How can this be done?

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tcoz

tcoz

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This might be a rhetorical question but here goes....Yesterday at the indoor range I frequent, I bent down to pick up some of my brass and in the next lane (which was vacant), I found two .40 S&W brass cases, the upper half of which were expanded to the size of a .45cal bullet and one of which was split down its length. Obviously somebody was loading .45 and "mistakenly" used some .40 cases. The RO confirmed this and said he had stopped the guy and asked him to leave. My question is how can this even be done? How do you flare a .40 case that much and how could you then seat the bullet and then how could you not recognize it since it would've obviously been such a strangely shaped cartridge. Would it even fit properly in a .45 magazine? With my Lee turret press and any powers of observation whatsoever, there isn't any possible way I could do that and not recognize my error somewhere along the process. I was absolutely dumbfounded by this. It also gave me pause when I thought about the number of reloaders that I see there every day and whether those panels that separate lanes would protect me in the event of a major kaboom in a lane adjacent to me. Most of you guys are much more experienced than I am so please enlighten me on how anybody could be this stupid.
 
A .40 case with a .45 bulge was fire formed in the gun.
This is what happens when you fire a .40 in a .45 ACP by mistake.
 
Obviously somebody was loading .45 and "mistakenly" used some .40 cases.
Click to expand...

My thinking runs with that of TooManyToys in that the magazine was loaded with 40 S&W from the start along with 45 ACP. What I see as obvious was the shooter in this case wasn't focused on what they were doing when they loaded 40 S&W in the magazine. It was likely just commercial manufactured 40 S&W ammunition in the first place. That being my guess anyway.
 
Duh....I didn't even think about that which now seems obvious and I didn't really discuss it with the RO. Being a reloader, I guess I just relate everything to that rather than remembering that most people use manufactured ammo. I knew you guys would enlighten me. Thanks.
 
I did something similar one time with 9mm in my glock 23 :banghead:

a shooting buddy/coach had a cardboard box full of 40s&w that he wanted to burn through over the weekend and we were about halfway through with the 1k rounds or so on day two when i had a low recoil round that didn't cycle the action. i manually ejected the round and noticed a huge bulge in a 9mm case that matched a 40 cal chamber. i dissasembled the gun, gave it a good visual and concluded nothing was wrong with it. the bullet stuck the target and keyholed but bounced off the plywood backing leaving only a dent.

1500rds later through that and its still kicking strong, but that was the dumbest thing i have done yet. 9mm will feed through a glock 23 mag and chamber, and go boom
 
z7....yes but you noticed it after one round. I found four or five of them on the floor which had already been partially swept. No excuse in that case unless it was his first time shooting, but I doubt it since the RO always asks a new face and if so, he accompanies them out.
 
This has been covered many times in the past. People "accidentally" shoot .22 Long Rifle in .22 Winchester Magnum chambers, .380 acp in 9x19 chambers, 9x19 in .40 S&W chambers and .40 S&W in .45 acp chambers. I've found 357 Sig cases that were fired in .40 S&W chambers, too, and even know one shooter who admitted to doing that by mistake when he had both pistols on the bench at the same time and grabbed the wrong magazine for the .40.

I've found .270 Winchester brass that was fired in a .30-06 rifle, after the shooter complained about the lack of accuracy in his new rifle.......

You're dealing with humans, which means anything can happen.

Hope this helps.

Fred
 
yep, my Son managed to fire a .270 win cartridge in a 7 mag. I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one, but it happens, and all to often as well.

GS
 
ReloaderFred said:
I've found .270 Winchester brass that was fired in a .30-06 rifle, after the shooter complained about the lack of accuracy in his new rifle.......
Click to expand...

Anyone know if .270 will chamber in a .30-06? I've got a few .270 cases I formed into -06 before I started reloading .270. I keep them segregated and use a couple of other operational safeguards to make sure they don't get fired in the wrong rifle, but anything is possible.
 
TenDriver said:
Anyone know if .270 will chamber in a .30-06? I've got a few .270 cases I formed into -06 before I started reloading .270. I keep them segregated and use a couple of other operational safeguards to make sure they don't get fired in the wrong rifle, but anything is possible.
Click to expand...
Absolutely a 270 Win will fire just fine (well not so fine) in a 30-06 Spring. chamber. The 270 Win parent case is a 30-06 necked down to the 270 caliber.

Ron
 
ReloaderFred said:
Actually, the .270 Winchester's parent case was the .30-03, which is why it's longer than the .30-06.

Hope this helps.

Fred
Click to expand...
That would be true. Most documentation points to the 30-06 being the parent case of the 270 Winchester, however, the 30-03 Springfield (30-03 Government) does indeed share the same cartridge length (with a longer neck) with the 270 Winchester of 2.54", while the 30-06 Remington comes in at 2.49". I stand corrected on that note.

Thanks
Ron
 
I must plead guilty to firing a perfectly good .44 Spl reload from my Ruger .45 Colt Blackhawk, once.
Apart from "puff-like" report & recoil, and non-existant accuracy (or even general direction of the bullet), nothing unfortunate happened.
The .44 Spl case suffered some & didn't get re-used.
 
I've seen the same thing several times.

We had an orthopedic surgeon (would hopefully imply some smarts) show up at the range a while back with a brand new custom high-dollar .45 ACP.

He proceeded to consistently fire a couple of rounds then have a jam with a doublefeed. It would also throw a live round out the ejection port as it doublefed (sp??). He struggled with it and ran several boxes of ammo through it before asking for help.

Thinking it might be his magazines, I went to load one of my magazines with his ammo and discovered that he was shooting .40 S&W in his .45.
 
Occasionally I'll miss a sort where a piece of 380 brass gets mixed in with the 9mm. But when I'm cranking along, I'll definitely feel the difference in the first stage pull for resizing, and immediately stop and pull it out.

Now running a piece of 40 brass through 45 dies, there can't be ANY pressure at all, so how can you miss it?
 
KOZZZ,

The problem isn't loading a .45 caliber bullet into a .40 S&W case. The problem is shooting a loaded .40 S&W round in a .45 acp chamber, or for that matter, any smaller round in a larger caliber chamber.

tcoz,

It normally doesn't cause any damage, since there is hardly any pressure buildup. If the case ruptures, there may be some gas leakage to the rear, but most of the pressure goes down the barrel, as there's no obstruction in that direction, other than an undersized bullet.

When dealing with human animals, anything is possible...........

Hope this helps.

Fred
 
380 fired in 9mm Luger
Click to expand...
I'm guilty of this. Really bad part is that it was fired after it had been reloaded as 9mm Luger. Made it through the whole process
 
What Reloader Fred said. There wasnt any damage to me or the gun. Magazine loading son-in-law had some splainin' to do :).
 
Seen this myself, both with 9mm in a 40 and a 40 in a 45. While this might seem like a mistake of monumental proportions that only a complete idiot could manage, I have figured out that this is a relatively simple mistake. To begin with, you can load 9mm ammo into a 40 mag, but you CANNOT load 40 ammo into a 45 mag. The lips are too far apart and the 40 ammo just pops through. So how is this possible??

Turns out this is not caused by loading ammo in the wrong mag (and this is impossible for a 40 in a 45), but it IS caused by GRABBING THE WRONG LOADED MAG OUT OF YOUR RANGE BAG AND STUFFING IT IN THE GUN WITHOUT CHECKING THE CALIBER!!!

Got a Glock 9mm and a Glock 40, with loaded mags for both in your range bag?? A lot of people do. Same for 40 and 45, and it's not just Glocks. A lot of the newer generation multiple caliber pistols use modular magazine sizes that are interchangeable, so the potential for this to happen is pretty large. If you want to protect yourself against this, you should seriously think about putting colored tape or paint on your mags or baseplate so you can tell what you're pulling out of your range bag.
 
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