and you use 15 year old primers?.... see what I mean.... not sure what you need to draw a conclusion about reliability, but I know that factory loads have let me down more than my own, per capita if you will... clearly that information doesn't hold water for every reloader in the world, it all depends on how careful you are in all aspects of reloading.
And given a choice, how many people will carry factory vs.
someone else's reloads?
No one in their right mind would carry someone else's reloads... then why carry your own?
Why is that? Because to be statistically significant for many handloader's low quantity production, we would have to shoot every round to determine whether or not it was good. This is not me talking, it's people with a lot better brains and understanding than I have. (I'm talking about failures on the order of 1:50,000 or 1:100,000.)
Lets say we agree that you won't have a large enough sample of rounds (both factory and reloads) to "statistically guarantee that [your] ammunition will have an acceptably low failure rate for self defense.".... do you have a big enough sample of shooting factory loads to make this claim?.... so really all it needs to be is as good, or better than factory loads... right?
The factory does this for me, which is why I'll pay >$1/round. I neither have the time nor the inclination... but I wonder if there's a difference in the AQL for WWB and premium self defense ammo. I would hope so.
I've heard anecdotal tales that 1:1,000 WWB will be a misfire... I've not been so lucky... I'd say it probably more like 1:10,000... And except for .22LR it'll be many more years before I hit that number. I guesstimate that I've shot 3-4,000 pistol rounds in the past 20 years. Before that it was all .22 pistol.
So what is an acceptable rate of failure for self defense ammo? And is it the same as WWB? I'd love to know.
I would also love somebody who loads and shoots 1,000 rounds a month to tell us what the failure rate for primers is, presumably the factory uses the same stuff.
so we have to use other means to determine the most likely result and go from there.... use the information you do have....
Either way.... We know either you made a mistake in reloading (likely not completely seating the primer, or using ancient primers and/or powder), or the manufacturer of the primer did (hard to argue given they sat for 15 years).... but the primer being faulty is easily argued to be just as likely to happen in a factory load (unless you are deadset on using substandard components for reloading *read 15 year old primers* and you buy good quality factory loads to compare, which is what you have done here).... as with any component, what you can buy for hand loading is every bit the quality of that used by a factory (better than some factory loads)... therefore, they are out of the equation....
Actually both the primers
and the powder are ~15 years old, but I also have factory ammo of a similar vintage (in fact I recently sold a few boxes of original Black Talons
), and a lot of stuff that's much older... regardless, all of the ammo I reload is for plinking and practice, not loaded to full-power specs... and is of various calibers, making it even more unlikely that I can get past the statistics.
Since the round fired on the second strike I can only assume that both the powder and primer were good.
So now we are down to a variable of ONLY YOU making a mistake being the difference between factory loads reliability and yours.... again, arguably YOU can be MUCH more vigilant about the production quality of your SD rounds than a factory can.... you can hand weigh and confirm every round is set right, crimped right, and generally the best you can find anywhere... no comparison...
Here's where we agree... and disagree...
I am most obviously the reason for the misfire. I personally do all the steps you list, except for plinking ammo I refuse to hand weigh every charge, though I visually inspect every batch before seating bullets, and we can conclude that was not at issue... so your right, we're back to me, or a bad case...which again comes back to me. I inspect every case for splits, but I don't check the pockets other than the "feel" of the primer being seated, and most times I clean the pockets.
As for the disagreement... as any long time QC or production manager will tell, you can't inspect quality into a product.
[/quote]Honestly, I think you just need to put a few more reloads down the barrel being very careful about the build to get your confidence back...[/QUOTE]
It's not about confidence... I didn't lose any confidence in my loads or techniques, but granted I am always looking for more knowledge and experience; I was merely using it as a example of why not to use reloads for SD, and fortunately for me I don't have to rely on them for that purpose
... if I did it would take all the pleasure out of reloading.
