Dumb question about "fixing" improperly seated live cartridges

[Shear_stress]

Was a-reloadin' this weekend. I only have one bullet seating/roll-crimp die for this caliber, and need to reconfigure it before I can roll-crimp. Out of shear laziness, I configured my roll-crimp die on live cartridges, rather than the dummies I usually make up. In the end, the set up process only wasted two loaded cartridges when I didn't fully backout the bullet seating screw. As a result, the bullets got pushed in a little too deeply on those two cartridges. I set them aside and finished the rest of the batch.

Afterward, I got to thinking about those two live cartridges. Not only do I hate waste, but having two improperly seated cartridges floating around seemed like a safety risk. In the spirit of thrift, and, well, curiosity, I decided to see if I could rescue those othewise wasted cartridges.

I used my impact puller to carefully drive the bullets out a few thousanths. I got a little over enthusiastic and lengthened the cartridges by about 10/1000" too much. I then placed the cartridges on a flat surface and used a plastic mallet to tap the bullets so that the cartridges achieved the proper OAL. They then went back through the roll crimp die.

The operation was successful. However, I wonder if I just traded one safety risk for another. How idiotically dangerous is it to tap a bullet on a live cartridge?

 

[BigJakeJ1s]

If your seat/crimp die was properly adjusted, and it sounds like you got that working, I'd just run it through that to seat the bullet to the correct depth and re crimp.

I'd be a little leary of tapping on the bullet if the base was not in a shell holder (with the hole under the primer). That would only be a problem if the primer was not seated flush or deeper. I suppose there's also a chance that some foreign object got under the base. All in all, the risks are minor, but also easily avoidable.

Andy

 

[The Bushmaster]

I don't care which end of the cartridge you are tapping on. Do me a favor...Let me know when you wish to do it. So I can get clear away from you O K??

 

[P95Carry]

If you use the puller to add excess length then no need to tap bullets to get OAL - just put them thru seating/crimp die assuming that is now set up for your run of loads!!

In fact if no foreign matter under primed and loaded case you'd be very unlucky to get a boom - but not worth taking the chance - is it?!

 

[Shear_stress]

To clarify, I set the cartridge bullet side up on a clean, flat wooden table. I am very careful to seat my primers below flush for the sake of safety and to prevent the cylinders of my guns from getting jammed should the cartridges back out of the chambers during firing. There was little risk of actually contacting a primer, I was more concerned with the impact somehow setting something off.

Anyway, my little adventure with the plastic mallet is not something I would repeat. I just didn't want to go back and reconfigure my die for bullet seating and back again for roll-crimping. Of course, that would have been better than than having a 158 grain piece of lead stuck in my forehead (as unlikely as that would have been).

As my dad says, "you can get away with anything once."

 

[redloki]

I have done the same thing as P95Carry has many times and it works well. I just hammer the bullet out a bit with the puller then reseat to correct OAL and crimp.

 

[Smokey Joe]

Deeper seating

Hmmm, Shear Stress, You only had 2 too deeply-seated rounds. Were I you, and assuming that the rounds were loaded to less than full-house pressures, and seated only a little deeper, I'd have reserved those 2 rounds for practice, fouling shots, etc, and used 'em up that way, rather than go to the trouble of adjusting them.

Seating a bullet deeper increases the pressure the powder generates before the bullet starts to move (less volume for the gases to fill up; same amound of gases; ergo, greater pressure).

If these were full-house, whoop-te-doo, pushing-the-envelope rounds, then you have an area of concern, and they are worth putzing with. If not, one always needs a few rounds at the range for less-than-critical uses like fouling shots, etc.

When I generate them, such "special purpose" rounds get marked with a ultra-fine-point Sharpie pen on the primer, an X or some other simple symbol; I put a note in that box of ammo telling what the X means, and that's that.

Of course, I don't normally load push-the-envelope rounds. Accuracy does not normally lie at the upper limits of pressure and velocity.