bbqreloader
Member
Pull a couple and check the powder weight, CFE-P runs very well thru my LNL, seriously betting its just a low powder charge...guess that also depends on your definition of "squib". Let us know what you find
Getting squib rounds and baffled
- Thread starter martinb3152
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That has not been my experience.
Interestingly, the people who don't weigh their loaded rounds and have decided without ever having done so that it is a waste of time seem to think they know more about the outcome than the person who does it as part of every loading session and has found a problem each of the few times there has been a discrepancy.
I have never had a case get through to bullet seating without having at least a partial powder charge. But even the variations in bullet weight and case weight have not been sufficient to "mask" a light powder charge.
AZAndy
Member
Martinb, are you saying that you had to drive a bullet out of the barrel six or more times with a dowel or brass rod or some such? What do you mean by "squib?" I'd be headed for home the first time it happened, because I don't carry anything with me to get the bullet out.
That will not necessarily be dispositive. The powder measure can have been - and likely was - working fine the entire time, but the powder could have "bridged" temporarily during the reloading session resulting in a string of empty cases.
There are other possible causes as well. The OP could have been distracted while reloading and not noticed when he stopped dropping powder. The OP could have been drunk or high, ran out of powder, discovered it, refilled the hopper and now has no memory of the event.
Well, I've tried weighing loaded cartridges to find light powder charges. Rifle cartridges have a chance of success due to the size of most powder charges used in rifle cartridges.
Handgun cartridges with small powder charges, the chance of finding all, and the operative word is "all", light or heavy charged cases is slim and none and slim's left town. (By light or heavy charges, I'm saying charges that or outside of safe levels, not in "normal" variations of what a powder measure will throw.)
Definitely, all bets are off if mixed head stamp cases or randomly selected cases are used. The weight variation from head stamp to head stamp can be significant.
From my experience with both rifle and handgun, I am not confident that I can find all unsafe rounds by weighing the completed cartridges. I use methods and inspections such as 100% inspection of the powder drop that eliminate the chance of seating a bullet on an under or over powder charge.
Apparently, my experience is not the same as others.
There was a time I dabbled with weighing and separating cases that I was using for Service Rifle competition. Given enough cases to sort through, I could have made match sized batches of cases within 0.1 grain of each other. I have no doubt that within a particular batch, I could detect variations in powder charges within the completed ammunition.
The time expending and the quantity of cases needed to get useful sized batches of matched cases made this effort too time consuming to be an efficient use of time for the minimal gains I could see.
Dudedog
Contributing Member
No argument or offense intented but I disagree.
I would think lot of it depends on how big the powder charge is to begin with.
7mm Mag with 60 gr of powder a no charge would be easy to spot, a 1gr light or heavy charge might be a different story.
Curious what case weight variation is in say .308 Lapua or other rifle brass that is known to be consistent.
Add swing for a known good match bullet and I can still easily imagine a 1gr diff if not more.
In 9mm with mixed brass (even with the same headstamp say WIN for my earlier post 4gr- diff) I just don't see how your can find a"missing" (or light) 5gr powder charge by weighing the ammo.
Some samples of factory ammo
Factory S+B 9mm 115gr RN 9mm
1 184
2 184.2
3 184.1
4 183.7
5 182.7
6 184.1
7 183.3
8 183.1
9 184.6
10 183.8
ES 1.9gr
Factory Speer GD # 53617 124gr HP 9mm
1 195.9
2 195.9
3 195.4
4 196.4
5 195.5
6 194.9
7 196.1
8 195.6
9 195.1
10 195.6
ES 1.5gr
Factory Speer GD # 53606 90gr HP .380
1 147.6
2 146.7
3 147.5
4 146
5 146.9
6 146.7
7 146.6
8 146.9
9 145.9
10 147
ES 1.7gr
Some PPU .380 10 rnds, min 144.7 max 146.8 so 2.1gr on these
So ~2gr here.
The Speer GD ammo is the LE Gold Dots which I have heard Speer holds to tighter tolerances than the Consumer GD stuff. (this may or may not be true, other people have mentioned this but I have not verified it)
Waste of time maybe not from a reloading standpoint, getting information is not a waste of time.
Trying to find a missing 5gr charge in 9mm with anything other than same lot weighed brass is a waste of time, so while you will have information it would not really be usefull for what you were attempting to do.
Note from my previous post I weighed some clean empty 9mm cases, and had two WIN headstamp cases come out 4gr different.
In a test I did for fun on cleaned fired cases from the same box of factory 9mm ammo I saw 2gr difference, and this was just a small sample from the one time I did it for fun.
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Dudedog
Contributing Member
As posted above I am sure with sorted cases and bullets you could find a very small diff, but that would only be with sorted cases and bullets.
ReloaderFred
Member
Until the OP comes back and states exactly what happened, everything else is pure speculation........
Dudedog
Contributing Member
Good point ReloaderFred and Walkalong, we need more info to help the OP.
LiveLife
Member
From what OP wrote, my guess is half a dozen or more rounds not going BANG, likely from not fully seated primers. If this is the case, OP can run finger tip over the primers to detect high primers.
If a case was not charged with powder and primer ignited, it will sound like "pfffff" and push the bullet into the barrel, which is the definition of a squib. Believe me, tapping out a stuck bullet from barrel is not easy or fun and if OP had to tap out several bullets out of the barrel, it certainly would have been mentioned in the OP.
I have hard time believing Dillon powder measure not dropping that many charges unless it ran dry.
buck460XVR
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^^The above posters asked the questions I wanted to ask. Are we talkin' a FTF or a true squib load? With a squib load, primers would be one of the last things I looked at. Iffin FTF, one of the first.
vaalpens
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With that many "squibs", it is probably FTF's.
FTF can happen to the best of us. I don't count myself in the best group, but I do take a lot of care to make sure all my primers are seated properly. All my primers are seated on a Lee single stage, and I normally seat the primer, turn the cases about halfway and seat again. Then sometimes I can feel that it is still not seated and have to work on it until I am satisfied. No FTF's for me until about two weeks ago when I had 3 out of a box of 50 rounds. All ignited on the seconds strike. Thanks to DA/SA guns. I didn't finish the box and left about 20 rounds for inspection at home. They all looked good. Looking at my gun I realized this is the one where I put a 17lb mainspring in. Not knowing if this is a primer seating issues or mainspring issue, I changed the spring out to a 19lb, and shot the remaining rounds the week following with no issues.
I am still not sure if it was a primer seating, mainspring or something else that contributed to the FTF's, but going forward I will document every time I have issues seating any primers, or if I deviate from my normal process. Hopefully next time I will be able to definitively be able identify to root cause of my FTF, if it happens again.
FTF can happen to the best of us. I don't count myself in the best group, but I do take a lot of care to make sure all my primers are seated properly. All my primers are seated on a Lee single stage, and I normally seat the primer, turn the cases about halfway and seat again. Then sometimes I can feel that it is still not seated and have to work on it until I am satisfied. No FTF's for me until about two weeks ago when I had 3 out of a box of 50 rounds. All ignited on the seconds strike. Thanks to DA/SA guns. I didn't finish the box and left about 20 rounds for inspection at home. They all looked good. Looking at my gun I realized this is the one where I put a 17lb mainspring in. Not knowing if this is a primer seating issues or mainspring issue, I changed the spring out to a 19lb, and shot the remaining rounds the week following with no issues.
I am still not sure if it was a primer seating, mainspring or something else that contributed to the FTF's, but going forward I will document every time I have issues seating any primers, or if I deviate from my normal process. Hopefully next time I will be able to definitively be able identify to root cause of my FTF, if it happens again.
It is, it's just not definitive.
Well, I consider that part of "working". IE, charging the case properly, which means the charge gets all the way to the case every time as well as being the correct weight.
DRAINSMITH
Member
martinb I just went back and read your previous post and noticed that you just had your press off the bench. There are a few things I would like to know.
1. How familiar are you with your press?
2. Are you sure you got everything mounted back correctly?
3. Have you checked your powder measure to make sure that it is dropping the amount of powder that you want?
1. How familiar are you with your press?
2. Are you sure you got everything mounted back correctly?
3. Have you checked your powder measure to make sure that it is dropping the amount of powder that you want?
Seems like a lot of unknowns as what is going on?
Has the OP returned and made clear if he had 6 failure the fire or 6 squibs?
I have been shooting for close to 40 years and reloading going on 15 years now and only experienced 1 squib in all this time, and it is a chore to push the Bullet out the barrel if I had to knock 6 squibs out my barrel I would be incredibly concerned and NOT continue reloading or shooting the ammo lot until I knew what is going on,
6 DUDS is way different from 6 squibs I hope the OP returns to clear this up
Has the OP returned and made clear if he had 6 failure the fire or 6 squibs?
I have been shooting for close to 40 years and reloading going on 15 years now and only experienced 1 squib in all this time, and it is a chore to push the Bullet out the barrel if I had to knock 6 squibs out my barrel I would be incredibly concerned and NOT continue reloading or shooting the ammo lot until I knew what is going on,
6 DUDS is way different from 6 squibs I hope the OP returns to clear this up
higgite
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All valid questions, but his previous post was in Nov. 2016.
I'm thinking he is calling a fail-to-fire a squib. But then you would think an experienced reloader would have tried restriking a FTF, which he doesn't mention. Hopefully, he will be back soon to clear up all our questions.
bbqreloader
Member
well until the OP comes back to fill us in....I'm heading over to @GunnyUS thread to get some Chips Ahoy and see what cleaning he's accomplished 
Nature Boy
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That’s the first thing that crossed my mind
OK, I'll throw in my 0.02 while waiting on the OP to respond. I've been loading on a 550 for 2 years now, and my impression of the Dillon powder measure is that its a quality unit that doesn't bridge, especially with a powder like CFE Pistol. Definitely not 6 times. So I doubt a low charge is the culprit.
IMO the only thing less than perfect is the priming system. Its definitely effective, but I don't get the same sense of feel that I did when I hand primed.
So my guess is an occasional high primer, and he had a few rounds that didn't go off because of that. So duds rather than squibs.
IMO the only thing less than perfect is the priming system. Its definitely effective, but I don't get the same sense of feel that I did when I hand primed.
So my guess is an occasional high primer, and he had a few rounds that didn't go off because of that. So duds rather than squibs.
martinb3152
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Well you guys were absolutely right. Found some rounds with very little powder in them. I don't know how this happened. But it's time to rethink my reloading habits. This is too dangerous of a game to make a mistake. I think what happened is that when I am low on powder of a particular brand and try to run out the Dillon powder measure, some were incorrectly measured due to not enough powder in the measure. I feel stupid for having this happened. Some people were asking if the squibs were getting stuck in the barrel. Yes they were. I bring a brass rod and hammer to the range just in case. I would just get a click. No small poof sound, just a click. When I load, I do make it a habit to look down at every round before pulling the handle. My biggest fear is a double charge. I am going to get one of those lights that you put in between the dies so I can get a better sight down. I might be having a metering problem with the powder measure also. I need to be more vigilante on watching to make sure the slide goes all the way in like someone mentioned. Thanks for every one's help on this problem.
martinb3152
martinb3152
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Dudedog
Contributing Member
Don't use a 550 so I don't know if you have a free station or not.
If you do the RCBS lockout die is neat.(does not work with bottle neck rifle cases) It will not let the case go up into the die if powder charge is to light/to heavy. (assuming it's adjusted correclty)
Needs to go in after powder drop and before bullet seat so I also don't know if that sequence will work on a 550.
I know Dillon makes a powder check die/system as well might be worth looking into.
If it was do to the measure being low you are probably ok to shoot the rest.
As I mentioned earlier I would mark them some how with a note to remind you to watch for squibs.
If you do the RCBS lockout die is neat.(does not work with bottle neck rifle cases) It will not let the case go up into the die if powder charge is to light/to heavy. (assuming it's adjusted correclty)
Needs to go in after powder drop and before bullet seat so I also don't know if that sequence will work on a 550.
I know Dillon makes a powder check die/system as well might be worth looking into.
If it was do to the measure being low you are probably ok to shoot the rest.
As I mentioned earlier I would mark them some how with a note to remind you to watch for squibs.
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Dudedog, there are only 4 holes on a 550 and the powder measure has to be on station 2. You could put a powder cop on station 4 if you don't crimp (or crimp during seating).
Martin, don't run the Dillon measure to empty unless you pay extremely close attention as they tend to get grumpy. I just ordered a light from Inline Fabrication for $32 built expressly for the 550 and I recently added overhead lighting to my bench. All well worth the money. Good for you for having a rod and mallet with you at the range. Instead of brass though I highly recommend a squib rod. Arredondo sells them and they can also be bought via Dillon. They are plastic so they won't peen over, but they are only for pistol barrels up to 6 inches I believe.
Martin, don't run the Dillon measure to empty unless you pay extremely close attention as they tend to get grumpy. I just ordered a light from Inline Fabrication for $32 built expressly for the 550 and I recently added overhead lighting to my bench. All well worth the money. Good for you for having a rod and mallet with you at the range. Instead of brass though I highly recommend a squib rod. Arredondo sells them and they can also be bought via Dillon. They are plastic so they won't peen over, but they are only for pistol barrels up to 6 inches I believe.
Don't let the powder run too low. The powder measure drops powder by volume not by weight, To get consistent drops there needs to be a fairly consistent weight in the hopper to fill the cup in the powder bar. Running it too low will cause you to have inconsistent powder drops.
Hope this is of some help.
Hope this is of some help.
Blue68f100
Member
No powder will do this, aka squib. But with some powder most all clear the barrel but may not hit POA. I don't load on a 550 but with most all dispensers its best to keep them above the baffle for consistency. If you don't have one in you dispenser I would suggest adding one.
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