Powder handling mistakes

[Old Grumpy]

Let's see; I've dropped a charged case while transferring it from the loading tray to the press, dumped a dipper full of powder on the way to the scale pan, all fairly minor mishaps, I did however dump a 1/2 pint of powder salvaged from bullets I was pulling (due to a mistake with seating cast bullets) into the WRONG bottle. The only mitigating factor was the 1/2 pint was W231, which I had plenty of, and I dumped it into a 1/4 bottle of Unique which I also had plenty of. After that several checks and balances were added to prevent that from happening again. (this happened before powder prices got silly high)

Grumpy

 

[JHTexas]

It’s hard to remember all the events when powder went where I didn’t want it to.
Today it was the bullet feeder, dropping an extra bullet at just the right time to knock the powder out of the upcoming case.
Happened enough that I’ll need to look into it a bit more, but it’s fair to say that I was losing some powder today.

 

[Hugger-4641]

Thanks to my procedures, some of which I learned here, I've never mixed powders and never double charged. But I've probably made all the other mistakes at least once..
I have dropped powder into cases with no primers, loaded the wrong bullets, seated bullet after forgetting to funnel powder in first. Probably the worst mess was cleaning out my powder reservoir and forgetting to close the drain chute before dumping new powder in. Done that a couple times before I adding it to my checklist.

 

[Click_Here]

Ive charged into a non-primed case before. Thats the only gaf so far. Ive read enough about dangerous mistakes and have been VERY meticulous about powder handling.

One annoying thing I have done is drop a 55gr .224 projectile in a box of 500 62gr .224 projectiles. That was fun.

 

[jmorris]

I have another rule—never let two teenagers reload by themselves.

That was actually the safest hobby we had back then, a few years later my Father did cover the roll cage end of my blown ’23 T roadster project, because all my money went towards ‘fast’. We were all invincible, at that age. Our Father didn’t want us messing up his gloves though, we were young enough our skin would grow back quick enough.

 

[Highland Lofts]

I've done several of these.
I just had a unprimed 38spl case mixed in with my primes cases and charged it.
I have left powder in the pan of the scale and put the rest of the powder back in the container.
One type of powder on the bench and in the powder drop and I put a index card on the powder tube held on with two rubber bands with what powder is in there. When I dump the powder back in the bottle the index card goes on the bottle until next time.


I go back to Upstate New York for a moth to go deer hunting with my family.
My brother bought reloading equipment.
He bought the RCBS electronic powder measurer. We were loading some 30-06 ladder loads for his kid. When we got done he drained the powder out.
I told him it would be a PITA if you forgot to put the plug back in. Low and behold he left it open. A couple of days later we were going do some 243 and a butt load of powder ended up on the floor.

I tumble 38spl and 357 mah together and seperate it when I put in on my drying racks.
When I went to flare my 38sple the was four 357 cases in there and had a huge flare. They are in the trash case bucket.
I have been working on 38spl all brass cases.
357mag cases all nickel.

40 caliber cases all brass
All 10mm cases all nickel.

All my 44spl cases will be brass.
After my New York deer hunting trip I will be buying 500 nickel 44 mag cases.

That will make it so much easier to seperate the cases after I we tumble them together.

 

[dcarr]

On my very first batch of rifle ammo with my brand new Lee Classic Loader I learned to pour extruded powder slowly from the pan into the funnel and then tap the funnel a couple times with pan, because when I didn't the powder could bridge and then let go after I took the funnel off the case I was intending to charge. Astoundingly enough, it only had to happen once for me to learn the lesson.

tap the funnel, definitely