What are some people thinking?

[thump_rrr]

My friend purchased a Remington 700 XCR II from a hunting buddy of his a couple of years ago in 300RUM.
It came with 50 completed handloads and 50 pieces of twice fired brass.
Last year he fired 5 rounds from it and found that the bolt lift was extremely difficult (I didn't know this at the time).
My friend wanted me to show him how to reload so I told him to give me his fired brass so I could decap it and run it through the wet tumbler so it would be dry and ready to load.

I begin to decap the brass and find every single primer pocket to be so loose that I can seat a primer with my finger.
I call my friend up and tell him about the primer pockets and I asked him if he had any issues with the gun. This is when the heavy bolt lift and poor grouping comes up.

I asked him if there was any load data with the load and this is what is written
200gr Accubond, WLRM primer, 97 gr Retumbo.

Needless to say we disassembled the remaining 50 rounds and began with a starting load of 89gr upto 95gr.
We found a sweet spot between 93.5-94.5 giving us 1" groups where we will concentrate our efforts.

 

[Hazwhopper54]

I am not sure how I would handle any one elses reloads. After doing it a while, I have found some very reckless reloading. I always try to use 3 sources of good manufacturer reload data. I would have pulled down the reloads and used powder for shtf and weigh everything and re- reload them.
We bought some brass and reloads of s&w 500. The lead ends were 440 gr. They said they used 15gr of titegroup. We still pulled all 200 of them. Everything was close but didnt want to find out otherwise.

 

[LiveLife]

I never shoot anyone else's reloads. Period.

Heck, I don't even trust myself after a range trip when I first started reloading where I mixed up different powder load data. When the first round when "BOOM" instead of "bang", I immediately realized what I did and after lowering my arms/pistol from above my head, I quietly packed up and went home to pull all the reloads.

Since then, it's double check/triple check of everything with redundant QC checks built into my reloading steps. We are all human and capable of making mistakes. Do you trust anyone else to be more careful than you with your body parts? How can you be sure?

"Funny thing happened at the range today" threads CAN BE preventable.

Be safe.

 

[ArchAngelCD]

There are only 2 reloaders I trust enough to shoot their ammo and that is a rarity. My advice is to trust no one's reloads...

 

[jmorris]

Yep, I can count on one had the number of folks that I would shoot their reloads. Out of one of my guns, the number gets even smaller.

 

[spitballer]

I make use of less-than-tight .223 primer pockets with Markron sealer but I'd be reluctant to take a chance on anything that loose. Not with something as bodacious as a 300 RUM.

 

[Potatohead]

when I first started reloading where I mixed up different powder load data. When the first round when "BOOM" instead of "bang", I immediately realized what I did and after lowering my arms/pistol from above my head, I quietly packed up and went home to pull all the reloads.

Glad to see some of you guys mess up too. Well, not glad, ergh, you know what I mean...

 

[ArchAngelCD]

Glad to see some of you guys mess up too. Well, not glad, ergh, you know what I mean...

We all make mistakes. If you are being careful and have safety checks built into your loading procedures you can catch the mistakes before you fire the rounds . If you do go as far as firing a mistake hopefully you are paying attention and can minimize the fallout. (like knowing when you fire a squib and not pulling the trigger again)

I have some very good teachers and there are checkpoints built into my loading procedures which has prevented my mistakes from being fired. I have been blessed and have caught all my mistakes before they reach the range. Those mistakes have never made it into a gun and probably never will as long as I don't get lazy and cut out the checkpoints...

 

[Hardtarget]

you've heard the old saying about there being two types of motorcycle riders....those who have had wrecks, and those who will have wrecks.

The same goes for those of us that reload...those of us that have made mistakes, and those that will.

Reloading is a hobby full of areas prime for mistakes. I don't even play a radio during some phases of the process. Its just too easy to let my brain "drift". I don't even like for my wife to come in...distractions!

...yes, I've pulled my share of ammo apart.

Mark

 

[morcey2]

I helped a friend of mine pull down a bunch of his Dad's 30-06 handloads. His dad was claiming to get 300 win mag trajectories out of his "special" reloads. The reloads were well documented with one exception: the powder was listed as "don't ask" on the boxes. When we pulled them down, the powder was a mix of Red Dot and some unidentified extruded powder. I don't know if the powder was actually mixed or if it was a duplex load because we were using a kinetic puller so it was all mixed up when we got it out. It was about 60 gr of powder altogether in each one.

The reason he was pulling them down was that he fired one of them in his Dad's rifle after he got it and he couldn't get the bolt open without a mallet. His dad was always complaining about the short brass life he was getting and that they didn't make brass good anymore. After we found out what the loads were, he took the gun, built on a commercial mauser action, to a gunsmith and it had severe lug setback completely swallowing the field gauge. The rifle was basically trashed at that point, but he did salvage about 35 good 165 gr Nosler partitions, but that was about it. And some fertilizer for the tomato patch.

Matt

 

[climbnjump]

I asked him if there was any load data with the load and this is what is written 200gr Accubond, WLRM primer, 97 gr Retumbo.

Yeah, I'll bet those were fun. The Nosler Rev. 7 reloading guide shows a max of 91.5 gr of Retumbo for the 300RUM and 200 gr Accubond.

SAAMI max pressure for the 300RUM is 65,000 psi. Running 97 gr of Retumbo through QuickLOAD gives a maximum pressure of 72,372 psi.

I wonder how much abuse that rifle was subjected to by its previous owner???

 

[GooseGestapo]

My Savage M110 in .300RUM gives light resistance and flattened primers at the 91.5gr level with 200gr Sierra's and Noslers; I use a max of 90.0gr.... and still gives 3,100+fps...

I can't imagine what would have happened at 97.0gr.... My Max load with a 180gr bullet is 98.5gr... for over 3,300fps

I bet the loader "kicked" the number and thought 91 was 97 when he started assembling the load.

check, double check, and re-check, freqently....
I never reload from "memory" If it ain't in writing and verified by other sources, it ain't happening.

 

[LiveLife]

friend purchased a Remington 700 ... from a hunting buddy ... a couple of years ago in 300RUM.

... came with 50 completed handloads and 50 pieces of twice fired brass ... 200 gr Accubond, WLRM primer, 97 gr Retumbo.

... Last year he fired 5 rounds from it and found that the bolt lift was extremely difficult

I begin to decap the brass and find every single primer pocket to be so loose that I can seat a primer with my finger.

My Savage M110 in .300RUM gives light resistance and flattened primers at the 91.5gr level with 200gr Sierra's and Noslers; I use a max of 90.0gr.... and still gives 3,100+fps...

I can't imagine what would have happened at 97.0gr

It's been 2 years, but the friend may want to talk to his hunting buddy. If the hunting buddy still reloads, he may be overloading other rifles.

 

[jerkface11]

Did you weigh the charges to confirm that it was 97gr and not a sloppy 91 or 92?

 

[herkyguy]

I had a buddy trying different seating depths of his .308 and he was pretty insistent that I try some of his reloads too. I didn't know a thing about reloading at the time, but I wasn't letting that ammo anywhere near my gun.

Having learned just a bit since then, I'm sure glad I didn't. The Hornady 9th edition has some good diagrams of pressure spikes....... not something I want to mess with.

 

[thump_rrr]

Did you weigh the charges to confirm that it was 97gr and not a sloppy 91 or 92?

They were all +- 0.1gr.
The R.P brass holds substantially more water weight than the new Nosler brass but was still 2gr higher than any other 300RUM data that I could find.
I'm away from home at the moment so I can't confirm actual case volumes.
We re-developed the load using Nosler brass and Nosler data and ended up at 91.5gr also.
As a side note Nosler loads to 3.580" as opposed to 3.600 which is the standard OAL for the 300RUM.

 

[JRWhit]

After we found out what the loads were, he took the gun, built on a commercial mauser action, to a gunsmith and it had severe lug setback completely swallowing the field gauge.

It might not be a bad idea to have that 300 RUM checked for this. With so many peices of twice fired brass, that rifle may have been regularly seeing 70,000 psi for a while.

 

[BullRunBear]

Threads like this are a helpful reminder to pay attention and double or triple check along the way. If I buy someone's cast bullets, out comes the micrometer and scale. I bought a batch of supposed 240 grain .452 cast bullets. The diameter was fine but they all weighed about 215 grains. No problem as long as I knew before loading.

I only shoot my own reloads and never fired a bad one. I'm very cautious but will pull bullets and start over if distracted. Rare but it happens. Better corrected at the bench than surprised at the range. I am not a fast reloader but it eventually gets done.

Jeff

 

[Vodoun da Vinci]

The only reloaded rounds I'll shoot other than my own were hand loads my Father in Law did. I was present during much of this and they were stockpiled and I shot them up years later. They were fine.

Other than that I will only shoot my own and have never had a problem....but as others have stated I am never complacent, never allow distractions, and have redundant checks for bullet weights and charges in effect at all times. I have no fear of a screw up but I'm always conscious of what will happen if I do.

VooDoo

 

[gamestalker]

I've made my share of mistakes also, but like Arch stated, I too have incorporated a number of fail safes into the process, which prevents them from making it to the range, much less off the bench.

As to shooting someone else's reloads, not gonna happen. The couple times I've shot someone else's reloads, bad things happened.

GS

 

[Jesse Heywood]

It's been 2 years, but the friend may want to talk to his hunting buddy. If the hunting buddy still reloads, he may be overloading other rifles.

Now you know why his "buddy" sold the rifle.

 

[loose noose]

When I first started reloading (45+ years ago) rifle cartridges, .270, 30-30, 30-06, I did it with a Lee Hand Loader where you took a piece of 2X4 and a mallet to resize the cartridge, punch out and replace the primer, and whatever was in the box for a dipper along with the recommended powder. Once I was done reloading without the use of a scale etc. I would take the rifle out to the range and test fire it as well as get the rifle sited in for deer season. I can remember at times that the bolt or lever would have a hard time closing (re-sizing) however after firing the bolt/lever would work just fine.

When I think about it, it is simply amazing that I didn't eat a bolt way back then, but I was careful to read the instructions, and check the level of the powder, and tried to just get bullets with a cannelure. In fact my buddies had the utmost trust in me and we would take turns shooting the reloads, such as they were. Pretty primitive wouldn't you say. I still have the .270 Lee Hand loader around here somewhere.

 

[FROGO207]

^^ Those propellant levels were the starting or slightly above amounts to use and were safe. Lee never had data that was at or even near max charge with the dippers. Look at the data and check it against the book yourself. You had to get a scale and weigh your loads using more/different propellent to get more out of the round. I have many of the Lee Loaders and this is the case with all the provided scoops vs data as well as the data using scoops in both the Lee books.