What's your worst experiance reloading ?

[lovedogs]

Fortunately, I'm one of those real careful guys and haven't had any mishaps. I've only been reloading for 37 yrs. though.

One of my old friends had a bad habit of having several cans of powder on the bench at once. I told him that was a bad idea. One day he ran out of H4831 in his measure. He inadvertently grabbed a can of H4895 and finished loading his 7MM Rem Mag cases. The next day another of his friends touched one of those off at the range. It knocked him off the shooting bench, broke the wrist of the stock, blew the floorplate out of the stock, and welded the bolt shut. After pulling the bullets and discovering his mistake he found he'd loaded it 13 grains over max for H4895 powder. A gunsmith removed his bbl. and got it all apart. It didn't hurt the Remington action or bbl. but it ruined the stock and bruised the shooter's face pretty bad.

Another friend, an ex-employee of a firearms manufacturer, once thought he'd go real slow and see if he could push some live primers out and replace them with a different primer. Bad idea! It's always better to soak them to kill them or, better yet, just fire them without powder and replace them with the primer of choice. Anyway, he didn't wear eye protection, either. A primer went off. My friend now has only one eye. Never! I repeat... never try to decap live primers!!

[krag35]

I have decapped hundreds of live primers without a problem, probably because I never thought about it. now that I know, I'm going to have to kill them first. My luck won't extend to deliberately dumb things

I know that live primers on the floor will cause your wife/girlfriend to quit vacuuming your reloading room floor

krag35

[krag35]

This one didn't involve reloading, but it did involve black powder. It was several years ago, so the shame (and more importantly the statute of limitations) has worn off.

The first house I bought was just a little dump, formerly owned by a widow woman who had passed on. it was over grown and generally run down, and in a poor part of town to boot. It was what I could afford at the time. Out in the back yard was a gihugeic Plum tree that was dead. I fell the tree, but what to do with the stump? I dug around it for a solid week, then hired the neibour kid to dig on that big bas###d for a week. by the time we were done, it looked like a 750# bomb had landed in the back yard, but I still broke 2 3/8 chains trying to pull it out with my pickup. If I remember right it was about July 2nd when I came up with this brainfart. On the 4th the city sets off fireworks from the rim above town, so I had cover for what I contemplated. 2# of FFFG in a 2" pipe nipple and some home made fuse. I snuck out back (whole family was out front watching the fire works) Lit the fuse and came back up front with the folks. My timing was off and the big BANG happened wile they were reloading the tubes up on the hill. I got off lucky I only ruptured the water line, and not the NATURAL GAS LINE that was 2' farther out. The fire department showed up along with the city fellers (to shut off Old Faithfull gysering in my back yard, and though I was in my mid 20's Dad nearly beat my ass again. That stinkin stump was still stuck, I wound up cutting off the exposed roots and backfilling. I had Plum sprouts in my back yard as long as I had that place.

it's a wonder I got to make old bones the way I did things.

krag35

[lovedogs]

Hey, Krag... you better watch yourself. Today they'd call you a terrorist and you'd expire in Guantanamo before your relatives could clear your name. But all joking aside, next time you plan a stump extraction let me know so I can watch... from a good distance, of course.

[kg42]

Just remembered that one: A fella reloaded two boxes of 45 with one of his dies interfering with his Auto-Disk powder measure; result was 100 squib loads...

He found a kid who was too happy to rack the slide back 100 times after shooting the big gun.
A guy said he could see the bullets fly to the target... I don't know; I can only remember the ones who bounced back and hit my feet over the next hour...

kg

[C1PNR]

I've never had a Ka-Boom, but rather on the other end of the spectrum. "Pop" and nothing else happens.

Years ago two young ladies, players on our softball team, were room mates in a section of town that wasn't the greatest from a security standpoint. They had been out on the desert shooting with us several times and finally one of them decided to buy a pistol for self defense. We talked it over a few times and they finally decided on a 4 " K model S&W in .38 Special.

Money was very tight and I told them I'd be happy to load up some ammo for them. To show them the reliability of reloaded ammo, we went out with their new (to them) pistol and a couple of my rifles, including my Siamese Mauser in 45-70.

We shot up quite a bit of the FACTORY .38 Special stuff they brought and finally moved to the rifles. Well, out of the 20 rounds I had loaded for the 45-70, 5 in a row DID NOT make a sound! Load, pull the trigger, and nothing but a "click." The other 15 were fine, but the 5 were the ones that made an impression!

They bought another box of factory ammo!

When I got home and pulled the boolits, they were black on the base, but had not moved at all in the case! Absolutely NO powder in those 5.

We shot together many times after that, but they ALWAYS brought their own ammo!

[Cynical]

Well C1PNR, a similar thing happened to me. Only it was less embarrassing and a little more destructive.

I had purched a Kel Tek Sub 40 for a range toy. One day when we were out on the firing line enjoying some rapid fire target practice, that squib load rudely announced its nature. Bang, bang, bang, click, BANG, OUCH, Wnat the heck was that ?!! as I dropped the mini rifle to the ground.

Then I proceded to learn how to ( or not how to ) remove two stuck bullets from a 16 inch barrel. The plastic receiver had split apart some and spit the magazine out,
but nothing was terribly broken. ( except my confidence in my home-rolled ammo.)

As for the accuracy of that rifle, it didn't suffer much. Nor did it improve any. It still couldnt keep ten shots on a 12x12 target at fourty yards.

When it was stolen from the range some months later I didn't even think of shedding a tear.

Al