I have been hand loading for about 30 years, I was once a pretty active member here - but I was absent for so long after a severe back injury that my profile vanished.
I would like to share some recent experience of mine.
I sat down at my trusty old red colored progressive, and cranked out about 250 rounds of .45acp to run through my new XDm compact. I load up a bunch of old 230gr LRN with some old AA #7 using my records for a good light load. At the range, I notice that the sound is pretty boomy, and there is a great deal of smoke. I figure that the lube on the bullets is probably just old making it smoky.
Every thing is going fine until I get a no-fire. After waiting to be sure I am not having a hang-fire, I eject the round and find the primer is missing! Feeling pretty boggled by how an unprimed round made it all the way from the press to the gun, I looked at all my loads and ran my finger over each and every primer to ensure that it had one, and that is was seated properly. I found 2 or 3 with primers not fully seated.
About 20 rounds later, the breach fails to close on a round. Knowing this is common when the gun gets dirty, I do a quick strip and brush - the gun is pretty filthy already.
At about the 200th round I get a squib.
I decide enough is enough and head home feeling very bothered by the whole thing - squibs really scare the crap out of me.
Now I really have no idea how many bullets I have reloaded over the years. I know that I have worn out barrels on my trusty old 1911 gvmt, so I have made a lot of ammo. I seldom have any issues with my ammo, I have so few issues that I let other people shoot my ammo.
After thinking about it for a while, I decide that I must be doing something different at the press. Just on the safe side, I give the press a very thorough look-over. This is an older Hornady Pro-Jector, those of you that have one know that it can be a tad temperamental at times.
I found three issue with it;
The shell plate would not fully advance every cycle. There was a tiny burr under the ball that would occasionally stop it from advancing.
The primer anvil had a tiny piece of debris under the anvil that was preventing the little sleeve from going all the way up around the primer. This would cause the little lever to hang every once in a while under the primer tube, then pop over under the shell plate. The primer could then be flung out of the primer cup. This is probably the source of my unprimed round. I can't remember ever using this press for small primers, so I probably put the primer anvil in and forgot about it years ago, not considering that I might need periodic maintenance.
The clamp on the big tube the primer tube slides into had shifted with repeated use and was no longer holding the primer tube at the exact height it should.
After cleaning and re-adjusting the press, I made a few dummy rounds paying very close attention to my every move. I have the seating die in the last position so that I can peer into a freshly charged case to make sure there really is powder in there. I found my light was positioned perfectly to create shadow inside the case that could be interpreted as a powder charge if one only glanced at it.
All my other motions at the bench seemed fine, except that I stopped inspecting each round individually. Instead I would just grab a few random rounds and look them over, then dump them all in cartons and scoop out handfuls to take to the range.
I load up some fresh ammo and head to the range, all the ammo came out fine, but it was still boomy and smoky - remember, these are supposed to be light loads.
Not liking the smoke at my local indoor range, I dust off some old 200gr JSWC I have laying around. Going back to some even older records (I never shoot 200gr), I find my data for this bullet, I double check it against my same era Accurate Powders manual, take off .2 grain to be safe, and load up 300 rounds using powder of the same era (about 20 year old AA #7, I'm just trying to use up old stuff while I break in my gun). I am feeling confident in using this load, the LRN loads seemed fine, and I am using a slightly reduced load from my records that is about the middle of the published data load range.
Toady I head to the range to get the 500th round through my new gun so I can feel confident using it as a carry weapon.
It is immediately clear that these are pretty hot loads. I have to shoot 5 or 6 or them before I am able to recover a piece of brass since they are all going down range. I recover a piece of brass finally, as expected the primers are cratered, printed, and flattened square. The extraction ring has burs, and there is a very very faint imprint of the feed ramp. I shoot a few one at a time through my 1911 since that barrel has even less case support than the XDm and find no bulging, but a very faint outline of the ramp, that brass got dented on ejection too.
I then fired a few rounds of Federal 230gr HST +P rounds, the hand loads are noticeably hotter than the
+P factory rounds.
I packed up and went home after firing less than 15 rounds total.
It seems that AA #7 does deteriorate over time, the powder smells fine and looks fine.
I write all this to my fellow old hands on the bench, and as a word of caution to the new hands.
Sometimes experience works against us. I felt over confident because of my experience, and I loaded and fired dangerous ammo because of it. To make matters worse, I continued to shoot even when I started to experience problems because I was over confident. Fortunately, that same experience sent me home early today, as I am sure it would have the other old timers here. My experience before though was reckless, I should have paid attention to the warning bells in my head and gone home early then too.
I now have over 500 bullets to pull as penance for being stupid and over confident. Hopefully some one will find this experience to be of value to them.
-Josh
I would like to share some recent experience of mine.
I sat down at my trusty old red colored progressive, and cranked out about 250 rounds of .45acp to run through my new XDm compact. I load up a bunch of old 230gr LRN with some old AA #7 using my records for a good light load. At the range, I notice that the sound is pretty boomy, and there is a great deal of smoke. I figure that the lube on the bullets is probably just old making it smoky.
Every thing is going fine until I get a no-fire. After waiting to be sure I am not having a hang-fire, I eject the round and find the primer is missing! Feeling pretty boggled by how an unprimed round made it all the way from the press to the gun, I looked at all my loads and ran my finger over each and every primer to ensure that it had one, and that is was seated properly. I found 2 or 3 with primers not fully seated.
About 20 rounds later, the breach fails to close on a round. Knowing this is common when the gun gets dirty, I do a quick strip and brush - the gun is pretty filthy already.
At about the 200th round I get a squib.
I decide enough is enough and head home feeling very bothered by the whole thing - squibs really scare the crap out of me.
Now I really have no idea how many bullets I have reloaded over the years. I know that I have worn out barrels on my trusty old 1911 gvmt, so I have made a lot of ammo. I seldom have any issues with my ammo, I have so few issues that I let other people shoot my ammo.
After thinking about it for a while, I decide that I must be doing something different at the press. Just on the safe side, I give the press a very thorough look-over. This is an older Hornady Pro-Jector, those of you that have one know that it can be a tad temperamental at times.
I found three issue with it;
The shell plate would not fully advance every cycle. There was a tiny burr under the ball that would occasionally stop it from advancing.
The primer anvil had a tiny piece of debris under the anvil that was preventing the little sleeve from going all the way up around the primer. This would cause the little lever to hang every once in a while under the primer tube, then pop over under the shell plate. The primer could then be flung out of the primer cup. This is probably the source of my unprimed round. I can't remember ever using this press for small primers, so I probably put the primer anvil in and forgot about it years ago, not considering that I might need periodic maintenance.
The clamp on the big tube the primer tube slides into had shifted with repeated use and was no longer holding the primer tube at the exact height it should.
After cleaning and re-adjusting the press, I made a few dummy rounds paying very close attention to my every move. I have the seating die in the last position so that I can peer into a freshly charged case to make sure there really is powder in there. I found my light was positioned perfectly to create shadow inside the case that could be interpreted as a powder charge if one only glanced at it.
All my other motions at the bench seemed fine, except that I stopped inspecting each round individually. Instead I would just grab a few random rounds and look them over, then dump them all in cartons and scoop out handfuls to take to the range.
I load up some fresh ammo and head to the range, all the ammo came out fine, but it was still boomy and smoky - remember, these are supposed to be light loads.
Not liking the smoke at my local indoor range, I dust off some old 200gr JSWC I have laying around. Going back to some even older records (I never shoot 200gr), I find my data for this bullet, I double check it against my same era Accurate Powders manual, take off .2 grain to be safe, and load up 300 rounds using powder of the same era (about 20 year old AA #7, I'm just trying to use up old stuff while I break in my gun). I am feeling confident in using this load, the LRN loads seemed fine, and I am using a slightly reduced load from my records that is about the middle of the published data load range.
Toady I head to the range to get the 500th round through my new gun so I can feel confident using it as a carry weapon.
It is immediately clear that these are pretty hot loads. I have to shoot 5 or 6 or them before I am able to recover a piece of brass since they are all going down range. I recover a piece of brass finally, as expected the primers are cratered, printed, and flattened square. The extraction ring has burs, and there is a very very faint imprint of the feed ramp. I shoot a few one at a time through my 1911 since that barrel has even less case support than the XDm and find no bulging, but a very faint outline of the ramp, that brass got dented on ejection too.
I then fired a few rounds of Federal 230gr HST +P rounds, the hand loads are noticeably hotter than the
+P factory rounds.
I packed up and went home after firing less than 15 rounds total.
It seems that AA #7 does deteriorate over time, the powder smells fine and looks fine.
I write all this to my fellow old hands on the bench, and as a word of caution to the new hands.
Sometimes experience works against us. I felt over confident because of my experience, and I loaded and fired dangerous ammo because of it. To make matters worse, I continued to shoot even when I started to experience problems because I was over confident. Fortunately, that same experience sent me home early today, as I am sure it would have the other old timers here. My experience before though was reckless, I should have paid attention to the warning bells in my head and gone home early then too.
I now have over 500 bullets to pull as penance for being stupid and over confident. Hopefully some one will find this experience to be of value to them.
-Josh
