Injury Caused by Powder Mistake -- 28.5 gr of Lever Evolution VS 28.5 gr LiL Gun

[hpshooter]

A costly and dangerous mistake

Thankful you are all right. Thank you for posting to remind us that accidents can happen to anyone.

 

[Kracken McGraw]

Yes thanks for the reminder that it can happen.
I’m sure glad you weren’t seriously injured!

 

[Evan]

The reason I posted these pictures was to show what can happen if you make a mistake with fast burning powder--I have been reloading for 60 years and I have never had a serious problem until now--But all those years reloading mean nothing if you screw up--I never had pistol powder around until the last year for subsonic loads--I may not have it around much longer-- It's not the powders fault it is mine for not paying attention and being over confident--The mistake cost me 2 thousand dollars plus with the emergency room visit

Thank you for sharing! I don’t want my posts above to be construed as criticism of you. I mostly wanted to point out the somber truth that consequences (thankfully not realized here) can extend beyond what we normally think about when we sit down to reload, just like when we hop in our cars and drive somewhere.

One thing I adopted not too long ago was narrow, long shelves and placing my powder in one long row from fast burn to slow burn with labels neatly facing out. If I were to accidentally grab the wrong bottle, it’s almost guaranteed to be in the same burn range as what I was wanting. I can also see all the labels at once. It takes more space but was a big change for the better compared to labeling the lids with tape/markers and then sticking them down in storage bins.

I am constantly amazed at how reputable guns, like your savage, handle these destructive events and work to keep the shooter safe.

 

[Infrequent Shooter]

Rem40, Sir, thank you for posting this. The pics of the rifle are a damn good lesson. I am surprised the amount of damage done to your rifle.

 

[KMW 1954]

No words to express my emotions on this.

I have been posting since I came here that I work a few days per week at a large outdoor range. At many times there could be as many as 25 - 30 people on our 100yd range at the same time. Many of these shooters are firing handloads. We have no way of regulating what is in these loads, whether they are safe or not.

I have it in the back of my mind every day I work what the risks are of having this exact thing happening. More important and frequently occurring event, people uncasing their guns and then pointing the barrel directly down the firing line. Then having them tell me, "it aint loaded!" Like it's no big deal. How does everyone that just got swept by this idiot know that gun wasn't loaded? I don't want to get shot and I certainly do not want to see a customer get shot.

I will admit that I too have broken the golden rule of reloading and on occasion had 2 different bottles of powder on the bench at the same time. I even have a habit of placing a large funnel over the bottle cap of the bottle I am using.

 

[450BM]

The reason I posted these pictures was to show what can happen if you make a mistake with fast burning powder--I have been reloading for 60 years and I have never had a serious problem until now--But all those years reloading mean nothing if you screw up--I never had pistol powder around until the last year for subsonic loads--I may not have it around much longer-- It's not the powders fault it is mine for not paying attention and being over confident--The mistake cost me 2 thousand dollars plus with the emergency room visit

Rem40,

Thanks for posting this and I’m glad you weren’t hurt more seriously. It’s a great reminder for all of us to not be so comfortable doing something potentially dangerous. I do a lot of woodworking and try to remind myself every time I use a saw to pay attention and not be too comfortable. Worst I’ve done is measure once and cut twice, which, never works out well but it’s fixable…

I need to do this more while reloading because I have powders from the fastest shotgun powders to the slowest rifle and I use most of them quite often. I do have the very good habit of only 1 powder on the bench but a cautionary tale is always a good reminder to check and re-check weights and charged cases. Thanks again for the reminder for all of us to be cautious. Hope you heal fast and completely.

Bryan

 

[Dgd6mm]

I'm praying for your recovery. I'm glad you're injuries were not worse. Please be careful in the future and thank you for posting. This will be a good reminder to all of us.

Don Dunlap

 

[Straightshooter1]

The reason I posted these pictures was to show what can happen if you make a mistake with fast burning powder--I have been reloading for 60 years and I have never had a serious problem until now--But all those years reloading mean nothing if you screw up--I never had pistol powder around until the last year for subsonic loads--I may not have it around much longer-- It's not the powders fault it is mine for not paying attention and being over confident--The mistake cost me 2 thousand dollars plus with the emergency room visit

Thank you for posting it.

It's a good reminder of what can happen by taking too much for granted.

 

[sw282]

This thread takes me back to 1980 when l first started reloading 44 Magnum for IHMSA. My wife's father came up for the weekend with his Ruger SBH. We went to a favourite shooting spot to try out his latest loads. Loading the gun he touched off the first round that sounded really LOUD. The next round saw the Ejector Rod launch itself TOO. John paused and l asked his load. He said. ''11.8gr of Unique and 200 gr Speer half jacketed bullet. 12.4gr is MAX''. No more shooting that evening. We went back to the house to try and find the cause of the KABOOM. Taking a couple of John's loaded 44s l disassembled them using my press and Vise Grips. Upon weighing the Unique we found John had loaded 18.1 Grains of Unique! NOT 11.8 Gr.
l have no ldea what the pressure was. He sent the SBH back to Ruger with no explanation l know of. They sent it back repaired. He never shot the repaired gun, trading it on another SBH with a different length barrel. Sadly John passed away in 1981. l still miss my GUNNY SGT father-in-law/friend from WW11

 

[1shot]

Sorry it happened to you and glad you weren't hurt worse. Bad things can happen.
Not to hold myself up as perfect, but I have long had the habit of placing a tag in the powder measure hopper when I fill it indicating exactly what powder is in it. Ideally, I never leave powder in a hopper anyway, but there are times when one might be called away unexpectedly and forget what powder you left in the hopper.

This is exactly the reason that we as hand loaders employee various "stop gap" measures to avoid the potential deadly error. My standing rule is I never have more than one powder on the bench at one time. This method has proven successful for me for over 50 years. I'm thankful that the OP was not more severely injured.
to quote Mark Twain, "life is to short to make all the mistakes yourself, so try and learn from the mistakes of others".

 

[demarpaint1]

Thank God you're OK, that could have ended up a lot worse.

 

[cavedweller60]

As a hypothetical, what if a piece of that exploding rifle killed a shooter near him at the range?

Just like with a car, we are not in a bubble all by ourselves. When our mistakes can injure or kill someone else, we have a higher standard of responsibility for our actions.

So what exactly is your point? You could accidently kill someone playing golf, heck, I have been accused of trying to do just that. Should people not be allowed to play golf? I had a nearly new Glock spontaneuosly disassemble itself. Luckily, no one got seriously injured. It seems as though you are saying that, if you can'tcompletely rule out an accident, you shouldn'tbe allowed to.participate....is that what your saying?

Every single activity we participate in has some level of risk to the participant and any bystanders. An injury caused by your behavior can be cause for a civil action. It really doesn't matter if you hurt someone with a car, a ball or a gun.

The courts will consider how negligent, reckless and knowing you actions were, the actual damages to the victim, any mitigating facts, etc.

If you really think about you are far more likely to injure someone with a car than you are with a piece from an exploding gun...probably 1000s of times more likely.

As a long time LEO I have seen people injured in every imaginable way. From minor injuries to death. Almost all the injuries could have been avoided but, sadly the weren't. Does that mean everybody should discontinue all non essential activities because someone might make a mistake and hurt someone?

 

[rem40xb1]

This happened because of a mistake in writing down a load--I had a partial box of ammo that shot very well in my 6 arc the paper with the load written on it was missing from the box so I pulled one of the bullets and weighed the powder charge--I knew it was lever evolution powder that I used on the 6 arc so I was all set to reload more of the same load. What I did was wrote down 28.5 grains of LiL Gun instead of Lever evolution I think this is partly to do with my age I am 80 and I didn't catch the mistake and followed what I had written down. I don't think this would have happened 10 years ago. If I continue to reload I need to slow down and double check what I am doing

 

[Turkeytider]

Thank God you are ok, but please don't reload anymore! If you can confuse powders, you don't want to be risking your life!

While I’m convicted in the belief that hand loading is necessary to REALLY know the level of accuracy and precision to which one’s rifles can aspire, at 77, with a diminished attention span and attention to detail, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that putting together things that can explode is not in the best interest of either myself or those around me.

 

[rdremsek]

It takes guts to post this and open oneself to the internet world.

If it had been me, I would not have posted it, and I would have spent the afternoon cleaning my pants out. And I would not have told anyone but my wife, cause she knows I do dumb things on occasion and has stuck with me.

Well said he didn't have to post it but he did i think he was trying to make a point to be careful what you do when reloading so no one makes the same mistake he did.

 

[Bottom Fodder]

I’m sure 90% of the people here have make mistakes the other 10% just won’t admit. They’ve been a many of time I pulled bullets because thought/ did make a mistake because I didn’t follow my check list.
Glad you’re somewhat ok and thinks for Sharing. This could help someone to double check them self on each Step

 

[M-61]

Having powder named as opposed to numbered I never thought was a good idea.
However that being the case, one should always have a clear head and no distractions when you reload.
I don’t reload more than about 40 rounds at a time. That’s because that’s all I’m taking to the range, but I’m strictly shooting 5 shot groups. And when I say reloading 40 I mean that brass has already been prepped.
Of course there’s only one powder on my bench, I never leave powder in the dispenser, and I never re- label anything.
That’s all great, the trick is not varying from that plan. Sure I’ve loaded more but that was years ago and what I do now works for me NOW.

 

[EEP]

Thank God you’re ok! Thank you for sharing! You may have saved someone’s life here by sharing that story! Be safe out there and this is a great reminder to us all how easy mistakes are made and not easily overcome! Get back on that horse rem40xb1!

 

[Tesoro]

I blame this lightly on the manufacturer. Being old schooler I am an advocate for powders only being designated by numbers, H-110, VV160 H4350 etc which are much harder to confuse with others. Catchy names like Lever evolution, L'il gun etc etc should be names for cleaning solvents and not gunpowders. Oh and btw I hope you buy a pair of glasses cause it is hard to shoot when you are blind!

 

[Evan]

So what exactly is your point? You could accidently kill someone playing golf, heck, I have been accused of trying to do just that. Should people not be allowed to play golf? I had a nearly new Glock spontaneuosly disassemble itself. Luckily, no one got seriously injured. It seems as though you are saying that, if you can'tcompletely rule out an accident, you shouldn'tbe allowed to.participate....is that what your saying?

Every single activity we participate in has some level of risk to the participant and any bystanders. An injury caused by your behavior can be cause for a civil action. It really doesn't matter if you hurt someone with a car, a ball or a gun.

The courts will consider how negligent, reckless and knowing you actions were, the actual damages to the victim, any mitigating facts, etc.

If you really think about you are far more likely to injure someone with a car than you are with a piece from an exploding gun...probably 1000s of times more likely.

As a long time LEO I have seen people injured in every imaginable way. From minor injuries to death. Almost all the injuries could have been avoided but, sadly the weren't. Does that mean everybody should discontinue all non essential activities because someone might make a mistake and hurt someone?

My point was that my first consideration is if I might hurt someone else. Hurting someone is an unacceptable outcome. When I see events like this, it reminds me to take a moment and consider if I am being reckless in how I engage with what I am doing. I think about how I could hurt others unintentionally with my actions and then how I can do things differently to minimize that risk. Like my example of no longer storing powder in a way that increases my chances of grabbing the wrong one, or using a spreadsheet to track every detail of every single round I reload instead of slips of paper in boxes that can be lost or misplaced. I’m not saying anyone has to stop, but we should honestly assess our capabilities and processes to avoid hurting others.