Reloading Mistakes, What's Your Worst?

[mr45man]

If you get an RCBS Chargemaster, make sure you close the powder drain door before pouring in powder, especially ball type. BTDT.

Yep been there

 

[Sheldon N]

Not checking headspace after changing annealing practices... was sizing to 0.004 shoulder bump. Within the next two firings all 100 lapua cases were case head separating and toast.

Most frustrating mistake is when loading precision rifle rounds on my Dillon 550 with a funnel to pour in weighed charges. Pour a charge when the ram is down.... powder everywhere. Double charge when the ram is up, then when you lower the ram.... powder everywhere. Needless to say I'm weighing the full cases after loading to confirm no empty cases/squib loads.

I'm only making that mistake every other loading session or so.

 

[lpreddick]

Early in my reloading career I had a winchester 25-06 with a boss gizmo on the end of the barrel(a break and tuner in one). I was having a problem using the boss and some degree of frustration set in and I some how dumped a ball powder into a canister of stick powder. At the range the first round was LOUD, hell, with that boss all shots were loud. Bolt lift was VERY hard and primer was gone. Dumbass me loaded another, and another. All had no primers, so I decided to stop shooting and go home. I pulled bullets and found ball and stick powder...Hodgdon powder. My other Hodgdon powders didn't look like this, so I called them and was advised I had mixed powders and now had a pound of fertilizer. The gun was not damaged BUT the boss muzzle break was belled, bulging in the middle. I came very close to blasting shrapnel to adjacent shooters! Thereafter, only one canister of powder on the bench at the time.

 

[PRR1957]

Chiming in late on this. My shooting buddy and I had as a last minute idea to go up north here in Michigan in February to do some shooting. At his house we went out to his garage were his loading equipment was set up to load up 100 9MM +P's for me and some 50 BMG for him. It was coooold outside and he didn't want to turn on the heat, so we were loading at very fast pace. To make a long story short, I grabbed small pistol MAGNUM primers by mistake. Good thing I was wearing thick winter gloves and the pistol was a early model a steel IMI, Baby Eagle. That load was +P++++P, and blew the grip panels off. Made my self a very large lettered sign that still hangs over my bench that reads"CHECK ALL COMPONENTS TWICE BEFORE YOU LOAD THEM !"

 

[eric n]

I dumped a new 1 lb can of 8208 into an almost new 8lber of r-15. Add insult to injury, all of the grass died when I used it for fertilizer!

 

[Toolbreaker]

I dumped a new 1 lb can of 8208 into an almost new 8lber of r-15. Add insult to injury, all of the grass died when I used it for fertilizer!

Different situation, but the same results here.

-About 6+ lbs. of powder? Check.
-Reviewing what I did after the fact? Check.
-Headed to the back yard with said "special blend" powder? Check.
-Questioning the intellectual capabilities of my gluteus maximus? Check, check...check.

 

[Sniper338]

Reloading 9mm... ran out of powder, switch to another powder, forgot to change the charge weight and made several hundred that were too light of powder charges to eject outta several 9mm handguns...

Reloaded on the progressive and no powder was going in, caught that soon enough..

Got up early one morning, started loading 284 win with 54gr of RE17, instead of 4831sc, caught that 10 or so rounds in.

Forgot to put in primers once, spilled a pound of powder out of a charge master, not enough neck tension and pulled out a bullet in my AR when ejecting/unloading and powder went everywhere

270 in a 280 shot, seen that.

Reloaded with sizing die not set up right and every one was hard to close on...

Prolly more..

 

[nmkid]

Take a look at this for, ' I don't know what happened'. This happened to me around 1972. I was just getting started loading and to this day I have never figured out what happened. The case is a .270 case. I was shooting 130 gr. Sierra's using IMR 4320. I don't remember the exact load I was loading anymore but, I long ago discredited the notion that I double loaded the case because the powder would have overflowed. That day I shot 5 rounds until I fired this one. When the rifle went off, I thought it recoiled a little more than usual. Almost instantly I felt something hot on my face. I rubbed my face and there were very small pieces of brass on my fingers. My eyeglasses with plastic lenses had several small pits. I looked through the scope and the horizontal part of the reticle was hanging down in 2 pieces, (Redfield Widefield Low Profile 6x). Also the stock was cracked starting at the tang back about 1". The rifle was a REM 700. I was being watched over at that time for sure. Even after all these years I still can't explain what happened.

 

[T-shooter]

Pulling the trigger and nothing happens, loaded one round with a primer but no powder. Loaded another with powder and no primer. I seat primers one at a time in the press and look at each one. Loading 200 .40 caliber rounds, I somehow put 4 primers in upside down. ??? And twice I forgot to close the drain on the powder reservoir on my Hornady Autocharger. "Gee, that thing is taking a lot of powder to fill." At least 1/3 pound on the loading bench each time.

The only sure fire way not to make a mistake is not to do anything!

 

[hogpatrol]

Many moons ago I lived in an apartment with old hardwood floors. I had a MEC shotshell machine. I was loading #8 shot and did more than one double loads of shot. Those little heel busters rolled in a hundred different directions. There was probably still shot somewhere in that apartment when I moved out a year later.

 

[rardoin]

Buying my first press and a set of dies..........


And that's all she wrote.

 

[Clancy]

Not checking headspace after changing annealing practices... was sizing to 0.004 shoulder bump. Within the next two firings all 100 lapua cases were case head separating and toast.

Most frustrating mistake is when loading precision rifle rounds on my Dillon 550 with a funnel to pour in weighed charges. Pour a charge when the ram is down.... powder everywhere. Double charge when the ram is up, then when you lower the ram.... powder everywhere. Needless to say I'm weighing the full cases after loading to confirm no empty cases/squib loads.

I'm only making that mistake every other loading session or so.

.004 did this?? How many firings total?

 

[Papa Charlie]

Most frustrating, I had been only neck sizing my 308's as I wanted to leave the fire form to the case body. Rounds started to get hard to chamber so decided to body form them for the first time. Well I ran the first case up into my new Redding competition body die. It was tight and I figured it was because I had let it go too long. When I went to retract the case, the base pulled out of the case holder. It was then I realized I had forgotten to lube the case first. Now I have been loading since I was about 14 years old back in the 60's and know better. I damaged the die trying to get the case out. Will not make that error again. Hated paying for another die.

 

[langenc]

Shot 223 in a 25/45 Sharps barrel...some misses and others keyholed.

 

[Sheldon N]

.004 did this?? How many firings total?

One box of 50 was around 7 firings, the other box at 12 firings, both behaved the same. Other lots of the same Lapua brass had gone 20+ firings when I'd been more careful controlling headspace so it wasn't a pressure issue.

 

[ireload2]

I had a frustrating discussion with a truly bone headed newbie about a year ago.
I am sure most of you are aware that Hornady has a line of ammo called Superformance.
Hodgdon markets a cannister powder also called Superformance. (note same name but 2 different companies)

This newbie was so green that he tried a powder and cartridge combination for which there was NO data.
He had posted wanting Superformance loading data for the .444 Marlin. He complained that he had already tried one load on his own and only got about 1400 FPS.
He could not grasp that Hodgdon Superformance powder was not the powder used in the Hornady .444 ammo. He was convinced that the Hodgdon product was used to load all of the Hornady ammo regardless of caliber.

Superformance powder is about the same burning rate as H4831.
Having 2 companies use the same name is a bad idea.
Hodgdon posted somewhere that they actually make 14 different powders that Hornady uses to load Superformance ammo.
So everyone please pass on to the newbies that Superformance ammo is not loaded with Hodgdon Superformance powder. Had this newbie picked a 257 Wby to load he might have gotten very different results.

 

[T-shooter]

Buying my first press and a set of dies..........


And that's all she wrote.

I couldn't put it better myself.

* Murphy is my guardian angle.
* If it works right the first time STOP! Something is wrong.
* No job is finished until you are bleeding.

 

[T-shooter]

Potential mistakes:
Always mark pistol/shotgun powder so you cannot accidentally use it in your rifle. Whenever I rapid fire anything especially with reloads, I always weigh each round to be sure it has powder. Imagine, no powder, the primer unseats the bullet followed by a good round. BOOM! I guess my wife could always draw my eyebrows back on while I'm in the hospital bed.

 

[swd]

I used to shoot a lot of trap. I loaded about 300 rounds on my progressive and looked at the powder tube and realized somewhere during that loading session I ran out of powder.

Also make sure on your Ponsness Warren loader to close the shot valve after changing shot sizes or you'll have an awful lot of shot all over your bench.

 

[snert]

Got brand new white berber carpet (before kids!). Set an opened (but re-tied) bag of #9 shot down to open door, went on my way, came back later. Don't ask me how, but when I picked it up, the open end was down. Deposited 24 pounds of shot into that berber carpet in one long sweeping motion. For a long time it looked like a big splash of grey on the carpet, and we never got all of it out. Beat the crap outta my vacuum too. I don't load shotshell anymore....

Used to load down a 224 caliber varmint rifle, using Unique for those close shots on groundhogs. One day I was wearing my earmuffs, shooting time after time at 450 yard groundhog, no spotter. Kept missing. no idea where bullet was going. After he casually went back to his hole I looked at my flip top bax. yep, clear as day on top in RED marker "REDUCED LOADS".

Here's your sign...