O.K. Fess-Up, Whats the dumbest thing you ever did with reloading?

[jma1965]

O.K. Fess-Up, Whats the dumbest thing you ever did with reloading?

I think mine was updating to Windows 7 and not backing up my Lee "The Shooter" software files. I didn't print them off either. O.K. that's two dumbest things.........Past reload data gone....

:killingpc:killingpc:killingpc

[desteve811]

lol when i had my 4 hole lee turret press i was reloading 460 mag and i didnt bring the ram up and i used the lee dipper and dumped 42grains of h110 in the funnel and dumped all the powder all over my press and bench.

[unclebill]

emptied my powder hopper into the WRONG jug.
expensive mistake.
i wonder why all those guys told me to only have 1 jug on the bench at a time?

[garym1a2]

Not charge a case and stick a bullet into the barrel. Good thing I was smart enough to know that if the recoil was very light and the op-rod of the M1A did not cycle that their could be a stuck bullet.
Next dumbest was not realize the chamber of the gun was well worn and useing small base dies. Had a few sperated cases from that.

[frkelly74]

Selling a mold or die set or brass when I sold a gun and then getting another gun that caliber. Not sure which part of that is the dumbest.

[btroj]

Did not have my powder measure tightened on the powder die on my Dillon 550. This allowed the measure to ride up causing reduced powder charges. I got very good at driving bullets from the barrel of my 45 Colt BH. Way too good.

Needless to say, that has not happened again.

[foxtrapper]

Took thirty years ,but I put the 231 into the 296!! Cost me 5lbs of powder.

[reloader28]

Either I've only done 1 stupid thing or this is the last one I can remember.

The electricity went out (it does quite a bit here). There was nothing else to do since the wife and kids were all gone somewheres. I grabbed a couple lanterns and went to the loading room to load ammo.

All went well and I had no mishaps, but when I turned around and hit one of the lanterns with a tray of 50 freshly powdered rifle cases, it made me stop and rethink a little bit.


But other than that, I dont ever recall doing anything stupid. Ever.

[midnight]

I once loaded a 357 with just a primer and no powder. I lodged a bullet into the forcing cone and tied up the cylinder on a Colt King Cobra. As it was, I couldn't have fired another round if I wanted to but what if the bullet entered the barrel and I was doing a rapid fire drill. Something to ponder.

One other stupid thing. If you use a powder dispenser like the RCBS chargemaster, you know you drain the powder by turning the little knob on the right side 180 degrees and all the powder drains from the hopper. Caution, remember to turn the knob closed when you are done. I didn't, TWICE. You can guess how much WC872 I had all over my bench.

Bob

[crabo]

Watching TV and changing out the caliber conversions on the Dillon Square Deal. So far so good, fill up the powder measure, then after seating the primer, fill the case with powder. Only problem is that I forgot to put the screw and retainer in to hold the powder dispenser onto the machine.

On the down stroke it comes off and dumps powder everywhere. I know I am not the only one that has done this and I wish I could say I have only done it once.

[deltaenterprizes]

I used a car antenna to unjam a tube of primers and they all went off. Thank God I had the tube pointed away from my face, the ceiling looked like a shotgun hit it!

[Piedmont]

I used to pick up duds of military ammo at the range. Then I would pull and sort the bullets by weight and diameter and load them in my 7.5 French rifle (what can I say, I'm cheap). Well one of my handloads looked funny and an 8mm jacketed bullet had been loaded in one of my 7.5 cases.

I don't know if it would have chambered but that might have been no fun at all had it been fired. Everything got measured twice after that.

[BulletFactory]

Loaded 700 or so rounds for a handgun that were only sized half way down for a better fit, then the barrel broke, so, they wouldnt fit in the new barre. I had to pull them all. It gets better. I was melting down the lead in a big cast iron pot, and all at once, the powder that was stuck to the lube ignited, and shot all the way to the cieling in a fireball about 4 1/2 foot tall, by 1 1/2 foot diameter! I wasnt hurt, but did have to go shave the other half of my face to match.:holysheep

[Centaur 1]

I used the toaster oven in the kitchen to pan lube pistol boolits with lithi-bee. SWMBO does not enjoy the odor of melted lithium grease. I was banished from the kitchen and I went and lubed the second batch in the garage on my hot plate, unfortunately she had clothes in the dryer at the same time. The next day she had to come home from work after an hour and change her clothes, because they smelled like my lube. After rewashing all of her laundry I now run an extension cord out in the driveway when I pan lube. I might just have to make a different lube and save this stuff for when I can afford a lubrisizer. Heck, she even makes me fry fish on the back porch with an electric fry pan.

[Centaur 1]

Loaded 700 or so rounds for a handgun that were only sized half way down for a better fit, then the barrel broke, so, they wouldnt fit in the new barre. I had to pull them all. It gets better. I was melting down the lead in a big cast iron pot, and all at once, the powder that was stuck to the lube ignited, and shot all the way to the cieling in a fireball about 4 1/2 foot tall, by 1 1/2 foot diameter! I wasnt hurt, but did have to go shave the other half of my face to match.:holysheep

When I have boolits that have powder stuck to them like this, I'll place them all on a sheet of paper on the driveway. Just light one corner of the paper and stand back until the powder's gone.

[44man]

My worst mistake was not getting married to a RICH, RICH, RICH woman! :drinks:

[Love Life]

I think 44man wins this one. [smilie=l:

The dumbest thing I have done is not turn the hopper on my perfect powder measure to the left before taking the hopper off. It was about half filled with 2400. Needless to say I always make sure I turn it to the left from now on.

[Freightman]

My worst mistake was not getting married to a RICH, RICH, RICH woman! :drinks:
Better yet have a keeper that is rich! You know keep me in lead, powder,primers, brass, guns and a 1000 yd private range, that is a keeper.

[mdi]

I sold off all my reloading equipment during a messy divorce. Hindsight says I coulda just stuffed everything in the camper (where I was living). (Redding press, Lee press, 6 various sets of dies, Lee powder measure, Lyman powder measure, Redding beam scale, various hand tools and about 200 - 300 brass and bullets).

[krag35]

I used to have a really nice Remington 788 carbine in 6MM Remington. I loaded 80 gr Remington FLGC over 42 gr of IMR 4895 and 100gr Partitions over 38 gr of IMR 4895. Both loads had been worked up from below, and both flattened primers a bit, and case life was a bit short, but I was in my faster is better stage back then and wanted every FPS I could wring out of that 18" bbl.

A friend gave me a box of 100gr Sierra spire points to try out. I had been loading 80 gr's (on top of the 42 gr of 4895) and was only going to load 5 rounds of the Sierras to see if they shot any where near my partition load. So I rolled the roller weight up to 8.0 gr. and FORGOT to move the sliding weight back to 30 gr.

Well a 20% overload in an already maxed out loading, you can imagine the results. I fired a group of the 100 gr. Partitions for a refrence point, loaded the Sierras and fired one round.

The magazine blew out of the bottom of the rifle ( denting the pickup hood BTW) and I could not open the bolt I should have saved that target, there was a bullet hole 5" above my partition group. When I got home and finally beat the bolt open with a ball pien hammer, 6 of the 9 locking lugs stayed in the rifle, 2 fell off the bolt when I laid it on the table, and one was streched backwards almost to the breaking point.

Now I zero my scale every time I change weights and double check ( sometimes triple check) what the weight is before I add any powder to a case.

[BulletFactory]

ouch.

[nes4ever69]

i get a hiccup in my cycle and throw powder in me lee powder through die, no case.

same thing only with double charges. at least im one of those that if something doesnt look or seem right, i just dump the powder out and re-do it.

after i moved from CO to MO i forgot how to used my scale. hadnt reloaded anything for month's and had to re-learn how to use it.

loading up some 50bmg had some primer not seat right, put some oil in the case to kill the primer so i could re-move them safely. well i went to reload a batch and found four primed shell's. i dont need to explain the rest.

[krag35]

My second dumbest thing would be filling both hoppers on my MEC shotshell loader, flipping it back and taking out the charge bar to change powder bushings. Getting distracted by something and flipping the hoppers back upright without reinstalling the charge bar. As powder and shot are running out of the hoppers, I shoved the hoppers back to upside down hard enough to snap the neckout of of the shot hopper, that made a bit of a mess.

[oscarflytyer]

Loaded 700 or so rounds for a handgun that were only sized half way down for a better fit, then the barrel broke, so, they wouldnt fit in the new barre. I had to pull them all. It gets better. I was melting down the lead in a big cast iron pot, and all at once, the powder that was stuck to the lube ignited, and shot all the way to the cieling in a fireball about 4 1/2 foot tall, by 1 1/2 foot diameter! I wasnt hurt, but did have to go shave the other half of my face to match.:holysheep

Reading thru these, and OMG! I could see myelf pulling and remelting bullets... Note to self - DON'T!!! FWIW, once had a motor we were working on send a fireball back thru the carb like that. Took my eyebrows and newly receding hairline about a month to grow back!

[oscarflytyer]

My second dumbest thing would be filling both hoppers on my MEC shotshell loader, flipping it back and taking out the charge bar to change powder bushings. Getting distracted by something and flipping the hoppers back upright without reinstalling the charge bar. As powder and shot are running out of the hoppers, I shoved the hoppers back to upside down hard enough to snap the neckout of of the shot hopper, that made a bit of a mess.

OK - THANX!!! Laughed until tears came to my eyes on this one! I could just picture it, AND doing exactly the same thing!

[markinalpine]

Adding powder to an unprimed case. :groner:

Mark :veryconfu

[Huntducks]

Screwing with the timing on my PW shotshell press then loading about 200 rds of 1/4 powder loads then not knowing I mixed all loads into a 5gal bucket with 500 normal loads there are a few surprises in every box but it's fun to watch the shot a wad leave the barrel matter of fact my son and I shot crows Sunday and i'm finely down to 3 box's of this batch.

My other big mistake was not going on a stone sheep hunt when I had the age legs and money.

[AZ-Stew]

Trying to make "plinker" loads for my Smith M-29 using Hornady 240 gr JHPs. If you ever read somewhere that jacketed bullets shouldn't be loaded to velocities below about 700 fps, believe what you read. I had them down far below that, but in the mid 70s I didn't have access to a chrono, so I don't know the actual speed. Doesn't matter. It was too low. I was shooting with a friend and loaned him the gun for a few rounds. Apparently, he didn't notice that there was something odd about one of the shots. I took the gun back from him and fired a few, then happened to look at the barrel. It looked like a snake that had just eaten a mouse. Big bulge about half way down the barrel. Amazingly, it shot just as well with the bulge as it did without it, but I suspect it lost a little velocity.

I sent it back to Smith and had it re-barreled. It was an expensive lesson and was the factor that drove me to casting for modern firearms. I already cast for muzzle loaders.

If you want plinker loads, use cast, not jacketed.

Regards,

Stew

[wallenba]

Began pouring SR 4759 into my Chargemaster hopper with the dump valve open and not noticing until it was half full.

[BulletFactory]

tried a chamber cast with hot glue. Even though I oiled it first, it got stuck. Then I tried to press it owt with a dowel, which broke in the barrel, I tried a lead slug in the muzzle end to try to drive it through, that didnt work. I had to drill through the lead slug for an EZ out, which did get the slug back out of the muzzle.That worked, so I drilled through the hot glue to drive a pin through there so I could back the dowel out, which worked, but the drill bit canted just enough to put half a dozen scratches on one of the lands. I finally peeled the rest of the glue out with a very thin screwdriver, and hat to use 000 seell wool on a bore brush to get the residue out. This was the extent of this afternoons activities.

[gwilliams2]

Discovered that the hopper on my Dillon was empty after just reloading 500 rounds; had no idea when it ran out of powder and had to pull all of the boolits. Won't let that happen again, now I visually check every round for powder before the boolit gets placed on top.

[ColColt]

Dumbest thing...that's a hard one. I've put primers and bullets in upside down(caught the error, however) and loaded with one powder with I thought I was using another. Fortunately, these errors were quickly discovered and corrected. In over 40 years of reloading, sooner or later one is going to happen. One occasion I was shooting the 45 ACP and one bullet never made it out of the barrel. It got lodged just ahead of the chamber. It takes powder to launch a bullet, not just a primer and I must have somehow missed one. Good thing I wasn't doing rapid fire and I'm thankful I was cognizant enough to realize it.

BTW-I don't cast with sandals on either!!

[Leadmelter]

I have three:
I was reloading on a RCBS Junior. I have a 100 cases sized and was in the process of decapping and flaring. The phone was ringing and I only had three to go. I brought the ram up and my thumb was in the way. I bad part was pulling my thumb of the decap pin. The call was not for me.
I mixed a half of something with 1/2 lb of 2400. Seemed to me, the best way to dispose of it, burn it. It was winter and I dumped the mess on a metal garbage lid. Being careful, I put about a foot of cannon fuse to ignite. I lite the fuse and ran inside to watch. WOW, there was about an eight foot column of flame. No neightbors called the police or fire.
I put the shell plate upside down in my Dillon and could not figure out why I wasn't working until I got out the manual.
Hope you had a chuckle.
Gerry

[mpmarty]

Moving from Reno Nevada to Tampa Florida with a buddy helping load my stuff in a U-haul I got talked into leaving a 35 gallon oil drum full of wheel weights in Reno as "it's too heavy to load".

[mlaustin]

Making 9mm my first try at reloading cast bullets. And then being so confident in the load I found in a book I loaded and shoot 100 of them without ever testing the load. I have a target over my reloading bench that has the perfect sideways shilloutes from 9mm truncated cone bullets all over it from 7yds :-/.

(I soon after slugged my bore, bought a lubrisizer, and found cast bullet loads online...which led me here! So a happy mistake all in all)

[pls1911]

Silliest mistake while casting?
I tried to explain the advanced styling of abstract garage ceiling designs to my wife.
She didn't buy it, so I preceeded to unpeel nearly 20 pounds of lead off the ceiling.

Geez, all that application technique wasted....work easily duplicated if you sweep casting residue up for reuse...and pick up a stray primer along with the lead scraps and dump it into a full pot full of molten lead.

CLEAN UP YOUR WORK AREA BEFORE CASTING !!!!!

[Tom W.]

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one to lose a piece of finger while seating a boolit...

But the dumbest thing that I did was to listen to a man who just got some moly, and wanted me to bring my cast boolits for my .45 acp over so he could coat them. Not being familiar with the stuff at the time, I asked would it rub off when I lubed them. Oh no says he. You won't need to lube them. The moly replaces the lube.

Forward two weeks later and I'm at the range with my newly acquired loads with the nice slick moly boolits. Four rounds and my Colt meeds a bump to get into battery. I tried a fmj that I had, it loaded and shot well, but the next load with the moly boolit again needed a bump to get into battery. I fired the round, cleared the pistol and when I looked at the muzzle, it looked like silver spaghetti coming out the end..
I ended up pulling 100 rounds, lubing the boolits with LLA, and never had another moly boolit again.

[Bloodman14]

I used to have a really nice Remington 788 carbine in 6MM Remington. I loaded 80 gr Remington FLGC over 42 gr of IMR 4895 and 100gr Partitions over 38 gr of IMR 4895. Both loads had been worked up from below, and both flattened primers a bit, and case life was a bit short, but I was in my faster is better stage back then and wanted every FPS I could wring out of that 18" bbl.

A friend gave me a box of 100gr Sierra spire points to try out. I had been loading 80 gr's (on top of the 42 gr of 4895) and was only going to load 5 rounds of the Sierras to see if they shot any where near my partition load. So I rolled the roller weight up to 8.0 gr. and FORGOT to move the sliding weight back to 30 gr.

Well a 20% overload in an already maxed out loading, you can imagine the results. I fired a group of the 100 gr. Partitions for a refrence point, loaded the Sierras and fired one round.

The magazine blew out of the bottom of the rifle ( denting the pickup hood BTW) and I could not open the bolt I should have saved that target, there was a bullet hole 5" above my partition group. When I got home and finally beat the bolt open with a ball pien hammer, 6 of the 9 locking lugs stayed in the rifle, 2 fell off the bolt when I laid it on the table, and one was streched backwards almost to the breaking point.

Now I zero my scale every time I change weights and double check ( sometimes triple check) what the weight is before I add any powder to a case.



Hey, Krag35, read my post "My first Catastrophe"; it will make you cringe!

[kbstenberg]

Well as long as we are talking about squeezing fingers.
I just started casting last year. I read the Lee instructions with there bullet sizer an figured this will be a cakewalk. Well after about a dozen bullets. I didn't move my finger away fast enough from placing the bullet on the stud that pushes the bullet into the sizer. I lowered the arm to size the bullet an almost put a 30 cal bullet through my finger.
I slowed my pace after that!!
Kevin

[Mustangpalmer1911]

I have only been reloading for a few months so nothing to dumb yet (knock on wood). My closest to something reloading I was about 15 got my first muzzle loader. While reading the instruction I read X grains(dont rember the numbers) for max load, forgeting that included the ball to I went out in the woods and loaded X for max powder and the cramed the ball in. Well when I let fly it felt like a had shouldered a howitzer. The rifle went flying about 15 feet behing me I was flat on my back and the target I had set up about 1 yards away was blown over looked like someone had shot it with a shot gun from powder burns but no hole from the ball.

[BulletFactory]

must have vaporised it.

[reloader28]

Krag, those shotshell loaders are terrible. I cant count how many pounds of powder and shot I've dumped from my MEC's. I had to laugh at you, cause I've been there and done that.

I built a little wooden box that has holes drilled in it for seperating 8 shot from 5 shot. Yes, I've used it more than 3 times for that. It also works good for getting the powder seperated from 5 shot. Its also been used for that a couple times unfortunatly. Its one of the handiest tools in my loading room.[smilie=l:


A couple days ago I was priming some rounds on my Rockchucker. Using the priming tube. I like this setup as I dont get along with hand primers. Anyway, the set screw and spring came out of the priming arm and flew accross the room. This wouldnt be a big deal except about 6 primers fell out the bottom of the feeder. Luckilly I had quick enough reflexes to grab the primer tube and yank it out of the feeder. That sucsessfully flung about 50 primers all across the floor. It took about 15 minutes, but I found all but 1.:p

[steg]

I had a suspected overload in a few rounds of .357, unfortunatly I was tossing them all in the same container as they were being loaded, so I pulled them all, over a hundred, and being frugal I saved the powder, but what I saved it in was a brand new un used GI ashtray, kept just for this purpose because of it's design, so far so good, the tray was left on my loading bench, and my wife never messed with my stuff at all, so it was prefectly safe, until wifes sister pays her a visit, she lights up a cigarette, and my wife gets her an ash tray, yep, first flick of ashes in the tray and it was like a rocket engine being tested, they were in the kitchen at the table, and I was in the living room watching TV, it was still flaring when I went into the kitchen to see what the ruckus was all about, Her Sister never smoked another cigarette in my house after that, LOL..............steg

[10 ga]

Mostly "reload" MLs. Sooo it has to be the loaded a boolet w/o any powder charge. Big PITA! Bullet puller or remove nipple and drible about 5 gr of FFFF in and then shoot the boolet out. OR, if it's one of my in-lines, break the gun down, remove the breech plug, and push boolet out. Safe shooting to all, 10 ga

[lead-1]

You got to love those Mec reloaders, I was checking the drop weights of a couple of new bushings and dropped a powder charge all over the place. I cleaned up the mess and screwed the shot bottle on and when I dropped a charge of shot to check, you guessed it, a load of powder all over the place again. I then dumped the shot back into the hopper and cleaned of the press, took the powder bottle off so it wouldn't drop again and when I tilted the hoppers over, you guessed it, the red cap wasn't pushed in tight enough and came out of the shot bottle dumping shot all over the place. You guessed it, I went back in the house to watch TV before I hurt myself.

[jma1965]

Oh, while I was reloading 12 Gauge today I remembered two more "Dumb Things" I have done.
When I first started reloading my own 12 Gauge Shells, I had ordered a Lee Load-all and #8 shot from Midway. I had saved a bleach bottle to store the shot in and when it came I cut the top of the shot bag open before I had the funnel in the bleach container. Trying to put the funnel in the container the top quarter of the shot bag flopped over spilling those little suckers everywhere...
Those things shot out of that bag like milk-duds out of a baby girls diaper. them things bounced everywhere. The worst part was that they bounced all over my laptop's keyboard and the laptop fan sucked some into the inside. What a mess.....



And the other was the first time I was done with the load-all, I took the body off the reloader to dump the powder "red-dot" back into the bottle....Not paying attention, I dumped it into the bleach bottle with the #8 shot.....

[Echo]

I was loading some .38 popcorn for a girl friend - got the cases prepped and in a loading block, then hit the sack. Got up next morning and seated boolits, crimped, boxed, and took them to her. She returned most a couple of weeks later. No powder...

Danged embarassing...

[casterofboolits]

My worst reloading blunder was in 1970. I was being transferred to the Tokyo branch of the company and could be gone for up to three years. My shooting buddy wanted to learn how to reload as I normally did all the reloading. To make the story short, I didn't watch him closley and he double charged a bunch of cases and I blew up a beautiful S&W Mod 15, got a piece of brass in my right eye and had to have it removed. Had to put eye drops in the eye for a year to retard scar tissue formation.

While I was in Japan, my buddy wore out a wooden handeled bullet puller and had to buy a new one to finish up pulling almost 800 rounds.

I haven't fired a round without shooting glasses since. Hard lesson learned!

[nes4ever69]

powder, wad, shot, powder, wad, shot, powder, wad, shot, powder, shot. huh this round looks runny.

[Bloodman14]

This thread needs to be made a 'sticky' entitled "Mistakes to avoid!".

[Swede44mag]

Not a reloading error but a refilling error. I drained the oil out of my Jeep grabbed the oil funnel and stuck it in an opening by the engine. Grabbed the 5 quarts of Mobil 1 and pored it in the funnel. 1 1/2 quart went all over the engine and floor before I realized what I did wrong.

I have a Dillon 550b I loaded a box full of 44mags went to the range pulled the trigger the primer went off and the boolit stuck between the cylinder and barrel. I had a brass rod with me because a friend had a similar problem with his 911 45acp. He only had 7 bullets stuck in his barrel. Back to the 44mag I drove the bullet back into the Cartridge/Cylinder cocked the pistol and only the primer went off again. *** is going on I thought, I pulled all the bullets, no powder to be seen. I looked at the hopper full of H110 so I wasn’t out of powder. I poured the powder back into the H110 can. Looked in the hopper there was the problem. Part of the wax paper that seals the powder had fallen in and covered the hole in the hopper keeping any powder from going into the shells. I now look every time I have also bought powder that had some **** in it that looked similar to a wasp nest.

[madman]

Not my mistake but a good one any way. An old friend used to be a commercial, custom hand loader. he was blowing the dents out of 223 cases by putting in 5gr of bullseye and a little wax in the end to reform the cases. He thought it was a little loud so he put his hand with a rag over the muzzle of the gun to quiet it down and lost most of his middle finger when he touched it off.

[peerlesscowboy]

Didn't pay much attention to the "max case length/trim length" thing when I started reloading. The .357 magnum cases just seemed to stay the same length so why bother with such trivia :rolleyes:
Then.....I started loading rifle cartridges, 6mm Rem. I think I was on about the 6th reload or so when one sounded funny! Needed a hammer to get the bolt open, never did find the primer :oops: That's when I learned about case length growth and trimming. I s'pose the loading manual said sump'thin about that in one of those chapters in the front that I was too cocky to bother reading?

John C. Saubak

[Harter66]

I once double charged a 12ga , it seems 54.? gr of Unique under an 1 1/4 oz does bad things . God bless the Winchester model 12,got very lucky that day and only needed to replace the headspace ring . Very lucky nobody got hurt .

On a lighter note there were these comercial cast 180 fp 309 dia I loaded for my 06' w Unique 9,10,11,12,13,14....17,18,just like the book says ..... nobody said anything about fit or gaschecks or plain base needs to got slow. The 1st loads were ok ,at shot 9 or 10 the bullet could be heard tumbling . 12 gr it sounded like shatering glass the I looked down the bore. No lands ,no grooves,just gravel roads. Sure wish id known about this then ......wish id had a mentor or a clubhouse like this in 94'. The chore boy or wool trick would have been nice to have known too,or kriol,or get the copper out 1st.

[Frosty Boolit]

Tipped the bottles back on my MEC 600 jr. with the plugs out.

[Ohio Rusty]

I just did it just this weekend .... I forgot to turn the turret back and loaded a cast boolit in the mouth of the shell. Thinking it was going to push it down to the crimp ring, I was one die too far and the LEE FCD shoved the boolit all the way down in the case to the bottom. There was no fixing that one ................
Ohio Rusty ><>

[Frosty Boolit]

Melt it out! Lead is not to be wasted!

[stubshaft]

Loading blackpowder in my 30/30 model 64 and letting my brother shoot them...He didn't clean the barrel!

[Leadmelter]

Just remembered another incident. I loaded up some rounds of 38 Special. Went the range and my good old load was shooting all over the place. Recoil felt strange but not overcharged.
Went home and found a spider in my drop tube with powder in its web.
Stay Alert!
Gerry

[Longwood]

I had a suspected overload in a few rounds of .357, unfortunatly I was tossing them all in the same container as they were being loaded, so I pulled them all, over a hundred, and being frugal I saved the powder, but what I saved it in was a brand new un used GI ashtray, kept just for this purpose because of it's design, so far so good, the tray was left on my loading bench, and my wife never messed with my stuff at all, so it was prefectly safe, until wifes sister pays her a visit, she lights up a cigarette, and my wife gets her an ash tray, yep, first flick of ashes in the tray and it was like a rocket engine being tested, they were in the kitchen at the table, and I was in the living room watching TV, it was still flaring when I went into the kitchen to see what the ruckus was all about, Her Sister never smoked another cigarette in my house after that, LOL..............steg
The ashtray trick sounds a lot like when I set off a dish of home made black powder in my moms living room when I was about 16. I had to crawl outside under the cloud of smoke and the coffee table and the linoleum floor had to be replaced.
The most amazing part was, my dad never beat my ass for it.

[Longwood]

Last week I picked up a ingot I had just cast. Did not take me long to inspect it. #rd degree spot about 1/4 " and second degree on the rest of the ball of my sign language finger.

[45-70 Chevroner]

I came across some tablets that were for keeping things dry. They were about 3/8" in diameter and smart me thought why not drop one in a container of Unique to keep the moisture out. Well I'm sure it works but when I poured the powder in the powder measure I forgot about the tablets. I proceded to load some 38 specials and when I went out to shoot well you guessed it nothing but a pop. The tablet had plugged the powder measure and I had about a 100 rounds with no powder. It took me about an hour and a half to pull the boolits. It only took a couple of seconds to figure out what I had done. I don't use the tablets any more.

[mnkyracer]

I acquired most of my reloading equip from my father. He had snapped the handle off an RCBS balance scale, so he always just put it under the pan when checking charge weights. Well, I thought I could improve on this and unscrewed the weight adj. pan and added spent primers/#9 shot to make up for the weight of the handle.

I must not have screwed it back down tight, because the other day I loaded some .22 Hornet rounds for him. Weighed out a 9 gr charge of 4227, dumped it in the funnel, and proceeded to spill powder whenI removed the funnel. This should not have been a compressed charge load. Turns out, I lost 2 grains of shot out of the scale. I only had to pull loads for 1 rifle in which those 2 grs put me in the red for max. pressure.

[evan price]

Loading some 45 Colt for my father's Judge and snapped a Lee decapping pin when I tried to resize the shell. WTH?? Turns out a .40 S&W had gotten in the 45 LC case and you can't decap two at once.

First round I ever loaded (9mm luger) I had the crimp die screwed in so tight that I crimped the case nearly halfway through the bullet. Left it on my desk intending to break it apart because it wouldn't come out with the kinetic hammer puller. Loaded some more and got it right. Made a dozen or so nice 9mm rounds. Got my Sig P239 out of the safe. Set it all down on the desk and loaded a couple magazines, then went out back to try them. Last shot of the magazine I thought I blew up the gun. Yep, the overcrimped round. Stuck the bullet in the barrel, blew the case head. Sig came through it just fine though. I keep that piece of brass as a reminder!

Loading 44 Mags in the turret press, set the bullet, forgot to advance the turret to the crimp/seat die and pulled the handle, the expander die shoved the bullet all the way down into the case and dumped 20 grains of #9 on top of it.

[ihmsakiwi]

Dumbest thing...that's a hard one. I've put primers and bullets in upside down(caught the error, however) and loaded with one powder with I thought I was using another. Fortunately, these errors were quickly discovered and corrected. In over 40 years of reloading, sooner or later one is going to happen. One occasion I was shooting the 45 ACP and one bullet never made it out of the barrel. It got lodged just ahead of the chamber. It takes powder to launch a bullet, not just a primer and I must have somehow missed one. Good thing I wasn't doing rapid fire and I'm thankful I was cognizant enough to realize it.

BTW-I don't cast with sandals on either!!

Ahh, Nor me with Jandals!! I was all kitted up, leather welders apron, safety glasses, thin leather gloves and long sleeved shirt. But when that sprue got jammed in between my big toe and the jandal strap a little light went off in my head that maybe I forgot "shoes". Won't do that again.

[Castlead]

When first starting reloading a friend would adjust the powder to make every round weigh the same. Using mixed brass did not help. Shot nice "patterns" though.

My dumbest, 200 rounds of 223 with max charges for 45 grain bullets while loading 60 gr bullets. Pull pull pull.

[Mossy Nugget]

First time reloading in a lee loadall, using the paper data sheet that came with it. I decided to finish a box of 12ga. with Winchester Universal hulls after I ran out of Federal hulls. A hull is a hull, Right? Nope! First shot would not cycle an auto loader, stuck in the chamber. Not willing to admit ignorance, I compounded it with stupidity, I then fired one in my pump gun. Now I have two jammed guns. Could have been a much worse way to end my day at the range. Several good licks on a dowel rod later, we escaped damage or injury. Bought a Lyman 5th. edition Shotshell manual on the recommendations of several folks in this forum. I no longer even consider substitutions of any kind.

[WildmanJack]

Many years ago, I bought a very well worn progressive press. It was an in-line press that moved the casings from left to right. I think it was a Champion, but i'm not sure. Anyway, the primer tube sat dead in front of the press and while loading one day I guess one primer got cattywumpus cause when I went to seat it, the whole primer tube blew up!! I had bits of primer in my face, my hands, it was a mess. NEVER loaded again without glasses!!!!
:roll:
Jack

[BulletFactory]

cattywumpus. Really?

[mold maker]

I haven't had a brain-fart yet while loading. Thats old folks speak for stupid mistake.
I did however find a live .40 round, in a pot of range lead, the hard way. Thank God I wasn't close by.
I now tumble clean, and rinse, it in a cement mixer, with citric acid, and Dawn. It's then spread on the drive to dry. I rake it back and forth several times, while inspecting it very closely.
I still have a silver splotched carport ceiling to remind me of what not to do. It's really quite a conversation piece during picnics.

[HighHook]

At the range with a buddy that only buys factory ammo. I said try one off these special 300 win mag rounds to see how nice they shoot. Well lets just say 30 years of reloading and i never had a cartridge that didn't have powder just happened. Ouch...

[Frank46]

Well I must confess to once shooting some 32-20 jacketed bullets out of a 1891 argentine mauser. Just pulled the fmj bullets and seated the 32-20's. Only had about ten to play with. Suffice to say only two actually made it to the target. The rest blew up between the rifle and target. Frank

[XWrench3]

read the load manual wrong, using the wrong powder in a 300 win mag round. luckily, it did not destroy the rifle (or me). but it did scare the !@#$%^ out of me! i knew immediatly something was wrong the split second when i fired it. then, i had to use a stick to beat the bolt open! it took me some investigating to find out what i did wrong. but when i did find it, i realized how lucky i was. PLEASE learn from my mistake! trust me, you do not want to go there!

[Shooter6br]

Well lets see. Had a primer (live) fall into the ram of my RCBS turret press. I "jiggled the ram) BANG@! the primer blew. Force went into my left hand below the thumb( meaty part) bleed real nice. Thought "Damn had would i explain to the ER what happened?" Well being an R.N I said "Nurse heal thyself" It was ok . Second thing sqib load in two differant 45 ACP's resulting it two destoyed barrels. My guardian angel has requested " combat pay" for keeping my in one piece" STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES"

[onesonek]

Selling a mold or die set or brass when I sold a gun and then getting another gun that caliber. Not sure which part of that is the dumbest.

I'm a member of that boomerang club too!

[roverboy]

emptied my powder hopper into the WRONG jug.
expensive mistake.
i wonder why all those guys told me to only have 1 jug on the bench at a time?

I did the same thing once. I dumped some IMR4198 in a 1 lb. jug of Win 748.

[jma1965]

When using a manually operated turret press.
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r223/jma2006_bucket/lyman-spartan-6-hole-turret-press-with-extras_190490128502.jpg
going from your sizing die to the next die,
make sure the handle is all the way up so you don't snap off your de-priming pin

[Crash_Corrigan]

Way back when I first started casting boolits I knew less than nothing. I first got a hold of Lymans casting manuel and read it cover to cover a couple of times and then went out and got a Lee 4-20 pot and a Lee 148 GR WC 6 Banger mold.

I had a 586 Smith and Taurus 85 to feed then. I set up the pot and after scrounging some wheel weights went to town. I got a small cast iron pot and put it on a coleman stove and smelted down the weights and fluxed with candle wax.

It was all going good until I started to mold boolits. I had a pair of leather gloves but that Lee 6 banger was really hot. I got another pair of bigger leather welding gloves and wore them. I now had two gloves on the left hand that held the mold and one glove on the right hand, safety glasses, boots etc. I was covered.

It was a nasty job making boolits but I kept it up. They turned out pretty good and I was a happy shooter and boolit caster. This went on for two years.

I guess I made about 6,000 .38 Wadcutter rounds during that time and one day a friend of mine invited me to go to a gun show at Cashman Field here in Vegas.

I was enjoying looking around and my buddy found my Lee mold with some others on a table. Only this one looked different than mine. It was the same mold but it had a pair of handles on it! Wow! I never knew they came with handles. All this time I was holding the mold in my left hand when I opened it to dump out the boolits and then I put it under the spout on a brick to hold it while I poured alloy into the empty mold and shook my left hand to cool off.

Needless to say I bought another Lee six banger with a pair of handles that day for $20 and used the handles from the new/used mold on my old mold. They fit just perfect.

A little knowledge can be dangerous but that had to be the most stupid thing I did for two years was to mold boolits without using the handles that the silly mold was designed for because of lack of complete knowledge.

If that did not turn me away from this addiction then I guess I am hopeless?
__________________

[jma1965]

Way back when I first started casting boolits I knew less than nothing. I first got a hold of Lymans casting manuel and read it cover to cover a couple of times and then went out and got a Lee 4-20 pot and a Lee 148 GR WC 6 Banger mold.

I had a 586 Smith and Taurus 85 to feed then. I set up the pot and after scrounging some wheel weights went to town. I got a small cast iron pot and put it on a coleman stove and smelted down the weights and fluxed with candle wax.

It was all going good until I started to mold boolits. I had a pair of leather gloves but that Lee 6 banger was really hot. I got another pair of bigger leather welding gloves and wore them. I now had two gloves on the left hand that held the mold and one glove on the right hand, safety glasses, boots etc. I was covered.

It was a nasty job making boolits but I kept it up. They turned out pretty good and I was a happy shooter and boolit caster. This went on for two years.

I guess I made about 6,000 .38 Wadcutter rounds during that time and one day a friend of mine invited me to go to a gun show at Cashman Field here in Vegas.

I was enjoying looking around and my buddy found my Lee mold with some others on a table. Only this one looked different than mine. It was the same mold but it had a pair of handles on it! Wow! I never knew they came with handles. All this time I was holding the mold in my left hand when I opened it to dump out the boolits and then I put it under the spout on a brick to hold it while I poured alloy into the empty mold and shook my left hand to cool off.

Needless to say I bought another Lee six banger with a pair of handles that day for $20 and used the handles from the new/used mold on my old mold. They fit just perfect.

A little knowledge can be dangerous but that had to be the most stupid thing I did for two years was to mold boolits without using the handles that the silly mold was designed for because of lack of complete knowledge.

If that did not turn me away from this addiction then I guess I am hopeless?
__________________


Looks like you proved that you really don't need those handles...... :wink:

[10 ga]

Only this one looked different than mine. It was the same mold but it had a pair of handles on it! Wow! I never knew they came with handles. All this time I was holding the mold in my left hand when I opened it to dump out the boolits and then I put it under the spout on a brick to hold it while I poured alloy into the empty mold and shook my left hand to cool off.


__________________

I have sent this whole thread to my wifes computer so she knows I'm not the dullest knife in the drawer like she claims. Thanks guys, you've saved me from casting purgatory! 10

[dverna]

Bought an RCBS Green Machine instead of the Star. Worst *** ever to come out of RCBS.

I did not purchase another RCBS product for 25 years.

[C1PNR]

Heh, without any help or instruction my first ever reloads were .30 Carbine, and I did a very good job of CRIMPING every one of them!

WOW!! I actually got off 2 or 3 rounds before I finally decided something might be wrong here.

I must say, my WW II Standard Products Carbine was undamaged, but I was a bit shaken!

Lesson learned? Research your new project and proceed with caution. It has served me well over many years and many different calibers.

[Tom W.]

And when I had a particularly evil bent..


I took a small amount of pyrodex and placed it in the spark path of a saw grinder at work, due to the fact that the operator wouldn't clean his machine. I told him that the grinding rock residue could possibly ignite.... When he was getting some coffee, I poured the pyrodex in the path. It looked just like the crud that had built up there. About the third time the wheel came down and sparks started to fly, 'POOF!!" There was a flash of fire and white smoke everywhere. The guy shut down the grinder, and I had to move out of the way, saying that I was afraid of an electrical fire, but I was really trying to hide my laughter.. After a spell they caught on...

[Chihuahua Floyd]

When setting the decapping pin back into a Lee 30-30 die, don't leave the die in the press, don't hold the pin in the die from the bottom with your left index finger. Also, don't hit the handle of the Lee press with your right elbow. Did not come thru the fingernail, but it left a mark. Had to push finger down off of the pin with other hand.
CF

[Link23]

i just had a live primer fall into my melting pot....needless to say, i was wearing flip flops well, a lead shower soon exploded.... not fun

[bigjake]

Once long ago, about 30+ years ago when I was young and stupid, I made this cannon. It was a good strong one. It had a 1 3/8" [1.375"] bore. It had 1" walls.
I shot it off many times, blanks, loaded with all kinds of chunks. but one time, I cut a piece of 1 3/8" shaft and wrapped it with black tape. I thought mixing smokless powder with black powder would make a special powder. Anyway, I poured a bunch of the "special" powder in it, jambed that shaft chunk in there and pointed the thing at a junk oven.
Luckily we took cover behind my VW, the thing completely blew, splitting like bannana peel pieces. one of the strips flew over our heads like a helicopter.
I cant even imagine what would have happened if one of those strips would have hit someone.
It doesnt get more stupid than that. :(

[bruce drake]

When setting the decapping pin back into a Lee 30-30 die, don't leave the die in the press, don't hold the pin in the die from the bottom with your left index finger. Also, don't hit the handle of the Lee press with your right elbow. Did not come thru the fingernail, but it left a mark. Had to push finger down off of the pin with other hand.
CF


Ditto!!! Dang did that hurt!

Actually, the dumbest thing I ever did at the reloading bench was working in the garage one night when my wife called from the doorway, "when are you going to bed Honey?"

Not looking up from the bench where I was into carefully weighing some target loads for a rifle match the following week, I replied "In a minute!"

2 hours later, I finished and went in the house to find the bedroom door closed, and my wife asleep in bed... After she woke up as I climbed into bed, I slept on the couch that night....Ever since, I shut down the reloading bench when my wife comes to the garage door... THERE ARE HIGHER PRIORITIES THAN RELOADING when you are happily married :)

Bruce

[*Paladin*]

Here's another one for you. If you use a electronic dispenser (like my Chargemaster), make sure the powder drain is closed before you add powder to the hopper. I lost dang near a half pound of H335 to that mistake one night. All over the bench and floor. H335 flows like water, by the way. Needless to say, I have written in permanant marker "CLOSE THE DRAIN" on the side of my Chargemaster...

[Doby45]

The dumbest/worst thing I have ever done is I caught my little 4yr old girls finger between a 40cal piece of brass and a depriming pin. I was not paying attention and we had already done about 200 pieces of brass. As we got closer to the end she liked to take longer than normal to "set" the brass in the holder, this way she had more time with me reloading.
The worst part is, I knew she liked to take a bit longer toward the end. Well I was in the groove and I was talking to her and we were having a great time. I went to push the handle down and I noticed immediately in my minds eye that something was not right, so I stopped the down stroke in midstroke (kind of like Tiger Woods stopping his swing in his backstroke) and by stopping I just barely put the pin to the top of her first knuckle on her index finger. The pressure was enough to get her attention and mine.
It literally broke my heart to see the look on her face as she realized that the daddy that always loves her and protects her had just hurt her. I thank God that my daughter has the heart that she does because after holding her and kissing her little finger for a while she looked at me and said "Its ok daddy, I forgive you." This from a 4yr old, needless to say my heart broke again and now I am extremely cautious when she comes to help me with some of my tedious tasks.

[.30/30 Guy]

The dumest thing that I did was buy a Lee Drip-O-Matic.

[wallenba]

OK, just did another dumb thing last night. I primed 50 Norma 7.7 x 58MM with large pistol primers........DUH!

[wmitty]

First, Doby45... I am very glad your daughter was not severely injured. I let my daughter run the press handle for me when she was about that age as I seated bullets. I spent a little extra time on one cartridge trying to straighten a boolit and nearly lost a finger tip.

Now for my stupid decision (s)

1. decided a piece of .45 acp brass would make a good jacket for a .45-70 bullet if I ran it thru a Lee push thru .457 die.

2. decided 5 grains of unique would be about right to get it out the muzzle of the test rifle.

3. decided an empty case with 5 more grains of unique would force the stuck "jacket" out of the bore.

4. decided I'd better quit a little too late after I'd realized I had bulged the barrel of my Dad's 1895 Marlin.

[bensonwe]

I'll jump on this band wagon. Last fall i purchased a rem .223 700 and was testfiring some loads. All was fine until I grabbed the last lot of reloads and touched one off. The recoil planted the stock firmly in my shoulder. I stopped and started to examine the rifle and noticed the bolt wouldn't open. After forcing it open, the bolt face was brass plated and the case mouth was gone. I went back to my reloading bench and noticed I grabbed reddot instead of my normal powder. Many years ago I was told by an oldtimer to never have two powders by your bench at one time. Now I know why.

[BulletFactory]

This would make a great sticky.

[Southern Son]

I thought that I was imune from reloading stuffups, but after reading this, I realise that I have had some. I have wrecked .310 Cadet brass when I turned the turret on my press before the decapping pin was out of the case (several times), I have caught my fingers in the press (again serveral times), and my most recent was while casting. I like to take a little break every 50-100 castings. I had just dropped one from the mould and decided to take a break. I put the mould on top of the pot and took off my casting gloves. At this point I noticed the last boolit looked strange, so I picked it up to look more closely at it. I made some funny noises and said some rarely heard words and then put it back down.

[GrumpyFinn]

This happened in the late 70's in Finland when I was about 15-16, I had gotten a Smith 38spl 6" barrel for my B-day, it did not take long before I realized I could not afford to shoot it so I took all my savings and bought redding press (only one available), set of dies and a powder measure. The store owner liked me so he threw in some VV powder, primers and a box of bullets to get me going, that's all I could afford at the time.
I set up my little work space to load some bullets, I did not go blindly into my new hobby though, I had my buddy, also 15-16, to help me set up, his father had taken him hunting for many years already so he was an authority in gun "business" and knew almost everything there is to know about guns.
Everything set up and ready to go, we did not have a scale so we took apart one Norma 38spl and put the powder in the hopper, twisted the knob and see if everything came out, if not we adjusted until it did, we were ready to load some ammo. As far as the OAL we eyeballed the other factory cartridges and adjusted the seating die accordingly, hadn't even heard about mics at that time.
Long story short, I'm still alive, the Smith, not so much. Ended up blowing the bottoms of the cylinder notches out after about 200 rounds, the empties would not come out without banging the ejector against a table. Took the gun back, told the store owner we had shot Norma's hot 38's, he sent the gun to S&W they replaced it with 357mag for an extra $20.00 and told us not bend the frame again......
There were a few mishaps afterwards but they were minor compared to my first attempts on reloading.
There was a time we emptied my uncles shot gun shells to make fireworks, reloaded them later with some other stuff and blamed the inconsistency on cheap Russian ammo, the Russian shotgun did not survive this endeavor, uncle did, and I told him what actually happened, 30 years later.

[felix]

Not checking to see if a gun was loaded or not. I ALWAYS unload guns, mostly by shooting until dry when the gun is a repeater, before putting them into the car after shooting. Yeah, right! ... felix

[AZ-JIM]

Still fairly new at reloading, I dont pretent to know it all or presume that I ever will. I managed my second one this week. The first time, I was probably 12-14 yrs old and dad and I had just put together a pair of CVA muzzle loader kit rifles. We went shooting and after several shots I had one that had considerably more recoil than the preveious shot. I couldn't figure out what I did wrong untill I couldn't find my ram rod, it was about 125 yds downrange and luckily no damage to me or the gun.:groner:

The second one, I loaded 100 rds of .243 with boolits this week for load development. I had my equipment set up, measured the C.O.L. and they were .030 shorter than what the manual said was max for that boolit and the case mouth was just below the first driving band so everything looked good. I got up early this morning and went to the range, got set up and put the first one in the rifle...the bolt won't close...WTH. Sure enough the boolit was up against the rifling (with about .060 more to go). It looks like another trip through the seating die will fix it without too much heartache. So I wasted a trip to the range and a day worth of fixing my mess, but the worst part is that I was going to chamber one to check it but thought "nah, it's already .030 short it'll be fine". NOTE TO SELF apparently boolits with short ogives need special consideration.

az-jim

[Longwood]

Do unloading count?
I was using a collet type puller to unload a handful of mistakes one time and decided to pop the primers in the pistol. I would stick one in the chamber and pop the primer then do another one. All went well till I did the one I somehow forgot to dump the powder out of. The cat has no idea how lucky he is, I had used the first two to wake him up and chase him out of my room. When the third one popped, it spit a cloud of burning powder all over the big stuffed chair he had been sleeping in..

[375supermag]

Once upon a time, many years ago, I decided that competitive shooting in a local bullseye league was getting a little expensive with factory ammunition and that I should learn how to reload my own ammunition.
Being basically cheap and poor to boot, I decided that I would start with one of those Lee single-stage starter kits for my .357Magnum. I followed all the instructions and everything went fairly well.
In the fullness of time, it became much too time-consuming to use a single-stage press, so I bought one of the new Lee 1000 progressive presses, set up in .357Mag. At first, all went well...ammo flowed from the press much faster than the single-stage. hundreds and hundreds of rounds were loaded with nary a problem over the course of several weeks.

And then one day, as I was boxing up rounds I noticed that a primer had been seated upside down! Now how did that happen??? I checked every other round...all the primers were seated properly. Oh, well, one wasted primer, a little bit of wasted powder and since I didn't have a bullet puller, one wasted Hornady jacketed bullet. My thought was that it only happened once...no big deal. Yeah...right!

Off we went to the evening match at a local indoor range. During one of the timed fire rounds, I squeezed off a round that sounded a little funny and didn't seem to recoil very much at all. I called an alibi and the range officer and I started to check out my revolver. Everything looked OK until we checked the barrel with a bore light...no light shining through!

Yep...a Hornady jacketed bullet stuck part way down the barrel...took a few minutes with a cleaning rod to get it out. No damage to the gun, just no powder in the case. Oh, and one lost shooting match.

Went home and decided to check out the Lee 1000 press...every once in a while it just would not dump powder and a little more often it would seat a primer upside down or sideways.

Next day, cheap and poor me went to the local gunshop and bought a new RCBS RockChucker, dies, powder scale, priming tool, etc.
Went home and took the Lee 1000 and it's single-stage brother off the bench and put them in a box...and there they have been for 20 years or more. That same RockChucker is still cranking out thousands and thousands of rounds in a variety of calibers to this day. I have been tempted to set the Lee up a couple of times, but I always just laugh and put it back in the cabinet.

I recently downloaded some videos about the disassembly and cleaning and re-assembly of a Lee 1000. I am tempted once again to give the Lee another chance. It may be time to make my second mistake in reloading.

[jma1965]

Back in the early nineties I was reloading 223 for my contender, I had gotten some 5.56x45mm's from the local gun shop and had shot them out and reloaded the brass but when I went to the range to fire them, the action was closing hard for every round... When I got home and was cleaning the barrel there was a half circle brass ring embedded in the barrel about 2 inches from the end. Nothing I tried would get it out. The gunsmith had to cut it down to 10 inches and re-crown the barrel. I assumed that because I only shot the cases one time that the case length would be O.K. WRONG..................

[keeber]

To make wads for some 38 spl shot shells, I used a 357 case deburred it to get a very sharp end. I chucked it in my drill and was cutting away when the case came loose. Put my right index finger over the end while I spun the chuck to retighten it... Perfect deep semi-circular cut in the tip. I'd rather have smacked it with my framing hammer.