Did something reallystupid this afternoon

[Maven]

My boneheaded move for today didn't result in any spilled alloy, setting the house afire, or blowing something up. (But hey! It's the start of a new week.) No, all I did was size and lube ~ 6 lbs. of freshly cast CB's to the wrong dimension, 001" too small and thus not usable in any of my revolvers. Here's what happened. After writing about the deterioration of accuracy in my S & W Model 10, I decided to re-slug its throats: .359" CB's were too tight; .357" was too loose but .358" was just right (sounds like Goldilocks!). Since I knew after last week's outing that .359" CB's weren't very accurate, I naturally decided to try .357" v. .358" RCBS Keith SWC, using the same charge of powder. Guess which die I left in the lube-sizer and didn't bother to check until after I'd finished processing all but maybe 10 CB's earlier today? Talk about frustration and a waste of time! To add insult to injury, the bowl of Lyman Dipper broke off too, but at least that's repairable*. Bummer!




*The bowls of the newer dippers are threaded for a 10-24 bolt, but the flaw in the design is the handle, specifically the threaded (thinner & more brittle) end fits into the bowl. the older ones were spot welded to the handles and could be rewelded I think.

[gon2shoot]

Dang, dont think I'd have told that one. Ya know nobody here ever has a senior moment. [smilie=1:

[felix]

I am to embarrassed to talk about that same thing. Happened to me several times over so many years. I am just lucky enough to have several friends, including me, to have several guns around that could use whatever is produced. The dies that are not useful are put away in an area that not even I can find without a purposeful looksee. I am just about ready to do that with powders, too. Things can get dangerous over 65. ... felix

[No_1]

Well Maven,

You are in a predicament. I see you as having 3 choices.
1st, melt them down again.
2nd, offer them for sale or maybe even a benefit auction.
3rd, Keep them in the stash until you have something to shoot them in.

On the bright side, If you used GC's and melt them back down then you will have annealed GC's to use in the future.

Robert

[OLPDon]

Sounds like you need to get something that fits that Boolit. Although we should match boolit to barrel but ........ I like the idea of matching gun to boolit.
Don

[mooman76]

Sounds like an excuse to buy a new gun! Dang, wish I had thought of that!

[Dean D.]

+1 mooman76!

Seriously, sounds like something I would do Maven, your not alone brother.

[jnovotny]

:holysheepWell welcome to the wonderful world of casting. Looks like you'll have to buy another gun, as long as the Mrs. will let you, or melt em all down and start over.

[TexRebel]

my vote is a new gun, or a rebarrel on the old one

[runfiverun]

shoot them in the 9mm

[jdgabbard]

Box them up, and keep them. You'll find something to use them in sooner or later. Or just ship them to me. My smith likes them .357s...

[NHlever]

Unless you have tried them in your gun, and found that they didn't shoot well, I would give them a try. I have two Ruger Security Six's that prefer .357 diameter bullets although most of the chamber throats will accept a .358 bullet. I've shot 1" groups at 25 yards with boolits sized to .357, and get no leading so who am I to argue with that?

[Big Boomer]

I have been a brass scrounger since I got into loading and casting my own bullets. I've made a number of mistakes of some proportion (that I prefer NOT to tell anyone about) ... but one mistake an old bud made could have been disastrous. We had cast up a batch of .357 bullets (Lyman 358156gc), divided them up between us, and went our ways to put gaschecks on, lube, load, etc., in .38 cases. With that particular bullet, there is a second crimp groove right behind the first and nearer the base of the bullet that we used with .38 cases in our
.357s. My old bud, who shall remain nameless, had been loading some .38 cases with either 12.5 or 13.5 grs. of 2400 (Hercules - we shot both loads regularly). For whatever reason, he went numbminded on the process and failed to follow proper procedures when he emptied the powder measure of 2400 powder. He proceeded to put Bullseye in the measure and didn't weigh a single round of powder, loading up a full box of 50 rds. by volume of whatever that would equal of Bullseye. He went out to the strip mines and fortunately, took along a Thompson Center Contender in .357. Instead of using the S&W M66 first, for which he had loaded the ammo, he luckily picked up the TCC and fired the first round out of it. He said the TCC recoil from that load was fierce! When he opened the breech, the primer fell out first. Then he had some difficulty getting the case out. He was ever so grateful that he providentially fired the first round out of the TCC instead of the M66. Now here's where the brass scrounger part comes in. He thought he would play a good one one me, knowing my scrounger tendencies, he fired that whole box in the TCC and left all that ruined .38 brass in one neat little pile where he shot them. Sure enough, a few days later I was at the same spot where we could shoot from 100 to 350 yds. and there was this neat little pile of .38 cases. Naturally, my scrounger's heart leaped at that pile of 38 cases! But when I picked up the 1st one and the primer fell out, the whole mistake my bud made raced (well, maybe not that fast) through my mind and I realized what he did. He asked me a day or two later whether I'd been out to the strip mines and whether I'd found a treasure trove. I told him what some blankety blank @^%$!&* had done ... and he admitted it. Lesson: always verify what you are doing and make sure you are on course. 'Tuck

[Heavy lead]

Can't believe that Contender survived. That's a lot of PSI.

[bbs70]

I ain't a tellin what I've done, he says as he lowers his head and blushes.

[snaggdit]

I did just the opposite last wed. I had just got the adjustable charge bar for my pro 1000. I was running low on Accurate #5 so I planned to switch it to Accurate #2. Installed the charge bar and put the hopper back on and tuned the load for 45ACP. I had been using 8.1 gr of #5, and wanted 5.3gr of #2. I got it dropping 5.3 and went to town. As I pulled the handle on about round # 70, I had a epiphany! I never switched powder. I had just loaded 70 rounds with 2/3 of a load of #5. I was in the garage swearing as I pounded out the boolits (sticky with LLA and acc#5). At least I could reuse the primed brass.

[Recluse]

I did just the opposite last wed. I had just got the adjustable charge bar for my pro 1000.

Warning. Temporary :hijack:

Did you have any luck with that adjustable charge bar? I bought one and is the biggest PITA and *** I have ever, ever purchased for ANY piece of reloading gear I own in the past thirty years. I got more squib loads and underpowered loads--regardless of which type powder I used--from that damned thing.

Great concept and great solution for the fixed volume disks, but the adjustable bar i got is 100% worthless. I'm STILL pulling boolits courtesy of that stupid thing. Stupid me, I trusted it and loaded up a hundred or so 9mm rounds of varying powders and loads trying to hit a "sweet spot" with the 105 SWC boolit. I'm having to pull every stinking one with a kinetic puller 'cause the Hornady won't grab those little cone SWC boolits. [smilie=b:

I'm normally a pretty strong supporter of many of Lee's products. Been having very good success with them for a long, long time. But this adjustable bar AIN'T one of them!

:coffee:

[snaggdit]

Well, a couple weeks ago, someone mentioned a small motor with a off center weight on it to shake the hopper. I used a vibration motor from my son's dead Xbox controller and taped it and a battery holder to the hopper. Now I get consistant loads with my Lee Auto Powder Measure. I was feeling limited by the disks, so someone recommended the adj. charge bar. Took a little while to dial in, but once I did, It dropped the same (underpowered!!!) load for all 70+... I have a habit of weighing the first 7-10, then about 1 every 5 just because of the poor track record before the shaking thing.

[Southern Son]

Well, most of you have admitted to something stupid in the past or just recently. So here is mine. I just deleted ALL of the songs out of my IPod music library. Every single one of them. About 50 hours of music, gone. I think that my computer skills are slowly getting worse. It is going to take me days to get it all back into the computer.

[montana_charlie]

I recently read a post by somebody in one of these forum sections who advocates 'bumping up' bullets in a vise. Sounds like a natural solution to your problem...
CM

[Hickory]

I like to read about people who have"done something stupid" and over the last 30 some years I've (had-heard) of only a handful of people who have done anything as stupid as I done when I was in my 20's. It was so dumb I can't repeat it. And won't, so don't ask. NO, I did not shoot my self of anyone else, or commit a criminal act, or engage in some sort of perveted sex. But it was really stupid. Maybe I should not have brought it up, but sizing a few boolits under size is not even close to stupid. Have a good day, and week.

[Maven]

All, Thanks for your understanding! Also, the odd thing is that I've rarely used the .357" sizer die (H & I), i.e., maybe three times in 16 years, which means I should have checked which one was in the machine before starting out. I think you can guess what I'll do from now on. On a brighter note, I was able to fix the Lyman Dipper via a 10-24 bolt, some #10 lock washers, nuts (flat & acorn) and a 10" pc. of 1/2" dowel. The business end of the dowel was wrapped in foil tape, a variation of "beagling," to keep it from charring.