BruceB
09-24-2006, 07:52 PM
Not a good day.
I'd been prepping some new .45-70 cases for their first loading, and left my dusty, grubby backyard loading shed for a while. When I returned, a stack of those Glad plastic boxes full of boolits had collapsed, and dumped several hundred boolits all over the floor. Some were as-cast, which isn't a problem, but my shed is DUSTY from the desert winds, and the lubed .338 bullets were unsalvageable due to contamination.
Sooooo.....I fired up the furnace to remelt them. I brought the pot up to full temp, and began dumping in the boolits, and....POW! Obviously, one of the sticky bullets had glommed onto a live primer somewhere on the floor, and it did what primers do, when reaching a certain temperature. I'd drawn the full RCBS pot down to about 1/2-full before adding the bad bullets, and looking at the splash patterns, it's obvious that the sides of the pot directed most of the spray upwards. It would have been MUCH worse if the pot had been near full. Splatters are visible on the roof /ceiling up to six feet or so away from the furnace, but relatively little went sideways. Still, there was enough to generously anoint a lot of "stuff" in the general area.
I got quite a few ornaments on my T-shirt and jeans, but only a few minor bits stuck in the hairs of my arms....no burns at all. No face problems, either, and I was looking right at it when it blew, near as I can recall. A couple droplets ended up in my "head hair" (as opposed to "beard hair", which got none).
The one thing I did right was that, just before dumping in the bullets, I donned my leather casting gloves and safety glasses. As it turned out, the glasses weren't splattered, but I was VERY grateful to have them in the echoing silence after the explosion, and before examining the evidence.
As the Sergeant on Hill Street Blues always said, "BE CAREFUL OUT THERE!!!" Forty years of experience doesn't protect anyone any more than a newbie (who might actually act a little safer than us grizzled ol' veterans....who should know better).
I'd been prepping some new .45-70 cases for their first loading, and left my dusty, grubby backyard loading shed for a while. When I returned, a stack of those Glad plastic boxes full of boolits had collapsed, and dumped several hundred boolits all over the floor. Some were as-cast, which isn't a problem, but my shed is DUSTY from the desert winds, and the lubed .338 bullets were unsalvageable due to contamination.
Sooooo.....I fired up the furnace to remelt them. I brought the pot up to full temp, and began dumping in the boolits, and....POW! Obviously, one of the sticky bullets had glommed onto a live primer somewhere on the floor, and it did what primers do, when reaching a certain temperature. I'd drawn the full RCBS pot down to about 1/2-full before adding the bad bullets, and looking at the splash patterns, it's obvious that the sides of the pot directed most of the spray upwards. It would have been MUCH worse if the pot had been near full. Splatters are visible on the roof /ceiling up to six feet or so away from the furnace, but relatively little went sideways. Still, there was enough to generously anoint a lot of "stuff" in the general area.
I got quite a few ornaments on my T-shirt and jeans, but only a few minor bits stuck in the hairs of my arms....no burns at all. No face problems, either, and I was looking right at it when it blew, near as I can recall. A couple droplets ended up in my "head hair" (as opposed to "beard hair", which got none).
The one thing I did right was that, just before dumping in the bullets, I donned my leather casting gloves and safety glasses. As it turned out, the glasses weren't splattered, but I was VERY grateful to have them in the echoing silence after the explosion, and before examining the evidence.
As the Sergeant on Hill Street Blues always said, "BE CAREFUL OUT THERE!!!" Forty years of experience doesn't protect anyone any more than a newbie (who might actually act a little safer than us grizzled ol' veterans....who should know better).