Starting Over: My Tale of Woe

[Super Sneaky Steve]

This morning I turned about 30# of ingots in to beautiful 9mm cast boolits. My new PC technique worked great, all was well.

Then it came to sizing. I had two massive piles, one unsized, one sized. They were close together, maybe too close!

Eventually, it happened. I fumbled. One fat bastard fell into the sized pile. OK no problem. I know about where it landed. I started measuring, and measuring. The more I dug, the more the Fat B swam away. I carefully looked for sheen on the bands, trying to find him, but alas no luck.

In the end I had to start over and dump the sized pile back into the unsized. It was the only way to get the piece of mind I was looking for.

So, I'm going to take a break. Let's hear your tale of woe.

[rancher1913]

look on the bright side, 2 sizing's dont hurt a thing, could have been something much worse.

[44Blam]

Or you might find it when you go to seat the boolit...

[44Blam]

Or you might find it when you go to seat the boolit...

[Dusty Bannister]

If you happened to also cast and size for 38 special, you could push the "I" portion of the die out of the die, clean well, and just drop bullets through the die until the fat one hangs up. I suspect you will use containers for the finished bullets from here on.

[kevin c]

I have done everything you described, including the mad search and then resizing everything, and more than once, though it was with HiTek rather than PC.

One hack: if it's just one lost slug and you're resizing down significantly, you can stop when you resize one with a lot more resistance than the previous ones.

Another, better hack: I now have a tube running from the sizer to and through the cover of the closed bucket that gathers the sized slugs.

[44Blam]

A real tale of woe is when you make a ladder of boolits with various powder charges and you drop the box. (Did this once)
Another is when you make a ladder of boolits with various powder charges and you get to the range to find out that that extra 1-2 thousanths that powder coat adds to a boolit make it so they won't chamber... And you don't get to shoot AND you have to pull boolits... (Did this too)

[Lloyd Smale]

I did a bigger mistake this year. Was loading for my new Grendel. Found a load that shot well and ran perfectly. Then in the middle of it I tore my whole loading room out and redid the floors and cleaned and put it all back. Then my first project was to load 500 grendels. Like a cocky old timer I didn't bother to bring the gun out and check. Somehow the die lock ring for the sizing die moved and the press wasn't sizing the brass down enough and about one in 3 wouldn't chamber or wouldn't eject. Couldn't be me so my first thought was the adjustable gas block needed tuning. In and out all the way with no difference. Then I blew the screw out of the gas block. Sent it back to psa and they replaced the block and said they test fired it and it ran great. I took it out SAME PROBLEM. So I then started playing again with the gas block that that darned screw went flying again. So I bought a Wilson gas block and tube and swapped it out. SAME problem. So I boxed up the whole gun and sent it to psa. They tested it and said it ran fine. Then I was really scratching my head. Was psa really shooting it? (I even sent some handloads but they wouldn't shoot them) My wife was heading to town so I told her to stop and see if they had any factory ammo. She came back with a box of wolf. Loaded them up and they ran like butter. Then I knew something was wrong. So I went back to zero and found I just wasn't sizing down the brass enough. Had to pull all 500 rounds, size them without a decapping pin, and load them back up. Two days of wasted work. Ive done similar things in the past mass loading rounds. Couple years ago loaded a pile of 556 and found half my ars wouldn't run them because of different chamber sizes. Told myself a few times no more unless I bring the gun out in the shop with me and shoot 5 out the back door out of every couple hundred. I think this time I finally learned. Now I will take the tightest chambered gun in that caliber I have right out with me. If they run in that gun they will run in them all. Goes for handguns too.

[WRideout]

I was pan lubing a batch of Lyman 358477 boolits by putting the pan, loaded with boolits, on the stove top with the lowest heat setting. I got distracted for a minute and when I got back all the boolits were leaning over on their melted bases.

Wayne

[dverna]

I dumped the shot out of a MEC reloader twice.

I have never regretted selling that MEC9000. A dumb design for fools like me...

[onelight]

I had a Browning HP that I worked up a load for and then loaded two 50 cal ammo cans 2 to 3k of that load . That's a lot for me I shoot twice a week but only 50 to a hundred rounds a trip. My interest has always been centered more on .44 / .45 hand guns , so those loads wound up sitting around for many years . When I ran across them 10 years or so later the Browning HP was gone and I had several other 9s , the old stash of reloads would not go into battery on any of the other nines because of the fat bullets so they sat around a few more years and every time I saw them was an " oh crap " moment . I discovered the Lee carbide factory crimp die thought it would be worth a try to save me from pulling all those bullets . Ran a few through the die they chambered in all the 9s I had and fired with no problems , so ran both cans through the the Lee die they shot fine and are long gone now.
I decided I would not bulk load custom size ammo any more.

[Texas by God]

I had to sit under a shade tree once and trim the forward drive band edge of 200 45ACP SWC reloads with my pocket knife. Just a hair too far out for our Colts. This was at a bowling pin match.... funny thing is they ran 100% through my little Star PD and a friends Browning BDA( Sig P220)

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[ascast]

So, I'm going to take a break. Let's hear your tale of woe.

Last winter I decided to load up some 45ACP. I had found a bag of bullets from somewhere so I fired up the wood stove and went for coffee while it warmed up out there. I had placed the bullets on top of and old steel wire milk crate that sits on the wood stove. Well, it got warm enough to melt open the plastic bag, and most of the bullets fell out; 150 maybe, and landed on the wood stove. I grabbed the bag and all the rest fell on the floor, etc. The stove top was plenty hot enough to melt the bullets. Lube was smoking and about to flash off. What a mess. What remains of "good bullets" are crap as they fell on the floor, stove, all kinds of grit and crap stock on them. I try to see the humor in these lessons.

[Jniedbalski]

You could always size every one and when u get to the last on that will be the unsized one. That’s how it always happens to me

[jsizemore]

Loaded a 100 SP MAGNUM primers instead of SP in 9mm Luger. Discovered my mistake on the next 100. I went ahead and shot them in my 2014 Sig P226 (stainless) and they ran fine. Got a W. German P226 cast iron breech block (really low round count) and shot a few of the Magnum primers. Got gas cutting in a donut shape around the firing pin hole. Had to find an outfit that did micro tig welding (Lewis-Bawol in Pa.) to repair my mistake. Great work, but I hope I never have to use them again. Guess there wasn't enough pressure to seal the primer cup to the brass. It wasn't like the primer box and sleeve didn't have MAGNUM in LARGE print on them. Just dumb stuff.

[onelight]

I had to sit under a shade tree once and trim the forward drive band edge of 200 45ACP SWC reloads with my pocket knife. Just a hair too far out for our Colts. This was at a bowling pin match.... funny thing is they ran 100% through my little Star PD and a friends Browning BDA( Sig P220)

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That is funny , hand cut boolits

[mdi]

I had a similar experience recently. I was processing some brass and I had about 100 sized 45 ACP cases in a bowl on my bench. I was running them through my M die with about another 100 loose on the bench. I reached for a couple unprocessed cases and knocked the bowl of flared over and they mixed with the unflared. Oh !!**&#. I grabbed a bullet and checked a few but decided that was really a pain so I just put them all in one container, got another container our and flared (reflared) them all...

[Super Sneaky Steve]

If you happened to also cast and size for 38 special, you could push the "I" portion of the die out of the die, clean well, and just drop bullets through the die until the fat one hangs up. I suspect you will use containers for the finished bullets from here on.

Now there's a fantastic idea. Wish I would have read that last night. I happen to have a 358 die I could have dropped them through. The unsized PC bullets were about 361, sized were 356.

[prs]

Yep, I made a mistake once. I thought I had used the wrong propellant, but it turned out I had used the correct type. So I was wrong.

prs

[charlie b]

Ruined 15lb of 1-40 lead for my black powder stuff. I forgot what was in the pot and added an ingot of Lyman#2. Dumb.