Ever wonder what would happen if.....

[wallenba]

Major brain fart for me this morning. Ever wonder what would happen if you loaded the wrong bullet? After 30+ years reloading I found out. I loaded 6 rounds of what I thought was a new load I cooked for my New Vaquero 45 Colt. Bang, bang, and bang. No recoil to speak of, bullets were on target about 2 inches apart, keyholed. I extracted the spent shells, bulged and split. THEY WHERE 44 SPECIALS LOADED WITH 7 GRAINS OF HS-6 AND MAGNUM PRIMERS!! I'm always the first to admit a mistake, I'm just glad they were light loads and not magnums, as the New Vaquero can't take a lot of pressure. See pics of 45 and 44 special.

[NHlever]

I did that once too, a long time ago. I had bought a mauser, and the dealer was a friend who had pleasantly argued that this wasn't an ordinary 8x57, this one was a 7x57 ( he knew I liked that caliber) and so justified a few extra bucks. Well I bought it came home, headed for the range with some 7x57 ammo, and had the same experience you had. It was indeed an 8x57! I fired two rounds before I figured out the problem too. Fortunately in both our cases resulting pressure was pretty low. So, I guess I have to find another way to fireform 45 Colt brass hun?

[ph4570]

YIKES!

Good to hear your and the weapon are ok.

[462]

Glad to hear that both you and the gun were not harmed.

Refreshing to see that there are still those of us willing to admit our mistakes.

[fredj338]

OOPS! While that is embarrasing, the pressure generated would actually be quite low as the cases have so much further to expand. Not good to do for sure, but much worse if you had gone the other way!

[JW6108]

It happens.

I found these at the local range.

[wallenba]

Thanks, for sharing this I feel a little less like an ass.

[eka]

Maybe the .308 in 30-06 was just an attempt to blow 'em out for a 30 Carbine

Keith

[southpaw]

I'll man up. I resemble the 44 mag in the 454 that JW6108 posted. Nothing bad happened. But I did learn never to carry 2 different types of ammo in your pocket.

I fired it in a super redhawk. like the others, the recoil was lite and report very different. These were not loaded lite either they were 1 load under max with j-word bullets in the hornady book.

[mpmarty]

Got a call from a neighbor down the valley that somebody was shooting towards her house one afternoon and her husband was gone to Alaska.

I grabbed my Glock 21 out of the safe, an empty magazine and a handful of what I thought was 45acp and jumped on my horse to run down the valley to her rescue.

Jammed a few rounds into the magazine and hollered down the draw to where the shots were coming from and got no answer but more rounds coming our way.

Racked the slide and fired a round into the ground a few feet in front of me and tried to fire another and the pistol didn't fire so I racked the slide and shot a second round and someone down in the draw hollered back they were leaving and quit shooting.

I then looked closely at the brass at my feet and found I had grabbed a bunch of 40S&W by mistake.

If I'd been thinking more clearly I would have just grabbed one of my 10mm pistols that are always loaded (and with the proper ammo) but the safe was right next to the phone and so I grabbed the Glock.

Dumb luck it functioned at all.

[wallenba]

My problem is all my large pistol cartridge boxes are the same, and the two I got mixed up were both Lee swc's. The lighting at the range was poor and I just did not notice, not when I took them off the shelf at home either. I'm going to use different color boxes from now on if I can find them.

[briang]

Mark each cal with a different color marker, on the boxes and the brass.

[Catshooter]

Closest I've come is using load data for Universal Clays while actually loading Clays. Fully loaded Glock 21, the first round emptied the mag - out the bottom of the mag well! Glad I only loaded 100.


Cat

[runfiverun]

i use little colored stickers on the boxes and mark the shelves with tape.
only problem with that is it makes it easier for my b.i.l. to find what he thinks he needs too.

[looseprojectile]

model 29 one time that the new owner fired six times. Brand new .44 magnum and he couldn't hit anything. Came with the box of ammo he bought with it, with six missing.
You guessed it, .41 magnum ammo.
Be careful out there.

Life is good