This could have ended bad for me.

[SP5315]

I went out today to get in a little quality time with some of my S&W 64's. I really like the S&W 64, I currently own 11 64's. I cut my teeth casting and loading with the Lyman 358311 starting in the early 80's when there wasn't much info out there except for a few manuals dealing with casting. I have found that this 358311 bullet is dead on at 25 yards with almost any .38 I've put it through. I can safely say that I've loaded several hundred thousand rounds since starting casting.

This morning I had taken five hundred rounds loaded with the 358311, loaded with 2.5 grains of Unique, and was down to about my last 50 rounds when it happened. I fired the fifth round of six, it had a normal report & recoil, but my cylinder locked up tight. As I was checking out the situation I checked the cylinder gap and could see that there was something between the cylinder and forcing cone. This puzzled me as I saw my shot hit the target, so I packed it up and headed home.

Later this evening I decided to get to the bottom of the problem. I shine a bore light down the barrel and it looks like everything is in order. I can see what appears to be a flash hole in the in the cylinder. I took my cleaning rod and sent it through the barrel and it stops right at the cylinder gap. I give it a few light taps and feel "something" move. I now can open the cylinder and dump the five spent and one loaded round. I had to double check each fired case as i missed it yet again on this inspection. The jacket of a what was a 95 grain .380 that had been smelted down as some point was now once again stuck in the bottom of the case.

This empty .380 jacket had ended up in one of the 5 gallon buckets that I keep my fired .38 brass in. It ended up inside the case upside down "nose down". During the sizing and decapping process the decapping pin punched a perfect hole through the nose of the jacket, and deprimed the case. I will say that the jacket blended in with the case pretty well. If this had ended up making it past the forcing cone I'm sure I would of have been in for a Ka-Boom. The .38 case showed on signs of high pressure such as flatted primer or hard extraction.

The first photo is the jacket stuck in the bottom of the fired case. The second photo is the hole in the nose of the empty .380 jacket. The third photo shows a loaded round, empty jacket ant the case that had the empty jacket after firing.

I'm tossing this out there as a reminder to all to not become complacent as I apparently did.

137105137106137107

[RED333]

Yep, slow down and look at every case before you put powder in.
Glad it went as well as it did.

[725]

Great report. Thank you.

[Shiloh]

Whoa!!

Fortunate indeed. My gues is that is was an education moment for you. So glad you didn't get injured.

Shiloh

[mongoose33]

Amazing.

I'm trying to figure out how a .380 jacket could have ended up in a bucket of brass. Any idea?

[captaint]

I wonder if the jacket was in somebody's box of bullets and ended up in the scrap heap ? Interesting situation. Good you caught it and didn't get hurt.. That could have been WAY worse.

[Echo]

Bizarre! But you get a Way To Go for the investigation.

[Nueces]

I've found junk in fired cases myself and have wondered if some kabooms have been due to near max powder charges in cases with much reduced volume due to tramp inclusions, say a 9 mm case in a 41 Magnum case.

[jmort]

Thank you for posting the results of your "investigation." Accidents do happen. Knowing how they happened can help others avoid accidents. Unlike the fool in another thread who claimed that he was infallible, my opinion is that no one is infallible in the reloading room, and that accidents do happens. To a degree, hypervigilance is in order.

[Springfield]

I find stuff in my brass all the time, such as smaller cases, dirt, rocks, spider eggs, packed in tumbler media. This is the reason I have never "upgraded?" my 550 to have a brass feeder. If it was just me I probably wouldn't be so very careful, but I load for my wife and my 2 kids also. I look in every case before putting it on the machine and look in every case after it is filled with powder.

[lbaize3]

Wow! I have had many crazy things happen and heard of other crazy things that happened when reloading, but what happened to you is the CRAZIEST thing I have ever heard!

[MBTcustom]

This is Murphy's law in action.
Living proof that if something can go wrong it certainly will someday.
Glad you and your gun are OK, and kudos for taking the time to investigate!

[RogerDat]

Appreciate the pictures and explanation. Would be easy to miss that jacket in the first picture, you picture makes it clear one more thing to look for in order to stay safe.

[pworley1]

Glad you were not hurt. A great reminder to us all.

[SP5315]

The only thing I can figure is that the .380 jacket was annealed to the point of being dead soft after smelting that the decapping pin easily punched through the jacket and helped to seat the jacket to the bottom of the case. As for the jacket ending up in with the .38 spl. brass, this had to be sloppy housekeeping on my part. I'll be adding much brighter lighting in the reloading bench area this weekend and will pay much more attention to the task at hand.

[bedbugbilly]

Glad it worked out O.K. and thanks for posting - a good reminder to us all to "check".

Different than your situation but all I use is "range brass" as I'm just a "plinker". I also have run in to "casing within a casing" on some of the range brass I've purchased. I have a bright light over the loading bench and I de-prime all of my brass on a single stage with a universal de=priming die. I have gotten into the habit of always looking in the casing as I pick it up before putting it in the press to de-prime, check again when I am hand priming and then one more time as I put it in my 4 hole turret to size the casing. A little OC but the several checks have helped me not only catch a few casings within a casing - but even some split mouths I didn't catch the first time looking at it.

You certainly had an "oddity" but it just goes to show that strange things can and do happen.

And I agree with you on the 348-311 - one of my "favorites" for 38s!

[243winxb]

2.5 grains of Unique What velocity does that produce with a 160 gr RN ?? Lucky bullets make it out of the barrel.

[Butchman205]

This is a problem I've ran in to several times with 45 colt. A 40 cal pistol cartridge fits very tidily in a 45 colt...but I usually find they when I jam or break a depriming pin

[SP5315]

What velocity does that produce with a 160 gr RN ?? Lucky bullets make it out of the barrel.

Good catch! That should have read 4.5 grains of Unique. This is also an example why I don't use load data found on the net. Sometimes one can hit the wrong key. My typing skills aren't the best, you should see what this looks like on the screen before I clean it up with the spell checker, lol.

[HeavyMetal]

This is why every container of brass I have has a cover on it, read as in Lowe's or Home Depot 5 gallon bucket.

I've always sorted range pick up and kept it separate until I do sort it.

Lot's of odds and ends found in range pick up brass plus stuff falls of the bench constantly so the covered containers are a must for the reloading area.

These days I am wet tumbling my brass and this produces a very clean and shiny case both inside and out. Very easy to determine a object in the case as I am loading.

Glad you got lucky and no harm done.