O.K. Fess-Up, Whats the dumbest thing you ever did with reloading?

[dverna]

Bought an RCBS Green Machine instead of the Star. Worst *** ever to come out of RCBS.

I did not purchase another RCBS product for 25 years.

[C1PNR]

Heh, without any help or instruction my first ever reloads were .30 Carbine, and I did a very good job of CRIMPING every one of them!

WOW!! I actually got off 2 or 3 rounds before I finally decided something might be wrong here.

I must say, my WW II Standard Products Carbine was undamaged, but I was a bit shaken!

Lesson learned? Research your new project and proceed with caution. It has served me well over many years and many different calibers.

[Tom W.]

And when I had a particularly evil bent..


I took a small amount of pyrodex and placed it in the spark path of a saw grinder at work, due to the fact that the operator wouldn't clean his machine. I told him that the grinding rock residue could possibly ignite.... When he was getting some coffee, I poured the pyrodex in the path. It looked just like the crud that had built up there. About the third time the wheel came down and sparks started to fly, 'POOF!!" There was a flash of fire and white smoke everywhere. The guy shut down the grinder, and I had to move out of the way, saying that I was afraid of an electrical fire, but I was really trying to hide my laughter.. After a spell they caught on...

[Chihuahua Floyd]

When setting the decapping pin back into a Lee 30-30 die, don't leave the die in the press, don't hold the pin in the die from the bottom with your left index finger. Also, don't hit the handle of the Lee press with your right elbow. Did not come thru the fingernail, but it left a mark. Had to push finger down off of the pin with other hand.
CF

[Link23]

i just had a live primer fall into my melting pot....needless to say, i was wearing flip flops well, a lead shower soon exploded.... not fun

[bigjake]

Once long ago, about 30+ years ago when I was young and stupid, I made this cannon. It was a good strong one. It had a 1 3/8" [1.375"] bore. It had 1" walls.
I shot it off many times, blanks, loaded with all kinds of chunks. but one time, I cut a piece of 1 3/8" shaft and wrapped it with black tape. I thought mixing smokless powder with black powder would make a special powder. Anyway, I poured a bunch of the "special" powder in it, jambed that shaft chunk in there and pointed the thing at a junk oven.
Luckily we took cover behind my VW, the thing completely blew, splitting like bannana peel pieces. one of the strips flew over our heads like a helicopter.
I cant even imagine what would have happened if one of those strips would have hit someone.
It doesnt get more stupid than that.

[bruce drake]

When setting the decapping pin back into a Lee 30-30 die, don't leave the die in the press, don't hold the pin in the die from the bottom with your left index finger. Also, don't hit the handle of the Lee press with your right elbow. Did not come thru the fingernail, but it left a mark. Had to push finger down off of the pin with other hand.
CF

Ditto!!! Dang did that hurt!

Actually, the dumbest thing I ever did at the reloading bench was working in the garage one night when my wife called from the doorway, "when are you going to bed Honey?"

Not looking up from the bench where I was into carefully weighing some target loads for a rifle match the following week, I replied "In a minute!"

2 hours later, I finished and went in the house to find the bedroom door closed, and my wife asleep in bed... After she woke up as I climbed into bed, I slept on the couch that night....Ever since, I shut down the reloading bench when my wife comes to the garage door... THERE ARE HIGHER PRIORITIES THAN RELOADING when you are happily married

Bruce

[*Paladin*]

Here's another one for you. If you use a electronic dispenser (like my Chargemaster), make sure the powder drain is closed before you add powder to the hopper. I lost dang near a half pound of H335 to that mistake one night. All over the bench and floor. H335 flows like water, by the way. Needless to say, I have written in permanant marker "CLOSE THE DRAIN" on the side of my Chargemaster...

[Doby45]

The dumbest/worst thing I have ever done is I caught my little 4yr old girls finger between a 40cal piece of brass and a depriming pin. I was not paying attention and we had already done about 200 pieces of brass. As we got closer to the end she liked to take longer than normal to "set" the brass in the holder, this way she had more time with me reloading.
The worst part is, I knew she liked to take a bit longer toward the end. Well I was in the groove and I was talking to her and we were having a great time. I went to push the handle down and I noticed immediately in my minds eye that something was not right, so I stopped the down stroke in midstroke (kind of like Tiger Woods stopping his swing in his backstroke) and by stopping I just barely put the pin to the top of her first knuckle on her index finger. The pressure was enough to get her attention and mine.
It literally broke my heart to see the look on her face as she realized that the daddy that always loves her and protects her had just hurt her. I thank God that my daughter has the heart that she does because after holding her and kissing her little finger for a while she looked at me and said "Its ok daddy, I forgive you." This from a 4yr old, needless to say my heart broke again and now I am extremely cautious when she comes to help me with some of my tedious tasks.

[.30/30 Guy]

The dumest thing that I did was buy a Lee Drip-O-Matic.

[wallenba]

OK, just did another dumb thing last night. I primed 50 Norma 7.7 x 58MM with large pistol primers........DUH!

[wmitty]

First, Doby45... I am very glad your daughter was not severely injured. I let my daughter run the press handle for me when she was about that age as I seated bullets. I spent a little extra time on one cartridge trying to straighten a boolit and nearly lost a finger tip.

Now for my stupid decision (s)

1. decided a piece of .45 acp brass would make a good jacket for a .45-70 bullet if I ran it thru a Lee push thru .457 die.

2. decided 5 grains of unique would be about right to get it out the muzzle of the test rifle.

3. decided an empty case with 5 more grains of unique would force the stuck "jacket" out of the bore.

4. decided I'd better quit a little too late after I'd realized I had bulged the barrel of my Dad's 1895 Marlin.

[bensonwe]

I'll jump on this band wagon. Last fall i purchased a rem .223 700 and was testfiring some loads. All was fine until I grabbed the last lot of reloads and touched one off. The recoil planted the stock firmly in my shoulder. I stopped and started to examine the rifle and noticed the bolt wouldn't open. After forcing it open, the bolt face was brass plated and the case mouth was gone. I went back to my reloading bench and noticed I grabbed reddot instead of my normal powder. Many years ago I was told by an oldtimer to never have two powders by your bench at one time. Now I know why.

[BulletFactory]

This would make a great sticky.

[Southern Son]

I thought that I was imune from reloading stuffups, but after reading this, I realise that I have had some. I have wrecked .310 Cadet brass when I turned the turret on my press before the decapping pin was out of the case (several times), I have caught my fingers in the press (again serveral times), and my most recent was while casting. I like to take a little break every 50-100 castings. I had just dropped one from the mould and decided to take a break. I put the mould on top of the pot and took off my casting gloves. At this point I noticed the last boolit looked strange, so I picked it up to look more closely at it. I made some funny noises and said some rarely heard words and then put it back down.

[GrumpyFinn]

This happened in the late 70's in Finland when I was about 15-16, I had gotten a Smith 38spl 6" barrel for my B-day, it did not take long before I realized I could not afford to shoot it so I took all my savings and bought redding press (only one available), set of dies and a powder measure. The store owner liked me so he threw in some VV powder, primers and a box of bullets to get me going, that's all I could afford at the time.
I set up my little work space to load some bullets, I did not go blindly into my new hobby though, I had my buddy, also 15-16, to help me set up, his father had taken him hunting for many years already so he was an authority in gun "business" and knew almost everything there is to know about guns.
Everything set up and ready to go, we did not have a scale so we took apart one Norma 38spl and put the powder in the hopper, twisted the knob and see if everything came out, if not we adjusted until it did, we were ready to load some ammo. As far as the OAL we eyeballed the other factory cartridges and adjusted the seating die accordingly, hadn't even heard about mics at that time.
Long story short, I'm still alive, the Smith, not so much. Ended up blowing the bottoms of the cylinder notches out after about 200 rounds, the empties would not come out without banging the ejector against a table. Took the gun back, told the store owner we had shot Norma's hot 38's, he sent the gun to S&W they replaced it with 357mag for an extra $20.00 and told us not bend the frame again......
There were a few mishaps afterwards but they were minor compared to my first attempts on reloading.
There was a time we emptied my uncles shot gun shells to make fireworks, reloaded them later with some other stuff and blamed the inconsistency on cheap Russian ammo, the Russian shotgun did not survive this endeavor, uncle did, and I told him what actually happened, 30 years later.

[felix]

Not checking to see if a gun was loaded or not. I ALWAYS unload guns, mostly by shooting until dry when the gun is a repeater, before putting them into the car after shooting. Yeah, right! ... felix

[AZ-JIM]

Still fairly new at reloading, I dont pretent to know it all or presume that I ever will. I managed my second one this week. The first time, I was probably 12-14 yrs old and dad and I had just put together a pair of CVA muzzle loader kit rifles. We went shooting and after several shots I had one that had considerably more recoil than the preveious shot. I couldn't figure out what I did wrong untill I couldn't find my ram rod, it was about 125 yds downrange and luckily no damage to me or the gun.

The second one, I loaded 100 rds of .243 with boolits this week for load development. I had my equipment set up, measured the C.O.L. and they were .030 shorter than what the manual said was max for that boolit and the case mouth was just below the first driving band so everything looked good. I got up early this morning and went to the range, got set up and put the first one in the rifle...the bolt won't close...WTH. Sure enough the boolit was up against the rifling (with about .060 more to go). It looks like another trip through the seating die will fix it without too much heartache. So I wasted a trip to the range and a day worth of fixing my mess, but the worst part is that I was going to chamber one to check it but thought "nah, it's already .030 short it'll be fine". NOTE TO SELF apparently boolits with short ogives need special consideration.

az-jim

[Longwood]

Do unloading count?
I was using a collet type puller to unload a handful of mistakes one time and decided to pop the primers in the pistol. I would stick one in the chamber and pop the primer then do another one. All went well till I did the one I somehow forgot to dump the powder out of. The cat has no idea how lucky he is, I had used the first two to wake him up and chase him out of my room. When the third one popped, it spit a cloud of burning powder all over the big stuffed chair he had been sleeping in..

[375supermag]

Once upon a time, many years ago, I decided that competitive shooting in a local bullseye league was getting a little expensive with factory ammunition and that I should learn how to reload my own ammunition.
Being basically cheap and poor to boot, I decided that I would start with one of those Lee single-stage starter kits for my .357Magnum. I followed all the instructions and everything went fairly well.
In the fullness of time, it became much too time-consuming to use a single-stage press, so I bought one of the new Lee 1000 progressive presses, set up in .357Mag. At first, all went well...ammo flowed from the press much faster than the single-stage. hundreds and hundreds of rounds were loaded with nary a problem over the course of several weeks.

And then one day, as I was boxing up rounds I noticed that a primer had been seated upside down! Now how did that happen??? I checked every other round...all the primers were seated properly. Oh, well, one wasted primer, a little bit of wasted powder and since I didn't have a bullet puller, one wasted Hornady jacketed bullet. My thought was that it only happened once...no big deal. Yeah...right!

Off we went to the evening match at a local indoor range. During one of the timed fire rounds, I squeezed off a round that sounded a little funny and didn't seem to recoil very much at all. I called an alibi and the range officer and I started to check out my revolver. Everything looked OK until we checked the barrel with a bore light...no light shining through!

Yep...a Hornady jacketed bullet stuck part way down the barrel...took a few minutes with a cleaning rod to get it out. No damage to the gun, just no powder in the case. Oh, and one lost shooting match.

Went home and decided to check out the Lee 1000 press...every once in a while it just would not dump powder and a little more often it would seat a primer upside down or sideways.

Next day, cheap and poor me went to the local gunshop and bought a new RCBS RockChucker, dies, powder scale, priming tool, etc.
Went home and took the Lee 1000 and it's single-stage brother off the bench and put them in a box...and there they have been for 20 years or more. That same RockChucker is still cranking out thousands and thousands of rounds in a variety of calibers to this day. I have been tempted to set the Lee up a couple of times, but I always just laugh and put it back in the cabinet.

I recently downloaded some videos about the disassembly and cleaning and re-assembly of a Lee 1000. I am tempted once again to give the Lee another chance. It may be time to make my second mistake in reloading.