The BoneHead Confessionals

[deltaenterprizes]

I am surprised the pound fired a LP primer is shorter than a LR primer,thank God you were not hurt.

[454PB]

My most recent screwup was fairly innocuous. I had two guns on the same bench, a Redhawk .44 magnum and a Puma model 92 in .454 Casull. I grabbed the wrong ammo, and fired a .44 magnum in the Puma. It didn't even split the brass, just put a bulge on it above the rim. I keep that case on the shelf above my loading bench as an attention reminder.

[357maximum]

I am surprised the round fired. A LP primer is shorter than a LR primer,thank God you were not hurt.

FWIW....I have intentionally shot quite a few LP primers in rifles(severely light pistol boolit loads)..I never had one fail to go bang....this time however it was not intentional and it had a full house load of H335 under a 120 grain sierra. The gun proably could have actually been fired after the incident, but I doubt it would extract very well...My brain was larger than my berries and I did not find out if it would in fact go bang in it's condition after the oops.

I watched that LR primer hit the floor (or so I thought)...the real primer dropped that day was about 6inches from the KABLOOEY PRIMER and was barely hiding behind the leg of my bench.

[Pitmaster]

Now that's scary!

I always vacuum mine up when I clean up. Never thought about them going off in the canister.

Here's a thread from GlockPost.com where a guy was vacuuming his carpet and set off a primer. Pictures included.

[Buckshot]

..............One of my boyhood friend's dad got tired of the cat's yodeling at night on their back wall. He rigged up some kind of electric wire on top, held up by pieces of old garden hose. For power he used (IIRC) some old flourescent light ballasts or transformers or something like that. This was back in the early '60's.

They had a Doughboy swimming pool and I was over swimming when I couldn't stand it any longer so I asked Steve (my buddy) what that smell was? He didn't know and I guess didn't smell it. We got out of the pool and began peering into the bushs by the back wall and found a dead cat. Come to find out years later that whatever his dad had hooked up was putting out some kind of hellacious juice into that wire and had electrocuted it.

We had an electric fence around the pasture we had our horse and mules in. It was a juicy one, and would actually clip off small plants and stems that got up against it. I never saw any of'em ever get bit, but they must have because they all knew about it and respected it. I had a neon tester with a probe and the electrified wire stopped by the gate on the hinge side, and on the other end of the gate was their water barrels. The gate was by the feed shed and I kept the tester there.

Once in awile there'd be a couple of'em lounging around by the water barrels so I'd get the tester out. The neon end had a hook on it and all you had to do was set that hook over the wire, and at that tiny sound you had their total and completely undivided attention . An equines' facial expressions are in their eyes, ears and the set of their head, having no facial muscles, however you could read volumns into what they were thinking.

They'd stand there with their attention rivited on me. All I had to do was move the probe close to the stock wire fence below the hot wire, and at maybe 1/8" or a bit less seperation it'd arc. At that sound they were gone! They'd swap ends and haul butt. It was actually quite hilarious because it didn't matter which of'em were down there, it was always the same deal over and over.

.................Buckshot

[Bass Ackward]

Bonehead? Oncest or twice.

I used to keep my casting stuff around and under the reloading bench. As I loaded and found a bad (enough) bullet, I would chuck it in the pot.

That is until a mystery primer that I never saw went off with me. It had fallen into the dipper, sight unseen, and apparently wedged itself in the spout. It used the short barrel spout for a launching mechanism that worked better than I would have thought it would.

No more casting stuff around the bench for me.

[waydownsouth]

yep ive got a vacum cleaner with scorch marks on the inside from cleaning the reloading room floor

I also fired a couple of 243 rounds through a mates 6.5 x 55 when we were sighting in his rifle and i took the 243 along to test a few loads no damage to the rifle but did end up with some intresting looking 243 brass.

[looseprojectile]

got a six inch S&W 629 in trade really cheap. He couldn't hit anything with it. It came with a box of ammo with six bulged emties. They were .41 mag shells. I never told him. Be careful out there.
Life is good

[nicholst55]

I have a 3X3X12" block of steel in my shop, that I once knocked over onto a dropped primer. The very loud BANG startled me - nad caused me to sweep the floor. Since then I don't allow an accumulation of dropped primers and spilled powder.

[docone31]

I have never kept things that go pop, with things that heat. Just my way.
So far, I have been lucky. Real lucky.
Way back when, sometimes I even had a drink or two. It was always during that time I experimented with reloading. Why? I cannot tell you to this day.
However, loading my 30-06, one of my buddies brought me over a box of jacketed bullets. Herters, .309.
I had gotten into the habit of using compressed cases. Why? I have no clue, I certainly do not do that today. I do have double torn rotator cuffs.
That night, I never had black outs, just serious grey outs, I always remembered sooner or later, I decided to load some hot loads using the .309 jacketeds just to see.
My buddies came over and not to lose face, I grabbed my box of loaded shells and proceded to the range.
I am glad I only used magnum primers back then! I suspect if I had used the primers mentioned here, things might have turned out differently.
I picked up my rifle, chambered one of the rounds, lined her up, pulled the trigger.
It is hard to explain what happened.
I had fired a gazillion rounds through this rifle, I knew the recoil very well. It was just plain comfortable to shoot. She and I could do anything. Well, almost.
The shot felt different. It was unlike any recoil I had experienced. Almost a push rather than a thud. I had summoned stupid courage to fire it, kinda like my first reload, and it shot better than it ever did.
The primer however, was a different story. The rear of the case had machine marks from the bolt face where it never had before. The primer was more than cratered. The case ejected from the bolt/reciever, the primer stayed in the firing pin guide! I had to pop it out with my knife. Same with the next one, same with the next one. I ruined 100 cases with one shot each!
Well, today is different, but I never forgot that.
I have paper patched, made duplex loads, installed Lyman 57D reciever sights on an 03-A3. They are tough recievers. Only broke one tap.
The case pressure on the primer, stretched the primer pocket to where I could hand push a primer into it. Some fell back out. The spent primers went into the firing pin guide and were absolutely flat with deep milling marks from the bolt face.
That Savage was a great rifle. Shot great, took a beating, felt good to hold. A great rifle.
Those loads did not hurt it.
A compressed case of IMR 3031 behind a .309 150gn jacketed soft point. Stupid, stupid, stupid and dangerous. I had gotten overconfident, careless, and got away with it. I take chances, but nothing like that again.
I do not know why I never got a pierced primer. I should have at least gotten one. Nothing blew past the primer from the stretched primer pocket. The bolt never got hard to work.
I load with dippers. I check my load with a digital scale even if it is a reccomended published load. Hey, why not? Today, I stay with minimum loads. Someone else can do that.
That was a stupid thing on my part. I have made mistakes, but that was just plain dang gone stupid, preventable. That was my doing,no one else's. That I got away with it.....
I tell people that.
Someone was looking out for me that day.
I think about it every time I reload. I get lots of loads in my cases today.