I have always been meticulous about my loading, no distractions in my loading room, no radio, no TV, and no company..

well last week at the range, I encountered my first major reloading screw up.

Getting ready for Cowboy action season, a practice shoot, I ran across 5 45LC rounds with no powder. At first I thought the charge may have gotten contaminated somehow, but after pulling the misfired rounds, there was no powder charge.
These were loaded 2 years ago, so trying to reconstruct what I did wrong, or how it happened is really bugging me. I always look down into the cases to make sure all have powder before seating bullets, or at least I thought I did, but in this case i apparently didn't.. and it's BUGGIN ME!

And for those of you that want to know, they were fired in a Ruger Vaquero, and the Winchester Primer just pushed the bullet out enough to jam the cylinder.

Now I guess I'll either have to pull the remaining rounds in that lot, or invest in an electronic scale to try to figure out which ones might not have powder.. (5.5 Trailboss)

But the event was an eye opener for sure, and just stresses the importance of not allowing yourself to get distracted, or loading when you have something on your mind, or anything else that might break your concentration..

When a got my first progressive I was going along having a great time making ammo had a good size box full then I looked up and saw the powder hopper empty.

Didn't count them but I just use that box for practice and being very aware of the pop instead of the bang

I kept a brass rod handy tried the measuring thing didn't work well

well i think that if that hasn't happened before that it was overdue. i ran a bunch of 45mag amount of the progressive a bit ago with about 40% of the rounds empty. turned out that there was a clump of powder which blocked up the measure. just one more thing to always be aware of. i don't think i know of anyone in the reloading game that it hasn't happened to before

It happens, even to me. A couple of years ago, at a Cowboy shoot whilst I was firing my Colt 38-40 (my fav caliber), one stage sounded something like this: "Bang, Bang, Bang, BOOM". Instead of 8 grains of Unique, I figure there was 16.
It still was a hit.

Laws of probability run rampant in reloading. Some just enough to keep you honest. I though a progressive press was the answer to all things, and it is, until primers flip, powder runs out, monotony sets in. Last one I did was to lighten up the crimp on the 45acp and ran about 500 softball. It didn't take long to figure out they were too loose, D'oh.

Because of this problem,I have retired my Dillon Progressive press. No mater how many times I tried to be a precise as possible,something always happened. A primer was seated up side down,no powder charge,a double powder charge,crushed cases,etc I found it was just not worth the possibility of damaging a firearm,me or a bystander.
I went back to the single stage CO-AX press and have never had a problem since.

They say that you're not a real shooter/loader until you've loaded without powder at least twice and shot your ramrod out at least once.

The only people who don't make mistakes, are the ones who don't do anything at all.

wow you've only done that once! You are Goooood!!

Well it is about time.

Just learn from it. Other than a pain in the butt no damage was done.

quote:

Originally posted by mike_elmer:
The only people who don't make mistakes, are the ones who don't do anything at all.

I've had some monumental screw-ups, now my wife even checks my tray to make sure all the cases have powder in them!

Let's see, a batch update of .45 ACP with at least 3 well under charge weight. My first batch on a progressive. I have a couple to pull. Bell curve and out piers compared to factory boxes. The first one cost me a barrel.

A .223 Rem with no powder. Didn't move the 77 SMK, loaded on a single stage.

Two incidents, 17 years.

Five or six years ago, one of my reloads destroyed my wife's Sig 45. Very, very scary, but she was not in the slightest harmed and continues to shoot.

I've been reloading for over 50 years, and until then I'd only had a slightly stuck bolt (once) and a cylinder that jammed (once).

We do what we can to avoid sh*t, but it happens.

I know they have the powder indicator thingies for Dillon and others too.

But when you are using 5 grains , or for something like 231, I have always wondered if it wouldn't be more trouble with it indicating wrongly with those small amounts.

This scares me up. I am just starting my RCBS piggyback up. Until now I had a loading system of checking and double checking. I think a powder cop is probably the answer! Primers seated upside down can still be checked when you put your loads in a case holder and it would not be fatal. BUT Powder is a different story.

Don't be scared, just be careful As I said, any other adult leisure activity has a far greater fatality rate than reloading. Even laying on the couch watching TV has a higher death rate.