Today I prepped 25 rifle cases, and charged them with W-748. It wasn't until I took them into the next room (my charging station and press are in two different rooms) and grabbed one to put it in the press to seat a bullet, that I noticed a small but steady string of ball powder coming from the bottom of the case. I held it up in the air to look, and sure'nuf, there was no primer!

So I sez to myself, "Self, you missed that one when you primed your brass."

So I grabbed another case to move it, and same thing -- no primer! Then It hit me -- I had forgotten to prime any of the cases! By the time I got all the cases dumped back into the hopper, there was a little mound of ball powder in the bottom of every hole in my tray.

It's not that I have not done this before, but I think it's the first time I did a whole tray, and the first time with ball powder! I guess I can be thankful that it wasn't a canister powder that wouldn't fit through the flash hole, and I went ahead an seated the bullets.

That would entertain the other folks at the range as I tried to figure out why there was no "BOOM" when I pulled the trigger!

Wow...I guess we have done it all. Interesting that you have a separate room.

Have we been imbibing or just not paying attention? At least you caught it. We've all done it. And at least you caught it!

No I had not been drinking. It was about 11:00 a.m. I was in a hurry to get them finished so I could drive down to the range and test several loads in different calibers.

That's cause #1 -- Being in a Rush!

The other problem was after I sized them and measured them, there were four or five cases that were a little too long and several cases with primer pockets that could use cleaning. Normally, I prime my cases before going into the next room to the trimmer and if a primer pocket is dirty, clean it out with a hand tool. But since there were so many cases, and since I was going to the trimmer anyway, I decided to use my RCBS Trim Mate with its rotating pocket cleaner to clean them. When I was finished trimming my pre-programmed auto reflexes kicked in and went right into what is normally the next step: charging the cases!

Cause #2 --Break in Routine!

It used to be no problem if I broke a routine, but the older I get, the more it seems I'm tied to whatever routine I am used to. So that leads us to.....

Cause #3 -- Getting Old

I would say, "live and learn" but I've lived a long time and learned about as much as I'm gonna learn. A better saying for me is "live and don't forget!"

Speaking of reloading while imbibing, We had a case here in Georgia a few years back where a guy was doing just that, and ended up dumping whatever rifle powder he was wanting to use into his hopper -- on top of a hopper half full of Bullseye!

The found him dead with an Enfield bolt in his brain, and several unfired .303 rounds, in his tray, most full of Bullseye.

I have charged a few without priming them first, but I then developed a routine where I put them into a tray head up or head down depending on what I'm doing - so they go in head down initially and as I deprime each one it gets put into the same block, head up, so I can see that it is deprimed, then I trim and chamfer and put them head down, so I can see the pretty shiny brass and then I prime and put them head up, so I can see the primers.

Then I weigh out loads and put them head down so I can see inside them all, and after seating the bullet they go into the MYM box.

Just my routine - it works for me.

Although there was a guy I used to shoot wife in RSA who loaded a whole tray of his favourite 7x64 before realising that there was no primer, so he just seated primers in the cases. After I heard this, I'd move to the other side of the range every time he appeared.

quote:

Originally posted by Bren7X64:
I have charged a few without priming them first, but I then developed a routine where I put them into a tray head up

Many years ago after having been guilty of charging unprimed cases I also began to heads up the primed case so it was apparent if the cases were primed or not. Than they were turned over and charged. roger