Today I got the biggest shock in my life. Every saturday I´m supervisor at our shooting range. A hunter and reloader with long experince tested same loads with differnt rifles and rounds. He shoots a Steyr Mannlicher in a 7mm round ( I don´t know the exact) and "kawumm", with the second shot the rifle was blown up. Thanks God, he isn´t injured, but he andI was shocked. He went home to analyse the failure. The rifle? A puzzle.
And I....,for the future I will check every round I´m reloading more and more and more and more.......


Martin

Another reason to select powders that completely fill the case at safe pressures.

It's good that the fellow wasn't injured. I guess that's why we buy quality rifles.

Big Bore Fan,

I’m not telling you anything that you don’t already know, but one of the reasons people who reload blow up rifles is reloader’s error for the most part.

You need to look into this problem.

Big Bore Fan,

You’re looking for a double charge, a charge with the wrong powder, a load that’s based on a lighter bullet, or an obstacle in the barrel.

Today , the Hunter told me the mistake. He used a wrong data for his bullet. The steyr rifle is destroyed, it´s impossible to open the bolt.


Martin

OUCH!!!Repetition, can cause complacency. A not so gentle reminder to quadripal check on each step.

One thing that I do is play classical music while I load so I have no distraction from TV or words to a song. Another thing that I do is have only one powder on my bench at any time during loading.
I am sure some more of us have a few little concentration secrets to post.

Filling powder and then directly seating the bullet in sequence (no tray powder filling) is another very good safety measure. You only work with one cartride at a time and can interrupt at will.

I messed up w/two powders on the bench once. Loaded my .270 Savage 112 with 56 grains of Varget instead of H4831SC. The bolt was pretty hard to open to say the least, the primer fell out of the case, the extractor was off the bolt. If anyone has quickload they might tell me what pressures I achieved

GE, not so safe! Thats how a friend blew his .41. He was interrupted while loading one at a time, thought he had put in the powder and seated a bullet. The primer blew it into the forcing cone and he shot another behind it.
A loading block is the only way to load so you can look into every case.

quote:

A loading block is the only way to load so you can look into every case.

Ouch, sounds like one of the more nasty mistakes, hope he didn't hurt himself! Did tray-filling when I used a mechanical powder dispenser, and yes, it may be an advantage to separate filling and seating by several cases to concentrate on one step. I then switched to hand-weighing for greater accuracy where seating directly kind of comes naturally. Will now be using an RCBS ChargeMaster so I guess the fill->seat procedure will continue. I guess if you organize and get a good working habit it should be just as safe.

His gun was a Ruger. The cylinder expanded into the top strap, bent it way up, bent the pin down and just made a mess of it. The metal DID NOT SPLIT and all held together. He was not hurt at all and there was no shrapnel.
Ruger was great about it and replaced the gun at their cost even though it was reloader error. One great company!