Ok, Has anyone every goofed and over charged a load. I did the other day and can't figure out where I came up with the charge amount. It is in none of my books or load notes. None the less I put 44 grains of IMR4064 behind a 90 grain bullet for a 243 Winchester. Thank God no one was hurt but it sure smashed the rim of the case making the FC really, really hard to read. I had to drive the round out of the chamber with a cleaning rod. Stretched the action on that little NEF .004 inches. That was a 10 grain over charge!

Question:
Have you ever Over Charged a load?

Choices:
Yes
No

Question:
By how much?

Choices:
0 to 2 Grains
3 to 5 Grains
6 to 8 grains
9 plus grains

Question:
Did you damage the rifle?

Choices:
Yes
No

Question:
Was anyone hurt?

Choices:
Yes
No

 

243 loaded to a 308 specs, forgot to change powder drop and CHECK IT.

Broke the bolt face of a Rem 788. No other damage.

years ago i was loading 7int and the load was 30.7 gr look at it wrong and loaded 37.0 gr, that was the first and last time i ever did that,
no damage to gun or shooter but had to use a hammer to open the bolt.
i keep that empty case as a reminder.

Not a rifle, I did the classic Bullseye screw-up in a Ruger 44 and bulged the cylinder. No harm to anyone but I did quit using Lee dippers. Not that they were at fault, they're just too high-tech for me

I once opened the primer pocket on a 22-250 .021" in one shot.

Had to beat the Rem 700 bolt open with a 2X4....no injury and no damage.....went back to shooting "dogs"

Another time I pushed brass to the end of the ejecter slot in a M-70 push feed in .220 Swift. I had to remove the barrel to open the action. No injury and no damage to the gun.....went back to shooting "dogs"

In neither case did I ever find out why or what happened.....but something was very wrong.

When I was first reloading, I borrowed the use of an old triple beam analytical balance to weigh charges. Lovely old piece of nostalgia for an analytical chemist.

Loaded a few shells for a 41 Rem Mag M57 pistol with 2400 (I believe). Pulled the trigger with a single round loaded. The muzzle of the revolver lurched to the sky. The muzzle flash must have been 3 feet in diameter.

Case was OK. Primer was VERY, VERY flat and it was pieced. Very minor flame cutting of the face of the frame. (Within a few weeks a small piece of metal broke out of the trigger and it had to be replaced.) Gun is still in use some 40 years later.

I looked VERY carefully for the cause as the load should have been warm but OK. Turns out the rider on one of the beams had slipped. Load was a couple of grains heavier than I thought it was. Pulled all of the loads down.

When I used that balance again, I would load charge cases and inspect them. I'd then return the riders and zero the balance and randomly weigh several charges from the batch.

Never happened again. (For which I am grateful!)

Yup, IIRC it was 8 grains or so over a max load of IMR 4064 in a 7x57 chambered Mauser 98. Big bang, heavy recoil, smoking action, stuck bolt, and blown primer (and almost the case head). No damage whatsoever to the rifle or my person. Got my attention, though!

I don't remember the specifics of this very well at all, but it was something like this.

The shooter had weighed his charges very carefully, was careful about the powder and primer he was using, and had carefully trimmed his cases and properly seated his bullets, only to find a sticky bolt and flattened primers on a couple of cases, at which time he quit shooting.

Now, this was a load he'd shot before with no problems, and he was puzzled. He pulled the bullets and weighed the charges, and they weighed properly.

Then he examined his balance beam scale.

Turned out there was an insect (a lady bug?) on the arm of his balance beam which caused him to add several tenths of a grain to each charge.