Flawed Thinking

I almost made a silly mistake today too loading some 243. Was loading up 40.5gr and set my scale to 45gr by mistake....set the grain poise to 5 instead of the .grain.
Had 5 cases charged and the only thing that clued me in was I remembered it was about 82% full with this charge per the Nosler manual and these were full up to the start of the neck which is closer to 95-100%.
20 years reloading and never did that before...going to be a bit more diligent going forward.
 
buzzmagoo said:
Well I do understand and have a Decent understanding of your experienced malfunctions. Case separation and the Resulting high-pressure gas releases must have been unnerving . But from what I now gather this happened multiple times . As for jewelry may be have them linked together as a bracelet. Or just nail them to your reloading bench as remberence ! Happily no injury was Ensued ( other than to your ego ) live and learn .:cheers:
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No offence intended........just from your previous post, I read it to mean you thought the action popped open and that was why the heads came off. My misunderstanding obviously.
 
Well I suppose you can start selling funky ear discs for the cool kids. Maybe make enough to replace the brass.

Thanks for the post it's always nice to have a story to help me reflect on my own practices

Jody
 
c-fbmi said:
Maybe I should put up a thread asking for ideas on what cool things I could do with 50 or 60 .470 NE caseheads, just as a testament to my unseeing arrogance...........
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Could make a nice inserted medallion into a nice hunting knife or inlaid into the butt of a knife. If you've got a few lying around I'd take a few off your hands. I've read up on acrylic casting and it could make for a cool inlay.
 
Send me your address BUM and I'll get a few out to you..........see if you can turn my pricey screw up into something nice.

Actually Sleeper the 470 case head isn't a whole bunch bigger than a 45-70 case head, I'm sure it could be inlaid into a knife handle with room to spare.
 
Dmay..........my apologies sir, my eyes are playing tricks on me now, I could have swore I read 45-70 in your post, not 470. My experience loading for my 470 will quite likely will apply to your 470 as well..........again I apologize for the misread and consequent bad advice, which is good advice for a 45-70 but NOT a 470........
 
Well I can tell you guys, there will be enough to try out all your fashion statement suggestions..........some cases aren't showing yet and I may get another plinker load or two with them, but most of my original 60 Norma cases are showing the "white line" indicative of impending head separation, so there will be lots to go around........a quick pinch with needle nose pliers ahead of the "white ring" and voila........another case head to play with.........
 
Hitzy said:
I almost made a silly mistake today too loading some 243. Was loading up 40.5gr and set my scale to 45gr by mistake....set the grain poise to 5 instead of the .grain.
Had 5 cases charged and the only thing that clued me in was I remembered it was about 82% full with this charge per the Nosler manual and these were full up to the start of the neck which is closer to 95-100%.
20 years reloading and never did that before...going to be a bit more diligent going forward.
Click to expand...

I have done that once. So now I set the scale and recheck it ,load the trickler and recheck it again. It sucked taking 20 rdns apart to recheck but better safe than BOOM. I takes me what feels like forever to load but I can sleep at night.
 
Good information c-bmfi

The take away, respond to any abnormal changes in the loading process, excessive trimming being a clue. Another is , that we as handloaders , are generally obsessed with velocity , accuracy and for hunters weight retention, we build/buy equipment that satisfies this.
However, many rifle/cartridge combinations do not follow this. In the example of a dangerous game double, the designers obviously went for function first and really had no thought of users handloading or sub-1 accuracy. Plus during the time of 'flanged' cartridges manufacturing tolerances were looser than today. This can be seen in military cartridges such as the 303 Brit, which is not a handloaders dream, but as originally designed works quite well.

Many long time handloaders can find themselves in the place you have experienced.

Thanks for the sharing your experience, it makes us all better.
 
New brass for hunting, handloads for practice?

I can't imagine anything more unpleasant than the realization that I had a case head separation in the middle of a hunt. That could absolutely complicate your day.

How does your rifle handle neck-sized handloads? (Do they chamber OK?) At the risk of grasping the obvious, that may be your best solution for practice (while reserving new or once-fired brass for hunting).
 
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