Reloading incident. Remeber to check before seating bullets.

cath8r said:
Buying a cheap electronic scale is a fantastic double check device before you put the rounds in boxes.
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That only works if the powder charge is a lot heavier than the brass weight deviations. I load 3.1 gr of tightgroup and have tried what you suggest when looking for a load that may have a light charge and the brass weight difference made it a lost cause...pull em all or shoot them the only way to find a problem round with very light loads.

Cold Lake, is there any possibility that some of that brass was picked up on a rainy day? I had the same scenario happen with 1000 rounds I loaded for the wife and we discovered she had given me brass she had been shooting on a rainy day and i just added them to the barrel of .38 brass we load from. When I pushes a squib slug out of the barrel it had a soft mushy powder mess on the base of it.

I have use a couple kegs of tightgroup and have never found it to be hard to ignite if it was dry.
 
Good thought, but the brass is all his own, picked up at the time it was shot. (As old as we both are, shooting in the rain is not really our thing!)
The headstamps are all Federal, from his start in CAS, when he was buying loaded American Eagle .357 and .38 Spl. cartridges. (Tale for another day!)
The brass is/was all tumbled, then deprimed and resized. It sits for sometimes a couple of weeks in my gun room, which has a dehumidifier going in summer, before we get around to charging the cases.
 
I scale and trickle every case without fail, and I always use a light to make sure all looks right. I’ve heard of friends that got distracted and squibbed a load.

I’m hoping never to do so.
 
The Cold Lake Kid said:
Good thought, but the brass is all his own, picked up at the time it was shot. (As old as we both are, shooting in the rain is not really our thing!)
The headstamps are all Federal, from his start in CAS, when he was buying loaded American Eagle .357 and .38 Spl. cartridges. (Tale for another day!)
The brass is/was all tumbled, then deprimed and resized. It sits for sometimes a couple of weeks in my gun room, which has a dehumidifier going in summer, before we get around to charging the cases.
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I’m just a little curious. No judgement here at all.

When I tumble cases, and thus far I have only reloaded rifle cases, I always check them. I also use the Lyman case prep tool and a brush.

You’ve got me a little concerned about residue now so I shall be even more cautious.

I have the dies for 357/38sp. I’ve been considering loading them but have held off because of the case trimming which would take a while. But I recently looked at a batch of 30 .357 magnum shells in my locker. 9 were cracked. I’m curious as to whether that was the issue encountered.
 
Extra caution reloading, is not a bad thing.
I give the cases a visual as I deprime/resize, culling any that are split or funky looking.
I did find some of the once fired, American Eagle brass cases (my friend bought as loaded ammo) were bulged above the flash hole and would not resize completely full length. Tested, they would not chamber in a .357 cylinder when given our "drop test".
No issues with the Starline brass now fired a number of times with 4.6 Titegroup under a 158 gr LRNFPBB.
 
Years ago, I had a powder charge sit way higher than it should, and found that a piece of target backer board had gotten swept up into the case and survived dry tumbling, so I learned to look down all the brass and be sure I saw the inside of the primer hole and nothing extra. Also helped with 9mm range brass that had dual flash holes, as you don't want to try and fail to reload that stuff.
 
HA! You reminded me of the time I was pretty happy I found a $hit load of .308 brass someone had just left on the range.
Collected it and brought it home, soaked them, rinsed them, put them through the sonic cleaner, left them to dry for a couple of weeks,then got around to tumbling them and depriming and resizing.
That's when I was reminded of Berdan primed cases.
Just one of many things that made me a GOFWG!:LOL:
 
American Eagle brass is garbage in my opinion and the only American Eagle ammo that goes near any of my rifles is 22LR
I will not use American Eagle branded rifle ammunition and I would most certainly never use it for reloading.
Over the course of my years working on other people's guns and also my own shooting experiences, American eagle has caused squibs, ruptured cases, torn off bases...... and piss poor accuracy LOL
It's One Time Use brass as far as I am concerned and that is for the first firing only LOL
 
Sounds like your experience mirrored my friends.
In fairness, we have found not all the American Eagle .357 brass he has saved is unusable for reloading. (Almost has me thinking one of the brass drawing machines is out of spec)
All the AE .38Spl brass is working fine, except for the occasional misfire or squib in cold weather.
 
hunter64 said:
On the other end of the spectrum years ago I was out with 3 other buddies at our usual saturday morning shoot at the range. Everything was as normal and we all proceeded over to the pistol 25 yard range. Plinking away when we heard a huge bang and this guy white as a ghost was limping around the table holding his right wrist in a daze. Somehow he had double charged a 44 mag shell and his redhawk was letting him know it didn't like it. That redhawk took it and next week he said he took it into a gunsmith to check it out and all was well. Never load when you have distractions, everyone can make mistakes but here you can't afford to make a mistake.
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I use bulkier powders in my revolvers so it is impossible to double charge. N110, 2400, and 4227 are my go to for revolvers.
 
I use a Chargemaster, so I seat a bullet, as the next charge is weighed out. Not pouring a charge would totally stop production, so their is virtually no chance of a round with no powder, and also no chance of a double charge.
 
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