Something so stupid!

travellerw

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Have you ever done something so stupid you don't want to admit it...

I did something yesterday that was stupid.. Then I followed it up with more stupidity and ended up with a squib in my gun.

In my defense.. I'm really green and it was a green mistake..
 
Having a squib load in your rifle doesn't sound stupid to me, unless a bull elephant was charging you.
If you shoot it, just make sure the bullet got out the barrel.
 
Everybody sooner or later makes a mistake. I have seated a bullet on an empty case, luckily found out at the range and not when shooting at the buck of a life time. Learn from your mistakes and move on.
 
Yup, learn from your mistakes and move on. As long as nobody gets hurt or equipment blown up it`s part of life. Thankfully i`ve never been the perpetrator of a screw up when reloading, but i`ve got some time left to learn new lessons. Keep at it and have fun.
 
I forgot to prime my brass one time. Setup all the cases in the loading tray, filled the cases with powder and then picked up the first case to seat a bullet. Powder ran out the bottom of the case onto the floor.

OOPS!
 
Welcome to the club! :D Eventually, everyone who reloads can expect one moment that they'll never forget and will double their attention to detail. As previously stated, as long as bodies (& parts) aren't damaged, it's just a lesson to be learned :)

I've done the same thing Mad Mikee :p
 
Yup. Had a squib in my gun during my IPSC match last weekend. I had 3 targets left on the stage and the gun jammed up .. Had to stop myself and the RO helped me get the slide open. Needed a rod to get the jammed bullet out. Embarrassing as heck but it happens.

Keller .. I like that shaking idea .. I chamber check every loaded round anyways, so why not. Great idea!
 
Ok.. So here are the details... This is proof of how mistakes can compound.

I had made up a few dummy rounds (5) when I first got my press. When I say dummy, I mean primer, casing, bullet, NO POWDER.

Somehow (not paying attention), those dummy rounds got thrown into a box with 800 loaded rounds (different brass types). After a short while, my heart sank and I realized what I did.

So.. after a deep breath I took the box of loaded rounds into my living room and dumped them out on the floor. There I sat for 2 1/2 hours sorting the rounds into "like" casings. Once I had them all sorted, I pulled out my scale and began to weigh every one. I thought it would be easy to pick out any deviations, but I was reloading 9mm and only using 4.2 grains of powder. In the end, I ended up with about 50 rounds that were out of spec.

I took those rounds back to the loading table and began to pull bullets. Sure enough, about 40 rounds in I found all the dummy bullets.

Now this is where the story should have a happy ending... Unfortunately this is where I made my fatal mistake. Maybe it was my frugality (cheapness) but I didn't want to waste 40 projectiles and they only had some small dents where I pulled the bullets. I figured "Hey I'm just shooting them at a steel wall, it won't care if they have small dents". So I dumped the powder from those cases (just to be sure), re-powdered them all and began seating bullets. Yup I really did, didn't even bother to run the cases through the re-sizing die.

I put all those in a ziplock bag and figured I would shoot them first. Next day at the range, I made it through about 25 before I had the squib. I didn't really notice anything different about the recoil. Just that when I pulled the trigger after, it went "Click". I racked the slide and out came a casing that was completely black. I knew right there that something went wrong. I made sure to safe the gun, then looked down the barrel. Sure enough, the bullet traveled about 2/3 of the way down the barrel.

Many lessons learned.. Scared the crap out of me.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by spideysteve

Keller .. I like that shaking idea .. I chamber check every loaded round anyways, so why not. Great idea!
Unfortunately, only works for non compressed rifle rounds.

Or 9mm with only 4.2 grains of Titegroup.. I initially tried the shaking and couldn't hear anything.
 
It happens to just about everyone eventually. As with muzzle loaders - everyone puts a ball down the barrel without a powder charge sooner or later. That's why ball pullers were invented!
 
I forgot to prime my brass one time. Setup all the cases in the loading tray, filled the cases with powder and then picked up the first case to seat a bullet. Powder ran out the bottom of the case onto the floor.

OOPS!

Me too :redface:

But my powder was the big kernel slow burning stuff, never got much out of the flashhole, only found out I had a problem when that loud "KLICK" proved two things .... A; the 'ol flinch aint so bad anymore:), at least this time the muzzle did not touch dirt. ... B; calling all the bud's out of camp to witness your Swede's phenominal LR, first round, CCB hit probability ..... BAD idea.:kickInTheNuts:f:P:2:
 
dumb dumb dumb

I once bought a big bag full of 222 brass and in this bag were a whole bunch that were sized and primed. Several different head stamps. Great I thought at the time I'll just load them all up and head off to the range. So I'm shooting and shooting and shooting. I'd get a couple to touch the the others would be scattered around in a 5 shot group. I did this just about until I had shot off all of these lovely primed brass which was 3 times to the range. And I just could not understand why this fine Kimber of Oregon wouldn't group worth a darn. Then my guru in Montana asked what brand of brass I was using to shoot all of these groups, to which I replied that my last group had 5 different brands of brass a Win, RP, Fed,Dom,S&B. He says did you miss the pages in all of your manuals where it says to only use 1 brand of brass, guess I must have skipped that page.
Now with all the same brass the rifle shoots just fine, imagine that. FS
 
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