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Finished up loading 800 rounds of 9mm today (thats pretty much a bottle of Blue Dot with my range load) and while i was in the process, one of the casings seemed to enter the sizing die really easily. Mmmm? I thought to myself, that does not seem right. Turns out an errant .380 brass had gotten into the mix and was about to head off down the production line on my 550b.

Trying to shove a 9mm bullet into that casing might have been interesting. Needless to say, i need to do a better job at checking my brass before throwing it into the tray for loading!

Anyone got any good stories of mixing brass on the press?

And while i'm at it. I did let two rounds drop off the line without primers. That's always fun. Good thing i QA when i'm done loading.
 
I have had quite a few .380's get in my 9mm brass. On my RCBS progressives it is really obvious when you try and run it though the sizer.

I am not sure what would have been interesting about trying to get a .355" 9mm bullet into .380 case that also uses a .355" bullet?
 
It has happened with my 550b before. Things were not right in the depriming/repriming. One got through to the seating of the bullet, but protruded out way too far. I always check each cartridge for size and appearance before I box it up.
On a side note: 800 rounds? Nice! Time to go shooting!
 
I got a few 41 Mag mixed in with some 44 Mag I was doing, same thing, slipped in the decapping die way too smooth, hard to tell because as with the .380/9mm the cases are very similar in size.

Was decapping some 44 mag the other day and the die wouldn't go down all the way, when I looked at the case there was a rimless cartridge pressed down inside the 44 case so tight you wouldn't have noticed any other way I don't think, haven't tried to extract it so I have no idea what it is, I am sure I could cross reference case dimensions from my reloading manual if/when I really want to know.

Another time I happened across a .45 ACP case that was able to snuggly accept a 44 case, was going through a nasty divorce at the time and it crossed my mind that a .429 diameter bullet might travel down a 45 barrel w/o getting any rifling marks on it...:s0131:... Shame on me...
 
Ice bullets tell no tales.

I think Myth Busters did this one, Ice bullets tell no tales because there are no tales, either the bullet melts before it can be fired and even when they could go direct from freezer to gun to trigger squeeze the bullet didn't last long enough to hit a paper target... Of course... I kind of wondered that if you were going to make an ice bullet, wouldn't you want something on the order of a styrofoam sabot?

P.S. wasn't this thread about brass?
 
shoot a cloth patched round ball in a smooth bore pistol.

cast the ball from lead that has it's OWN mix of lead and tire weights. Once the ball is cast add more lead or tire weights changing the formula.

Use white tee shirt cloth from a common brand of tee shirt.

use no lube on the patch.


if you need range look into a 30-06 frangible round. like they used for shooting at drones during gunnery practice. Nothing to look at under a microscope with one of them once the Iron filings and graphite hit something hard.

Or just pick the right mate and still be going to the range to shoot together 30 years after you hooked up.
 
Frangible rounds tend to perform more like ball rounds in soft tissue, it isn't until they hit something hard enough to actually cause a fracture that they break up. I would not consider them to be a projectile that really breaks down. Most of the tests I've performed, firing them into water, sand, gravel and the like, the bullet survives either intact, or it snaps in half, still leaving a section with identifiable rifling.
 

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