Here's a new one... for me anyway. Reloading disaster

[Crohnos01]

Wow... I have been reloading for in the neighborhood of 40 years and never seen this before... Maybe some one can explain this one for me.

My son was given several hundred rounds of . 223 ammo which had been purchased apparently by a friend of his at a gun show . The friend tried to chamber a few rounds and they wouldn't feed. So rather than throw them out, he asked if my son wanted them and he said sure, he'd take them.
So, my son brings them home and asks me about them and I advise him to not trust unknown reloads, but rather use my collet puller to salvage the components and burn off the powder since we don't know what it is. So, he starts pulling rounds apart and just for fun, we weigh the charges for 3 random shells and find the charge weight varies by as much as 5 grains on what seems to be a target of 24 grain loads. I am thinking "ok, good call pulling these apart because whoever loaded these up obviously didn't watch what they were doing very closely "
As the operation proceeds he finds some of the case necks are cracked, others are missing part of the neck entirely. Here's where the part comes in that I am really scratching my head over though...
One of the rounds he pulls the bullet from, turns the shell upside down the powder won't come out. I told him that likely the guy had gotten lube in the case.. sure enough the powder comes out in clumps like you would expect if there was lube in the case... while trying to tap the case and remove the powder, A SECOND BULLET APPEARS THAT WAS INSIDE THE CASE WITH THE POWDER!

In all my years of experience, which granted has been on single stage presses, I have never seen anything like that before. How on earth can someone punch a bullet all the way into the case with the powder and then seat another bullet in the neck on top of the whole mess?!
I shudder to think what might have happened if someone had actually fired this round!
How can someone screw up a reload this badly accidentally ? Is this an inept progressive press operator at work? I can think of no way to make such a mistake with a single stage press.

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[Pyro]

WOW!!! If you have any idea or notion of who loaded these rounds .........you will do everyone a great service and divulge the info.............PLEASE, so no one will get hurt.
Thankyou

 

[Crohnos01]

I really don't know who did the reloading, but if I find out I will certainly let you know... pretty crazy , huh?

 

[Member 5605]

Damn. Story of the year.

 

[TM-Salem]

I was just shooting the other day with my wifes uncle, his BIL and his friend. The uncle had his 30.06 and wanted to know if I would like to shoot it. I noticed that they were all reloads and I declined because I wasnt there while they were being done. Well the friend of his BIL said sure and he started popping off rounds from it. We heard a very loud bang and looked over at the guy and he was shaking pretty bad, he said that he cant open the bolt on the rifle.

I told the uncle that there was an over charge of powder or when the bullet was being fed into the chamber it pushed the bullet into the case creating way too much pressure. Well we finally got the bolt free (by use of a rubber mallet) and the primer was blown completely free of the case and the primer pocket looked big enough to drive your car through.

I grabbed a couple of the reloaded rounds and with my fingers I was able to moved the bullet in and out of the case... I wont ever shoot someone elses reloads unless I watch them as they are doing it.

 

[v0lcom13sn0w]

Wise decision!

 

[Crohnos01]

Yesh.... that must have been a pretty good recoil on that round.... lucky the gun didn't come from together....

Maybe folks don't realize it , but there is no room for error on reloading. People can get seriously hurt if you screw up on this stuff. I realize I get a little anal fussing over 10th grains, but when you're a lousy shot lIke me, you need all the help you can get

 

[ZigZagZeke]

I borrowed my dad's model 88 Winchester in .243 to shoot some ground squirrels at around 200 yds. I'd shot it before and knew what the sound and recoil should be. He sent along some reloaded ammo that a friend had loaded for him. The first shot I knew something was wrong. Way too much "BOOM", and way too much recoil. I had a hard time getting the action open, and when I did the spent primer fell out of the case. The primer hole had a black ring around it from escaping gasses. I was only about 16 at the time, but I knew better than to shoot it again. We took the ammo back to the friend, who upon disassembling a few rounds discovered that he'd loaded up the cartridges with the wrong powder. I've never shot somebody else's reloads again.

 

[Stomper]

About 3yrs ago (there about) I bought a 6.8SPC AR upper from a young guy down near Springfield, and he also had a HEAP of 6.8 reloads that he REALLY wanted to move with the upper for a CHEAP price because nobody was wanting them.

I still refused to buy them with the upper for the VERY REASONS stated above.

 

[Trick]

That story gets a pucker factor 10. I'm shocked that this could happen.

 

[etrain16]

Damn, just another great reminder that other folks reloads are no bueno. I've had folks offer me reloads as partial trades before, but I never, ever take them. Thanks for sharing that odd and disturbing story.

 

[The Heretic]

After I had a 9 mm round let go at the web of the case and slightly injure the hand of my SIL, I've never bought reloads again.

Unless the reloader knows the history of the case they don't know how many times it has been fired and with what kind of load.

Then there is the issue of trusting the reloader to take the proper care and diligence in their reloading.

I trust my own reloading, but nobody else's.

 

[Certaindeaf]

Yeabut to make it all better he probably jacked them nice shiny cases up into a Lee FCD so it's all good. lol

 

[Mikej]

@Crohnos01 Were the head stamps all the same? You didn't really say if the rounds were hand "good ol' boy"" reloads, remanufactured, or what.

 

[Member 34319]

Scary stuff.

Sad that companies try and make ammo using any means to make money off the craze. These types of things will get someone hurt

 

[Crohnos01]

@Crohnos01 Were the head stamps all the same? You didn't really say if the rounds were hand "good ol' boy"" reloads, remanufactured, or what.

You know, I didn't really look that closely as I wasn't the one pulling the rounds apart, but now that you asked, I went over to my bench and grabbed a handful to take a closer look. Keep in mind, I don't shoot .223, so I am not intimately familiar with the round however.....

When I first examined them, it almost looked like a crimped primer, but when I looked at them closer under a magnifying glass, it looks like whatever method was used to seat the primer mangled the primer pocket around the primer.. maybe using the wrong size ram for the primer? However the headstamps seem to all be FC & LC.. at least of the half dozen I grabbed. I enclosed a couple of shots of this case after the bullet was removed.... we DIDN'T do the damage to the neck; that's the was it was in the box with the rest. Just one example of what NOT to do with reloads...

 

[ZigZagZeke]

You know, I didn't really look that closely as I wasn't the one pulling the rounds apart, but now that you asked, I went over to my bench and grabbed a handful to take a closer look. Keep in mind, I don't shoot .223, so I am not intimately familiar with the round however.....

When I first examined them, it almost looked like a crimped primer, but when I looked at them closer under a magnifying glass, it looks like whatever method was used to seat the primer mangled the primer pocket around the primer.. maybe using the wrong size ram for the primer? However the headstamps seem to all be FC & LC.. at least of the half dozen I grabbed. I enclosed a couple of shots of this case after the bullet was removed.... we DIDN'T do the damage to the neck; that's the was it was in the box with the rest. Just one example of what NOT to do with reloads...

View attachment 284087 View attachment 284088

Looks like maybe the original primers were crimped and the pockets maybe reamed out to accept the new primers?

 

[Crohnos01]

Maybe so... Crappy job if that's the case...but that would be in keeping with the rest of the quality of the reloads

 

[Mikej]

I'm not familiar with what military/crimped primers look like. I've thought they were crimped in just a couple of places and not entirely around. ?shrug?

 

[Crohnos01]

I have seen them with both a ring crimp and a three point crimping system.... not that I'm an expert mind you and I tend to try to avoid the extra work involved in removing the crimp from the primer pocket if I can.