Reloading Fail Thread

[Ura-Ki]

How do you blow up a cast bullet?
Silver Hand

It is pretty common with black powder cartridge rifles. once you get to a certain fps they melt and disintegrate. makes a pretty interesting sound. different led alloys, powders exct. you can do it with cast bullets in modern smokeless rifle cartridge as well!

 

[Ura-Ki]

What kind of powder are you using under a 180 rifle round that would even come close to allowing a double charge? If your cases are ever less than half full in a rifle, I'd go back and brush up on the load data.

I was experimenting with a sub sonic load for this! I wanted to do some desecrate pest control on the family farm with out spooking the live stock!

 

[jluck]

I was experimenting with a sub sonic load for this! I wanted to do some desecrate pest control on the family farm with out spooking the live stock!

Copy. Must have been using pistol powder? Rifle powder would be really dangerous loaded light like that!

 

[Ura-Ki]

Copy. Must have been using pistol powder? Rifle powder would be really dangerous loaded light like that!

Yes, pistol powder! Didn't work out very well in the end! Rifle powder would be too loose and at the very least would be very inconsistent and at worst would likely blow up a fine old rifle and...........I don't wanna think what it might do to me!

 

[Ura-Ki]

It is pretty common with black powder cartridge rifles. once you get to a certain fps they melt and disintegrate. makes a pretty interesting sound. different led alloys, powders exct. you can do it with cast bullets in modern smokeless rifle cartridge as well!

I miss spoke on ''Blowing up cast bullets" No, they didn't explode, they vaporized!

 

[edslhead]

If you stuff some powder in those cases and jam a bullet in them you can shoot out the dents and re use the brass.
Silver Hand

heck yea, I was just about to do that

 

[Silver Hand]

I miss spoke on ''Blowing up cast bullets" No, they didn't explode, they vaporized!

I have been casting lead for about forty years and have seen a lot. The vaporizing Bullet is something I must have missed.
Especially in a black powder rifle.
I have cast and loaded for large bore Rifles with combinations of tin, lead and antimony. Using a 300 grain pill [The fastest of the 45/90 projectiles] and with the use of modern smokeless powders-4895, and I could only scratch out about 1,550 FPS on the chronograph before fouling complications began.

What mould are you using, and can you post up some data?
By the way did you ever lead the bore with such high speed projectiles? Would you share what your pot melt consisted of?
I was running a brass rod after every second or third round at 1,550 fps to remove fouling.
How many rounds could you get off in a string before it affected your accuracy- Oh I forgot .
Silver Hand

 

[Silver Hand]

heck yea, I was just about to do that

I like your smile.
Silver Hand

 

[Crohnos01]

Oh yeah... My best Effie was about 40 years ago. 14 years old just learning reloading from my Dad... I tried seating the bullets in an old '06 by running down the seating die and checking for marks on the bullet Where the lands would just be touching... Sounds good hun theory, but I somehow managed to not seat the bullet deep enough and ended up in one of those "aw-$hit" scenarios that involved a black bear at about 8 yards... It took several rounds firing from the hip since a 12 power scope doesn't do well at that range. During one of my frantic eject/reload operations I remember seeing a case spin through the air without a bullet in it and me not remembering pulling the trigger (ever notice how time slows down when crap is hitting the fan?) I chalked it up to "buck fever", jammed another round in the chamber and resumed firing. Later, after changing my shorts, I picked up my brass as ole Dad told me to and headed back to camp. As I was going through the cases, I noticed one without a bullet and a pristine primer. When I asked the old man about how that happened, he grabbed my rifle, opened the mag door, and a full charge of powder fell out... In my infinite wisdom In had seated the bullets too high and when the round in question wouldn't chamber, I ejected it leaving the bullet in the chamber. The next round I chambered, compressed the bullet into the case and when I fired, I shot two bullets stacked on each other down the tube... I could only guess that the fact they were touching all the way down the barrel is what kept it from doing the grenade thing....then I had to change my shorts for the second time!

 

[Silver Hand]

What an experience and learning not to use anything above a 4 x in the brush for the rest of your life also came in handy I will bet.
Thanks for the great write up, hope the rifle shot straight after that.
Silver Hand

 

[Crohnos01]

Yeah it did, fortunately...It was a pre 64 Winchester model 70, which also probably helped save my bacon. Yes, many lessons to be learned here... properly seat your bullets, don't confuse elk which you are hunting close range with a bear which is better hunted at a distance, and perhaps most importantly, YOU CAN'T PACK TOO MANY UNDERWEAR.

 

[Silver Hand]

Yeah it did, fortunately...It was a pre 64 Winchester model 70, which also probably helped save my bacon. Yes, many lessons to be learned here... properly seat your bullets, don't confuse elk which you are hunting close range with a bear which is better hunted at a distance, and perhaps most importantly, YOU CAN'T PACK TOO MANY UNDERWEAR.

One of the most grueling and fun sports I have ever involved myself with was hunting bear with hounds. Chasing bear down for days at a time and finding them on the ground backed up against some corner of rock or sand stone some place, after crawling through a swamp. Nothing else like it on this earth. Finally he looks at you all pissed off and either runs or says ''xxxx - it'' you are going with me, dogs or no dogs.
.35 cal, 250 grain spire point, backed up with 52 grains of 3031 and a mag. primer. Oh what a feeling from that old 660 Remington Mag. Up close and personal like.

Just for the topic sake, last night wile running my Dillon 1500 trimmer about three hundred and fifty cases got fudged, when the locking collar backed off and went unnoticed for over an hour. It's what we do, and it never stops going wrong no matter how many years we try to get it right.
Silver Hand

 

[Member 5605]

Yes, this was me. I did it.

 

[ageingstudent]

The box of shame...to be fair there is a bunch of unexploded stuff in there that I picked up at public ranges. But I have a box of .40 S&W there on the left that got magnum primers by accident. There is a crushed .380 case in there due to me forcing a misaligned projectile. There is also a 158gr .38 there that had so little velocity it bounced off a backstop and hit me in the face. I leave that bullet in there to remind me to wear safety glasses with test loads. Even if you are careful s$#& can go haywire.

 

[Max713]

Had my first big fail.

Reloading 300 Blackout, couldn't figure out why I was having over-pressure issues on a below max load, with a below max COAL.
Well, turns out the re-sizing die setup instructions were just a starting point... I was re-zing the cases with a should height of about 1.060", 1.070-1.072" is called for. To short of a shoulder resulted in what would normally be a safe bullet seating depth, into a bullet/land contact. I resized several hundred rounds of brass to this spec...

Lesson learned!
Not before several new pieces of equipment though, including a comparator, headspace gauge and Sheridan gauge...

 

[Sabertooth]

Looks like I am not the only one who has shot a 30-06 magnum shell in a regular 30-06 and got by with. Pulled the bullets out of the other 11 rounds. Then took a steel rod and run it down the barrel to drive the case out.

 

[zeppelin]

About 20 years ago, I had a brand new Springfield Armory M1A Super Match with a nifty 50 mm objective scope that had an internal bubble level. I had some .308 handloads that I knew were safe, and had fired many in bolt action rifles with absolutely no problems. Loaded up a mag with a few of these, went into prone and fired. The gun doubled--meaning it fired two shots in fully automatic mode with one pull of the trigger. The scope came back and whacked me in the head, leaving a pretty good knot just above my eyebrow. This was a decidedly unpleasant experience. Turns out M1A's -especially those with tight chamber tolerances- can be quite dangerous with handloads in which the head end of the case is even slightly too large. What happens is the second cartridge doesn't quite seat into the chamber all the way and when the bolt slams forward the floating firing pin comes forward with enough force to ignite the primer and voila', two cartridges fired with one pull of the trigger. This is a very dangerous condition since the gun is actually out of battery when it fires the second cartridge, and there have been M1As destroyed by this. This phenomenon is described in the (somewhat voluminous) reading material provided with M1A guns.

 

[Crohnos01]

The scope came back and whacked me in the head, leaving a pretty good knot just above my eyebrow. This was a decidedly unpleasant experience.

Yikes... that DOES sound unpleasant.... and downright lucky that you didn't have pieces of a M1A to remove from your anatomy.....I imagine you didn't continue firing those loads to see if you could recreate the experience?

The only time I have had a scope clobber me was after I had spent literally hours crawling through scrub and cactus in Wyoming to try and get in shooting range of a small herd of antelope, only to peek up and see that they were jogging away from me... In my infinite 20 some year old wisdom, I jumped up and started to run towards the now fully running animals while simultaneously throwing my my rifle to my shoulder... somehow I managed to throw the butt of the rifle over the top of my shoulder and still touch off a round....it's amazing how fast a rifle scope can smack you in the noggin when there is nothing to stop the rifle from reacting to ole Newton's 3rd law of motion... but this thread was about reload fails not "stupid things I did as a kid"

 

[pinne65]

This event always reminds me to put (enough) powder in.

I don't know if it just not enough or none at all and the bullet got all the way there on just the primer.

 

[Certaindeaf]

This event always reminds me to put (enough) powder in.
View attachment 279876
I don't know if it just not enough or none at all and the bullet got all the way there on just the primer.

Yea, that sure is curious. I wonder if some prior shots allowed that bullet to walk forward enough (due to combination of weak crimp and or recoil) to not result in proper ignition of like H110?. which ideally operates best with high neck tension, crimp and a very narrow range of powder volume.