When reloading bottle neck rifle brass. I went to resize some .223 Rem. cases and here is what I noticed about my sizing die:
The decapping pin and sizing ball were missing. Uh oh. I've never had this occur before. My first wonder is, where could those have gone off to? Uh oh. Maybe they came loose while inside a cartridge case. Which is a potentially dangerous situation. Which you'd think would be minimally possible with a cartridge as small as .223 Rem. I don't load max. loads but usually my powder selection is such that the case is close to 100% full with bullet seated. So it would be difficult to imagine getting a case filled with powder while the pin and sizing ball were still inside.
After physically looking inside about 500 cases sized previously without finding the missing parts, my next search phase was the floor of my work area. On hands and knees, I first found the decapping pin. The sizing ball was nowhere around. But I figured I could've gotten kicked farther afield. Sure enough, I found it about ten feet away. Finding the pin was proof that these parts hadn't gotten loaded into any ammo. I think what happened was, last time I used the die, the ball (which holds the pin in place) must've been loose, then when I spun the die out (I still use the threads), that also spun the ball and pin off.
I take the rod out from time to time for cleaning. You'd be surprised how dirty these can get. My advice: Make sure they are tight on the rod before use.
The decapping pin and sizing ball were missing. Uh oh. I've never had this occur before. My first wonder is, where could those have gone off to? Uh oh. Maybe they came loose while inside a cartridge case. Which is a potentially dangerous situation. Which you'd think would be minimally possible with a cartridge as small as .223 Rem. I don't load max. loads but usually my powder selection is such that the case is close to 100% full with bullet seated. So it would be difficult to imagine getting a case filled with powder while the pin and sizing ball were still inside.
After physically looking inside about 500 cases sized previously without finding the missing parts, my next search phase was the floor of my work area. On hands and knees, I first found the decapping pin. The sizing ball was nowhere around. But I figured I could've gotten kicked farther afield. Sure enough, I found it about ten feet away. Finding the pin was proof that these parts hadn't gotten loaded into any ammo. I think what happened was, last time I used the die, the ball (which holds the pin in place) must've been loose, then when I spun the die out (I still use the threads), that also spun the ball and pin off.
I take the rod out from time to time for cleaning. You'd be surprised how dirty these can get. My advice: Make sure they are tight on the rod before use.