Be careful out there!

M

Mike38

New member
You've read them here before, but I thought I'd share my moment of brain lapse with you today. I found a box of 100 pcs of 122gr lead truncated cone 9mm bullets in my man cave closet earlier this week. Been around for 5 or 6 years, so I thought I'd load them and shoot today for "free" so to speak. My normal load for these bullets is 3.6 grains of Hogdon Tite Group. Very accurate load in my Beretta.

Well, I shot about 50 rounds this morning, and accuracy got progressively worse as I went along. Thought it was me so I switched to a .22. Nope, I'm okay, must be something else wrong. Back to the 9mm. Accuracy kept getting worse as I went. Then, the last 10 shots started to keyhole, with the last 4 or 5 hitting the target perfectly turned at 90 degrees, nice little outline of the TC bullets in the paper.

Field stripped the pistol just now and the barrel is badly leaded. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why. Then it dawned on me, check the powder charge! My volume drop was still set up, so I did a few powder drops and weighed it. 4.6 grains! Max load according to Hogdon's is 4.1 grains. I was 0.5 grains over the max load! I loaded 4.6 instead of 3.6.

No damage that I can see, except a badly leaded barrel that will take some time to clean.

Be carful out there folks!
 
Thanks for posting and glad you're not hurt.

I think your self-imposed penance of cleaning the lead out of the barrel pretty much fits the crime in this case but if you wanted you could cheat and get a Lewis Lead Remover.

http://www.brownells.com/gun-cleani...ead-remover/lewis-lead-remover-prod21587.aspx

Stories like this sometimes make me question this hobby of ours but like I've said before collecting stamps would be sooooooo boring. (But I would worry less about keeping all my fingers.)
 
Good thing it only made for a good story.

Being reminded that we're all human is essential in this craft we have undertaken.

Once you get all the lead outta the barrel (good luck with that :D), at least one good takeaway from the experience is knowing how much "head room" you have for that loading.
 
Hopefully others can learn from my mistake. Don't trust your memory when reloading. Look it up, check, double check, triple check......:D
 
We all goof up

I mis-set the weight on my balance beam scale the other day- Caught my own goof up after I had seated the bullets. Pulled them all down, and felt very foolish but very lucky. I was waaaayyyyy over max.:o

We are both lucky. Caution, my friend.
 
obviously any charge weight that is not what we wanted in a bad mistake and can make dangerous situations. luckily though, you were just in that +p territory. def not where you wanna be with lead bullets though. i hate cleaning the lead out of barrels.
 
Happens to everyone sooner or later. That's why I purchased an electronic scale to compliment my balance beam. Don't trust the electronic by itself but it's a great tool for a sanity check.
 
Did a similar with some 158 gr lswc and 38 spl. cases. Misread the load data and I believe loaded 5.0 of clays instead of 3.2. If my memory is correct. Luckily I only loaded 6, after firing them in a GP-100 I had to bang on the ejector rod to get them out and yeah they leaded badly. Worst part is that they were superbly accurate. Oh well. Lessons that do no damage but scare us a little are some of the best ones.
 
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