Lucky To Be Alive

Thank you so much for sharing. It takes a real man to admit mistakes. You have done a good service to others by sharing this.
 
Glad i had read this post a while back...this past weekend i headed up to the reloading room to crank out some 308's. We have been doing some home renos and getting ready for the thanksgiving.crew to come over. Anyway, the last thing i was reloading was.....uhhh. theres some powder in the hopper but i didnt leave the bottle out. Well, let me match the powder to whats in my cabinet....hmmmm, powder in the hopper looks the same as my autocomp and my lilgun. So which one is it...cant recall what i was reloading last...thought it was 357 but it could have been beowulf. Then i remembered reading this post and decided that that last bit of powder in the hopper wasnt worth rolling the dice on whether im going to the hospital or not. I decide to just dump it in my "mixed" bottle and add to the garden food for the spring. I hope that this post makes others think in similar situations as it made me decide better safe then sorry. I couldnt imagine what would have happened it i dumped lilgun into what was left of my autocomp and then reloaded 38/357 with it.

Glad your healing up and again, glad you shared your experience.
 
Wow.

May I ask how many grains of Titegroup you loaded in the rifle cartridge?

That had to be near 200,000 PSI, because I am guessing it was overloaded by 4-5x the max. Titegroup is so fine too, a TON fits in a case.

Glad your OK, we all make mistakes. Thanks for sharing, that was very humble of you.
 
That is my worst fear in reloading, I keep my handgun powders far away from my rifle powders and on a high shelf. I got into the habit of only keeping one powder at a time out.
 
eloder ?2 is a great powder BTW....:eek:

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I just saw this and praying for your complete recovery.

I did almost the same thing with Titegroup several years ago.
Loading .44 magnum with Lil'Gun Something came up and I had to quit suddenly. I resumed the next day and had 10 loads made up with 240 gr. jacketed hollow points and 23.0 gr. of ???? WHY does that bottle say TITEGROUP and not LIL'GUN? After I took them apart I emailed Hodgdon and asked them what the pressure would be. Their answer was having not tested that load they couldn't say but it would absolutely have been over 75,000 psi.
I was blessed to catch it before as a friend would say I "pressure-tested it".
I DO wish Hodgdon and other powder suppliers would label their bottles differently.
Same powder TITEGROUP. To this day I do not know how powder bottles got switched. No kids here.:confused:
As always RELOAD AND SHOOT SAFELY.
 
I put a typical Varget load, and put titegroup in there instead, to see what the PSI was in quickload?

its over 300,000 PSI.

The tensil strength of the strongest chromoly steel used in connecting rods on cars is ~220,000 PSI. So that blast was strong enough to break a connecting rod in a car.
 
Wow! Missed this thread too. Was in the final run of work before winter and coming up on my birthday. In short absent and busy. Glad it turned out much better than what it could have! Well evidently healed enough to get out there again I see! Glad you can. Appreciate the share!

Man that's a lot of Titegroup in a small place! Fast burner like that, 300,000 psi...man I don't doubt it!:eek:
 
I am healing but finger still numb, no fingernail and in the cold feels like its going to fall off. It will be a long healing process but at least now can somewhat type with it.

I put over 40 grains of tite group.

It was 1 heck of an explosion and I do know I am lucky, but at the same time get frustrated with the slow healing process.

I will get back to the bench for sure, but shot factory ammo when I sighted in my new rifle. One step at a time.
 
Glad to hear your doing better. Hope everything heals up properly.

I did nearly the same thing a while back, fortunately in the other direction. See I was loading my favorite .44 mag load with 4227 (baby blue label) my hopper was getting low so I grabbed what i thought was the same powder. As I was dumping the powder in I noticed it was an extruded powder, what the heck, I Looked again at the label it said 4064 (light blue label). I just got through loading some test loads for the 7mm-08 and left the bottle out. Lesson learned.
 
I am glad to see others mention they also made or almost made a similar mistake. Just makes it clear how easy it can happen.

Reloading is so fun and rewarding. This post is not to discourage you, just keep the experience fun and one you can pass on to your kids.

Just share my experience so they remember what can happen.
 
Awe man. Glad you are okay. I've only been reloading for a few months now and it was valuable for me to see this, thank you for sharing. I'll be sure to go slow and double and triple check loads and such.
 
Damn! I hope your finger will be back to normal eventually.

I know how you feel. I broke my wrist in a motorcycle crash a year ago and couldn't ride or do much of anything else for 8 month.

Good luck and thank you for sharing. This story will help me keeping my eyes peeled when starting to reload soon.
 
My vote we make a permanent thread from this one. Less it be buried and not reminding people like it seems to be doing. Nothing like those pics to get the point across aye?
 
I've been reloading since 1983 and always kept all of my powders stored together on a shelf on my reloading bench. Never had a problem until a few years ago I decided to reload some .223 Rem. I loaded 100 rounds and when I went to put what I thought was the left over W748 back in the container, I saw that it was a container of W296. I was kind of confused for a minute, and then I realized that I had grabbed W296 instead of W748. Both powders were together on the shelf and I grabbed the wrong one.

After that, I took all of the powders off of my reloading bench and put them in another room. Now the only powder in my reloading room is the one I am using at that time. I also make sure that different powders that have similar looking labels are not stored next to each other.
 
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