MarkCO said:I've had 4 squibs, all factory ammo. They are unnerving.
I'll bet it is. We had a fellow on another forum who ran a contract testing handgun ammunition for several federal agencies. He said that by the time your crew had fired a couple hundred thousand rounds of commercial ammo, you'd seen every kind of failure a handloader can experience, plus several a handloader would not experience just because he handles his components and looks at his brass. These included duds due to primed cases without flash holes, hollow bullet jackets with no core, inverted bullets, untrimmed cases, et cetera. Of course, these were on top of squib loads, overpressure loads, backward seated primers, split cases, and all the other stuff handloaders run into.
I found a funny loading error with a round of Lake City National Match ammo I had fired at a DCM match at Camp Perry in the mid-1980s sometime. It actually shot OK, but when I was cleaning my policed brass, I noticed one case felt heavier than the others. I weighed it, and it was about 230 grains, whereas the others were about 195 grains. I looked inside with a bore light and saw that the web appeared darker on one side. So I got out a dental pick and poked and found a dark lump was there. After a bit more effort, I pulled it loose and got it out of the case with needle-nose pliers. It was lead. About 35 grains. Part of a bullet core, I supposed, but not a whole one (this ammo was loaded with the M1 Type 173-grain open-base boattail FMJs). An odd-size lump of scrap, oddly located. I only mention it because it is an example of a handloader handling components and therefore seeing what the machine at the factory did not.