The dumbest reloading thing I'd ever done survey.

S

Smoke & Recoil

New member
Like the title says,
What was the dumbest thing you'd ever done with your reloading project ?
Examples;
Wrong primers
Wrong bullets
Wrong powder
Blah, Blah, Blah.

I'll start.
I thought that I would have some fun shooting black powder
.30-30 cartridges, so, I reached for the 165 grain lead bullets
knowing darn well that they were 30 caliber, but being new to
reloading (35) years ago, I didn't realize the bullets were not
meant for .30-30 class rounds...way to long. So, I chucked them
in my lathe and turned the live rounds down in order for them
to chamber. All went well, but that was just DUMB ! :eek:
 
Always have prided myself on safety and attention to detail. I have two different misadventures that I consider my worst -- by far.

My worst: being too cautious, building .38 Special loads with a plated bullet and a flake shotgun powder, making them far too light and sticking one in my bore. I did pay attention and I did know I had stuck it, so I was in no danger of bulging the barrel with a follow-up shot but removing the plated slug was a horrendous chore, just pure evil. Building loads THAT light with a slug that doesn't move easily? In .38 Special that I knew fully would be shot with an L-frame .357 Magnum? STUPID! Over-cautious can prove to be nearly as bad as reckless on the other end of the spectrum.

My Second Place Winner: made some cast lead double-ended wadcutter loads and they worked well, so I thought "hey, faster is better too, right?!" I build 100 rounds of cast DEWC loads with Bullseye in .357 Magnum and I leaded up the barrel at a furious rate. This too was an irrational pain in the backside to clean out and I still remember that idiocy.
 
Well it wasn't a safety thing, more of a hold my beer and watch this. Was visiting a buddy of mine in Nebraska, and were going to shoot prairie dogs. He had a sack of cheap .223 FMJ ammo he got from somewhere, well it wasn't much fun to shoot dogs with, so back at his house as we were sipping a cold one, I jokingly suggested we grind off the tips and drill a hole in the bullet to make them HP's. We an hour later we had a decent number completed. They certainly were not the most accurate rounds fired, but danged if within about 200 yard we weren't able to make prairie dogs go POP.

And just for laughs, a deputy friend asked me to make some training rounds for his .38 special. drilled out the flash hole, inserted a primer and packed some cotton into the casing. Handed them to him in the parking lot one day. The removed his .38 from the ankle holster, dumped the loaded ammo into his pocket inserted one of the training rounds and shot me in the stomach with it from about 5 feet away, not thining a wad of cotton would do anything, Son of a B*&^%^ that hurt, raised a nice welt from that close. He did feel a little bad, in between laughing fits that is.
 
Forgot to set the crimping die on 44 mag once and loaded 500 240 gr LRN bullets. There was just enough case tension to hold the bullets in the case but under recoil they jumped and locked the cylinder up.
Ended up pulling the bullets and starting over - sooo much fun!
 
Accepted reloaded ammo from another person. I knew the person, and believe therefore that they knew what they were doing at a reloading bench, even though I had never been shooting with them before.
The 2 cylinder fulls I actually fired, I simply walked the 10-20 ft and picked up the bullets.
I pulled the rest.
He, on the other hand, got good ammo for his trouble.
He had told me they were too hot for his gun.
About the only silly thing I did was load truncated cone lead bullets backward in 9mm rounds, sort of homemade wadcutter. They didn't cycle the pistol, and tumbled. I had the sense to only load about 20 of them, at least.
 
I poured powder I was done with into the wrong open can on my bench. I caught myself, but I threw out a can of powder because of it. I never have more than one can of powder on the bench after that.
 
I think I let this secret out once before, but why not tell it again?

Don't reload during thunderstorms!

In '07, I was living in an apartment, and had pretty much put the finishing touches on my bench. Being a newly designated bachelor, I was kinda proud that more space in my dinning room was occupied by reloading stuff than dinning stuff. I didn't think much about a storm that was rolling in as I poured a cup of coffee and wandered over to my bench. I straddled my chair, as a feller will just prior to sitting down, and reached across the bench and grabbed a bottle of (seems like it was an IMR powder at the time). About the time I was bringing the bottle closer to my face and into reading focus range- my butt alighted in the chair. At that exact moment, lightning struck a transformer just outside the apartment (that is a freakin LOUD occurance!), the power went out, it got pitch dark, I guess I flinched and sloshed hot coffee all over myself, and turned over the chair with me in it.

I'm laying there in the floor tangled up in the legs of the chair, scalded, thinking "My God! I just blowed myself up!" I recall waving my hand in front of my face, then really freaking out I thought "My God! I just blowed myself up, I'm blind, and I may have blown my hand off!" (couldn't have seen my hand in the dark anyways). For some reason running seemed to be the next most logical thing to do. Dammit, I can't get up- I'm all tangled up in chair legs! I get somewhat free and into something like a front leaning rest position and launch myself forward. I had no idea I had gotten that close to the wall, but I figgered it out about the time I jammed my head and neck down to what felt close to my belly button area. At least I was free from the chair, but still feeling that running was pretty important at the time. So I turned 180 degrees and tried to run the other way- friggin chair was still there and again it turned it's full vengence against me.

By this time I am sure there wasn't a full comprehendable thought anywhere at all between my ears and I may have well been screaming my fool head off. Somewhere in this most brief ordeal that felt like a lifetime- I think I even swallowed my snuff. Anyway, again I free myself from the clutches of the chair and made it to the front door. It never occured to me that it wasn't nearly as dark outside as it was inside- in fact I don't think anything occured to me at all. I didn't come to my senses at all until I realized I was in my truck about a mile from the apartment doing 75 in a 45mph zone. I don't know where I was going when I started out, but when some sort of rational thought returned and I figgered out I wasnt blind or maimed- I ended up at a coffee shop, wet to the bone, and quite frazzled. When I got back to the apartment, I had gone off and left the front door wide open- thankfully nothing was stolen. I found the can of powder a good 18 feet away in the living room, and I don't remember if the coffee cup survived the ordeal. Since then, I have given up reloading with even the remotest sign of bad weather in the area, and I no longer enjoy a cup of coffe at my bench either. That chair was given away and replaced with one with more stable footing.

So folks, when the reloading manuals advise against any distractions at your bench, no food, no drinks, and no tobacco products- them words are there for a reason. Be careful out there- life gets rough and sometimes God likes to show he still has a sense of humor.
 
Mine won't begin to compete with 10-96, but.....
It was when I got banished from reloading on the kitchen counter when a primer wound up in the disposal.
Shoulda' seen her jump when she flipped the switch and it went off.
 
I'm laying there in the floor tangled up in the legs of the chair, scalded, thinking "My God! I just blowed myself up!" I recall waving my hand in front of my face, then really freaking out I thought "My God! I just blowed myself up, I'm blind, and I may have blown my hand off!" (couldn't have seen my hand in the dark anyways). For some reason running seemed to be the next most logical thing to do. Dammit, I can't get up- I'm all tangled up in chair legs! I get somewhat free and into something like a front leaning rest position and launch myself forward. I had no idea I had gotten that close to the wall, but I figgered it out about the time I jammed my head and neck down to what felt close to my belly button area. At least I was free from the chair, but still feeling that running was pretty important at the time. So I turned 180 degrees and tried to run the other way- friggin chair was still there and again it turned it's full vengence against me.
Click to expand...

While not the dumbest, that has got to be the funniest!
 
When I got involved in reloading, I was a sophomore in high school, using Dad's gear, bench, manuals, and such.

And one day, I was agonizing over the perfect .30-06 load for my recoil sensitive little sister, my older sister strolled in, and proceeded to pester me, as sisters are want to do.

Being a star baseball player, I absent mindedly threw a primer at her. Which she then stepped on.

That was a bad decision on my part.
 
Stupid? Dumb? ...Probably depends upon the observer's experience level and perspective.


I've done many things outside of the "standard practices" most reloaders know.
...But most were very carefully calculated, and the risks presented by each experiment were carefully mitigated.

Most people, on the outside, looking in, would probably say that handloading .22 WMR (not re-loading, just hand-loading) and having a cartridge detonate in the seating die would be at the top of the list. But I don't consider that to be a tremendous failure. It was simply one of the possible outcomes, and somewhat 'par for the course'. :rolleyes:


The only really dumb thing that comes to mind right now...
(I'm sure there's worse, but I can't recall anything at this time.)

More recently, I ruined a bunch of brand new, once-loaded, but never fired, .458 SOCOM brass - which is nearly impossible to obtain. I had some test loads that proved to be beyond useful pressure (not "over pressure" - just beyond the pressure level that I wanted), so I used an inertial bullet puller to dismantle the cartridges.
Only when I was boxing the brass back up, did I notice that the neck tension had been so great that all of the rims had been bent, distorted, and deformed during the bullet pulling operation. They were no longer usable in that condition.

That loss made me feel so stupid for not noticing it with the first cartridge, and I vowed to find a way to save what I could.
6 months, several contraptions, and $6 later, I modified a Lee .45-70 case length gauge to use as a punch, with the cases on an anvil. That flattened the rims enough to get them in a shell holder. From there, I went to the Rock Chucker reloading press with the cases, and modified the case gauge even further to match the contour the of web in the cases as closely as possible. Whack! Turn the case 120 degrees. Whack! Turn the case 120 degrees. Whack!

I saved them all! :D

Stupid, stupid mistake; and I won't trust the cases for hunting or full power loads. ...But at least I don't have to scrap them.
 
That was a great read there 10-96, I was envisioning that whole scenario being played out in my head and I almost couldn't stop laughing. Great stuff!

I haven't been reloading very long so I haven't performed a whole lot of "dumb" things yet (would like to keep that to a minimum anyway).

But I do remember a time where I was loading a batch of 50 .40 rounds and was just using my funnel to pour the powder in while the cases where in the loading block. Picked up the first round after all of them were charged, ready to seat the bullet and that's when I realized I hadn't primed any of the cases.
 
While I have nothig to match 10-96 ( great story by the way). I did have my Duh moment too. Just got done prepping 100 6BR cases, Sized,chamfered,turned the necks,trimmed ( the whole 9 yards) set up the scale and started powdering them. Now I was using RL-15 ( stick powder). I had all 100 powdered and ready to seat bullets. I maybe got 10 to 20 rounds into it when I realized I forgot to put primers in. Being the flash holes are so small on a 6MMBR no powder was falling out. All one can do is cuss,swear and then just laugh at how stupid you are. I really did debate for about 5 seconds on priming them while the powder was still in them, but decided I was dumb enough to powder without primers that It would be my dumb luck also to have a primer go off seating, So there I am dumping all the powder out and starting from scratch.
 
the dumbest thin I ever did was load up 500 rounds of 9mm after powdercoating for the first time. I took out about a dozen random bullets and measured them, and they were all about .357, which is where I wanted to be. so I didn't resize any of them since my random sample passed. off o the range, like all of them, couldn't chamber, some being as big as .360. pulling 500 bullets was a pain.

I haven't had a squib. I am probably in 10-15 thousands round range. I attribute most of my non-mistakes to the fact that I am still using a single stage press doing things one at a time. makes it hard to mess up really bad. but I have been toying with the idea of upgrading to a progressive this year, then I can let the mistakes come pouring in
 
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