You often think you are the 'ONLY ONE' that has these stupid screw ups...
I'm so glad to see that 'Mr. Murphy' doesn't only live in my house!
I learned reloading from my grandpa who had some questionable practices...
But when you have been doing it since the Wright Brothers were still making cutting edge aircraft, modern equipment and safety weren't really in practice...
(Reloading as a hereditary disease, grandpa to grandson, skipped a generation)
SO, my BIGGEST screw-up was probably the waste powder incident, as I've come to call it.
You have to remember, the 'Depression Era' people WASTED NOTHING, so the waste powder went into a big glass 'Ash Tray' with a seal-able silver lid...
(I don't know what is actually was, but we called it an 'Ashtray')
And grandpa would figure out how much of it he could reuse in different rounds through trial and error.
The thing was probably 6" across, and had about 2" of powder in the bottom, which he would 'Dry' out before using, actually putting it in the oven to dry out before use!
(We would NEVER do anything like this today, but this was the mid 60's, and he had been doing it since the 20s or 30s)
So, Grandpa is reloading some 'Cowboy' black powder rounds, and the powder is getting out since the copper funnel grandpa used didn't fit the mouth of the cases properly.
I was a young pup, and I swept up the droppings and put them in the 'Waste' container...
About half way through, the local cigar chomping game warden came in to talk to grandpa about some deer carcasses that had turned up in the river bottoms...
(Deer hunting was illegal at the time)
Because my grandpa was a 'River Rat' that trapped, fished, hunted and cooked a little whiskey once in a while, and he figured that if grandpa didn't do it, he knew who did...
When this particular game warden thought he had something figured out, he would light that stinking 10¢ cigar...
And you know where this is going...
He lit up, dropped the wooden match in the 'Ash Tray' and all hell broke loose!
Three things happened instantly!
1. An INTENSE flair, followed by pieces of glass ashtray flying all over the work bench,
The 'Fight Or Flight' instinct kicked in with two of us,
2. The game warden heading out of the pole barn/shop towards the barn lot,
3. And me headed for the door/path past the garden to the house and the safety of Grandma!
Grandpa, keeping a cool head, capped the TWO POUNDS of black powder in the metal can before it became part of this catastrophe...
The next thing I know, I hear SCREAMING like a little girl...
So I turn around and run back to see what's happening.
Grandpa is coming out of the pole barn/shop choking on the smoke,
So I follow the screaming and find the game warden hung astraddle the barbed wire electric fence getting his privates cooked and screaming in a voice my 8 year old sister couldn't reproduce!
The next thing I know, grandpa is standing next to me, next to the plug for the fence charger saying,
"Just let him hang a little more..."
Then pulling the plug... The screaming stopped.
No damage other than some loaded cases in a block ignited, and a HUGE scorch mark where the ashtray had been sitting on the back of the bench... AND LOTS OF SMOKE...
And one old, cooked, NOT so cocky game warden rolling around in the pasture moaning and holding his sack with BOTH hands!
The end results...
He was a LOT more polite after that when we saw him...
I dispose of Waste Powder in a SEALED container, and wet it down with water...