Ammunition & Hand Loading > Cartridge and Shotshell reloading

Confessions of a newb reloader

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OnTheFly:
Several months ago I had purchased 5K of small pistol primers, 8# of gun powder, and was poised to buy bullets and reloading equipment.  Then the panic hit.  After a few months of searching for bullets, I finally happened to be on the Montana Gold website and purchased a case.  They had a one case limit, so my 16 year old daughter bought a case too.  Oddly enough, she doesn't want the bullets, so I just bought them from her.  ;)

As I stated in another thread, my friend has reloading equipment and has started to shoot pistol more, so we joined forces (supplies + equipment) to start reloading 9mm.  We started with a recipe from a local forum member to see how it would work in our guns.  We went to a friends house who helped us set up the dies in a matter of 30 minutes.  Later that evening we had the dies back at my friends house and installed on his D550.  We started to slowly produce rounds, but we began to have troubles with the primer feed mechanism.  I believe that this definitely added a distraction as we tried to solve that particular problem.

Somewhere during this process, I believe I placed the bullet on the case while the case was in the powder drop stage BUT BEFORE the powder had been dropped.  I must have had a distraction around this time (primer feed issue?) and when my attention went back to the reloading I advanced the press which left one round with no powder, one with no bullet, and another without a crimped case.  When the case with powder but no bullet fell into the tray, I thought I had just failed to place a bullet on the case.  I apparently did this a second time too.

So what was the result at the range?  One squib for each of us, and two rounds that would not feed into the chamber because the case neck was still flared.  Because we knew that our reloading was still in the experimental stage, we were being very cautious with each round we shot, looking for any unusual things. 

After I figured out my mistake, I felt horrible.  I don't want to see my mistake get myself or anyone else hurt and/or ruin a gun.  HOWEVER, I have actually found the bright side of this situation...

1) I definitely learned something about reloading
2) I definitely learned something about how distractions can affect my reloading
2) I now know what a squib sounds like.  A very odd muffled "PUH" which was quite different than just the striker falling. I think it is more likely that I will recognize a squib later
3) I now know how to hammer a squib out of a barrel

So now I just need to figure out how to keep it from happening again.  Many experience reloaders I have talked to say that if they every get distracted, they either say "Just a minute" to the distractor and keep reloading until they have finished all the cases currently in the press, or they pull the cases and start over after the distraction is dealt with. 

Okay...start the scolding.

Fly

kozball:
I see value in lessons learned.   :)

unfy:
Heh.

Glad everyone and equipment turned out safe.

With my progressive, whenever there is ANY sort of "what happened here?" situation, I unload all of the shells from the press and start them over from the flare die after addressing whatever problem there was. And with a progressive, this isn't a huge concern as far as "time lost" - a few pulls of the handle and you're done with whatever time ya lost.

Distractions while reloading are a definite no no, especially with a progressive. No TV, no involved conversations, no talk radio.  Why no talk radio ? Ya can't ask the radio "sorry, what?" - so ya gotta focus on it a bit more than a normal conversation.

It took about 1000 rounds before I even allowed myself to have music going on in the background.  Do note concerning music - it shouldn't be loud.  You need to be able to *hear* the press as an extra safety measure (detecting problems etc).  For me, my music choice is usually some kind of calming ambient / soundscape like material or a jazzy groove kind of thing (thus it's easier to hear out of place sounds).

Concerning the primer feed issue... not being sure exactly what your problem was... there's a few things that help with my Hornady LNL AP which uses a tube + shuttle style thing as well.

a) if you have an adjustable cam guide that shuttle rides against, try fiddling with it a bit (can help for both getting a primer from the tube AND for the shuttle seating all the way under the shell plate etc)

b) some folks have had good luck putting an empty brass case of varying weight on top of the primer following rod/stick.  9mm, 45acp, whatever might fix things.

c) you should be able to still *feel* the primer seat... learn to pay attention to that feel to see if something's missing or if you're gonna crush something...

d) the 550 has an empty primer buzzer afaik (something the LNL AP aint got) ... but for my LNL AP i found taking a perm marker and marking the "empty" depth on the following rod to help lemme know how many primers are left in the tube (most feed problems occur when the tube is near empty)

e) pick up a can of hornady one shot dry lube and hit most surfaces with it

00BUCK:
Prime example of why all new reloaders should start out with a single stage press and a loading block. Glad nobody got hurt.

unfy:
Oh, and yes, there are youtube videos of folks hammering out 100 rounds in 3min or 1000 rounds in an hour or whatever on their progressive presses.

I don't advocate such nonsense.

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