Complacency is your enemy!

[Pulp]

A friend of mine loaded some .45 Colt with his usual 6.2 grains of TiteGroup, the proceeded to blow up a fine old Smith and Wesson revolver. Fortunately, he was not hurt. He went back to his bench and discovered the slider on his scale had been bumped up 10 grains, so he was actually loading 16.2 grains. Two examples of complacency here: 1. he didn't check his scale before starting, just assumed it was where he left it; and 2. he didn't notice the larger volume of powder he was pouring in his cases.

Folks, be careful out there, and NEVER take anything for granted. It was bad enough to lose a fine old gun, but he sure could've lost a finger or two, or an eyeball or two along with it.

 

[caojyn]

Wow! He should go buy a lotto ticket

 

[WessonOil]

No kidding.
I've been reloading for about 30 years now, and I use a standard load for plinking and competition that I have loaded possibly tens of thousands of times.
I still physically check my powder disk, bullet weight, and case volume when I start a session.

 

[okietom]

This is a reason to check zero on your scales. If you balance them on zero you have to set them again. It would be good to use a check weight every time too. Same reason.

I do the zero thing and want to get some check weights. I have used bullets for a check weight and I know they vary some but it does mean my scale is close.

 

[swampratt]

Pulp your friend got lucky that trip.
I also zero my beam scale before i start and load all cases with powder and have them in a loading block.
Then i look into each case and all are the same height on powder and i am good.

Mistakes may happen though..If this was all safe there would not be sooo many warnings and tools to avoid this.

 

[Revived]

Close call... Glad he's ok... Good lesson for all... Even though I run dedicated progressives with set throws and powder check stations in play... I have a "pre-game" routine of checking the first dozen rounds through the system - then after every few hundred rounds until i'm done... cause stuff simply happens...

 

[Johnny]

Glad he is ok. For this reason I try to always load with powder that use most of the case volume. I am scared to death this will happen to me some day.

 

[dlbleak]

I do as swampratt does and charge all of my cases and set them in a block. I then visually check each one before I start seating bullets.
my condolences to the smith, may it RIP.

 

[Phadrian]

Maybe I didn't read right if he had been loading and checking before and he was accurately measuring 6.2 grains of powder, and lf came back to the same set up at his bench it seems to me his powder charge would have measured very light.after all his powder charge was 6.2 and the scale somehow got set to 16.2. That would have been your first clue something was wrong. Having to change your powder measure to increase a powder charge 2.61 times greater would have meant turning the screw on the powder drop so many turns that would have been clue number 2.

I appreciate the message to be careful, and the message is important, but you must not think you reloaded a round properly, there can be no question you did.

 

[Revived]

Haha... it's that whole assumption based thinking that creates "complacency" - He assumed his powder was correct based on a prior setting.... You assumed he used a powder measure...