I was on the fence on whether or not to share this story or not: Mostly because I feel completely embarrassed it even happened because of my own incompetence, but I decided to do a write up anyway in the hope that maybe one person reading this message may learn something and not have happen to them what happen to me. Anyway, a bit of prolog is in order (Please try to stay awake: just writing this is a bit of therapy for me after what happened today).
I was bitten by the reloading bug in December before Sandy hook, but after dip ***** was re-elected. I bought a couple of reloading books (not manuals from vendors: but actually reloading books) and read them from cover-to-cover and I set out on setting up what I felt was the most safeties setup I could make. I dry walled my garage and painted it to make it brighter, I expoyed the floors to spot cases, and installed a combination of halogen and other lighting to brighten up my work space. I reloaded my first case, .40 S&W, and quickly expanded to other calibers:
I did this for one bullet and everything went ok. Cool: time to build a sample lot for firing and chrnolographing the results. I used the Hornady reloading manual 9th addition and I went with the following load:
I worked up a load of 16 rounds to test in both of my kimbers 1911: One full size and the other commander size. *IMPORTANT NOTE* at some point while reloading the sample set I had a problem with the powder die. It wasn't opening up the case mouth enough and was causing problems on my Horandy LNL press when it reached the bullet setting step. What I can theorize is this is when the double charged happened. While messing around with it I must have dropped the powered twice since I was making adjustments with the press at the top of the stroke so it couldn't auto-index and was focused on one stage vs the other stages while making adjustments. I've always been careful of this in the past...but apparently I missed this one.
That happened early this week...fast forward to today. I've had quite the stressful summer of dealing with work garbage and dealing with a newborn in the house I was ready to take the trip I've talked about all summer to hill-side up in Ft Wayne and become a member. I put in my vacation time, jammed mags, packed the truck and headed north. I've had a urge for a very long time to take my FN A5M SPR and hit steel at a 1,000 yards. I've never shot at that distance I wanted to put my .308 handloads to the test. As an afterthought I threw my .45 ACP loads on the truck along with chrnographer to measure where I was at with the loads. Of course that was secondary objective vs what I wanted to do: I wanted to hear the bang and the clang of steel at distance.
I spent most of the morning working from 200-1000 and I got the sound I wanted to hear many of times over. I packed up the rifles and decided to move over the pistol bay and quickly chrno my .45 ACP loads before calling it a day. I wanted to know where they were at as far as FPS and pressure and adjust before doing a production run. I measured out the distances, setup everything, and in the midest of doing all this a shooter came up and started talking to me about reloading and asking what I was doing. I volunteered up the information and he asked if he could stay. Sure, I'm all about learning so why not right? I loaded up 8 rounds in my kmber HD and took aim and shots are:
Well, not exactly. I've gone back an forth on this point during my 1 1/2 drive back to Indy and I have two working conclusions:
I can't describe how lucky I am that that I got to come home to my wife and newborn with zero injury. If i was shooting a polymer gun or a gun with an unsupported chamber I am sure I would have been taking an ambulance ride somewhere. That is dumb luck and it doesn't below in the reloaders world. I thought I was doing everything right and taking all the right safe guards: but the cold hard reality is all it takes is ONE mistake. One double charge, one squip, one (pick your danger) and you can bee in a really bad spot. I ask that anyone that reads this learn from my mistake so you don't have to be in the position of counting your fingers to make sure they are still there.
To answer the next set of questions of: Why even reload then if it is that damn dangerous? Well, to be honest outside of shooting this is my second biggest hobby. I saw today my loads out-shined the factory ammo hands down. I was consistently printing with my rife at distance and that is why I do this: The fun of making ammo and the fun of shooting accurately
This happened on a Friday. I happened to get out to the range today for some shooting and I noticed a smudge on my glasses. I tried rubbing it out...until I realized it was a piece of brass emended in the lenses. I've never been one to go cheep on safety gear (But of course the idea is always not to make dumb mistakes), but I went with theses for my range glasses:
http://www.midwayusa.com/product/26...anced-shooting-glasses-smoke-and-clear-lenses
and it would appear they were highly effective in keeping shrapnel out of my eye.
Here are some images of the shrapnel. I tried to identify the piece with a circle and an arrow.
I was bitten by the reloading bug in December before Sandy hook, but after dip ***** was re-elected. I bought a couple of reloading books (not manuals from vendors: but actually reloading books) and read them from cover-to-cover and I set out on setting up what I felt was the most safeties setup I could make. I dry walled my garage and painted it to make it brighter, I expoyed the floors to spot cases, and installed a combination of halogen and other lighting to brighten up my work space. I reloaded my first case, .40 S&W, and quickly expanded to other calibers:
- 9MM Lugar
- .45 ACP
- .308
- .223
- 300 BLK
- 5.7 FN
- .380
- Adjust decapping-resizing die station
- Adjust powder expansion
- adjust powder drop distance as well as powder weight
- adjust bullet setting
- adjust crimp
I did this for one bullet and everything went ok. Cool: time to build a sample lot for firing and chrnolographing the results. I used the Hornady reloading manual 9th addition and I went with the following load:
- Titegroup 5.8 grains
- OAL 1.213
- Winchester Large pistol primers
I worked up a load of 16 rounds to test in both of my kimbers 1911: One full size and the other commander size. *IMPORTANT NOTE* at some point while reloading the sample set I had a problem with the powder die. It wasn't opening up the case mouth enough and was causing problems on my Horandy LNL press when it reached the bullet setting step. What I can theorize is this is when the double charged happened. While messing around with it I must have dropped the powered twice since I was making adjustments with the press at the top of the stroke so it couldn't auto-index and was focused on one stage vs the other stages while making adjustments. I've always been careful of this in the past...but apparently I missed this one.
That happened early this week...fast forward to today. I've had quite the stressful summer of dealing with work garbage and dealing with a newborn in the house I was ready to take the trip I've talked about all summer to hill-side up in Ft Wayne and become a member. I put in my vacation time, jammed mags, packed the truck and headed north. I've had a urge for a very long time to take my FN A5M SPR and hit steel at a 1,000 yards. I've never shot at that distance I wanted to put my .308 handloads to the test. As an afterthought I threw my .45 ACP loads on the truck along with chrnographer to measure where I was at with the loads. Of course that was secondary objective vs what I wanted to do: I wanted to hear the bang and the clang of steel at distance.
I spent most of the morning working from 200-1000 and I got the sound I wanted to hear many of times over. I packed up the rifles and decided to move over the pistol bay and quickly chrno my .45 ACP loads before calling it a day. I wanted to know where they were at as far as FPS and pressure and adjust before doing a production run. I measured out the distances, setup everything, and in the midest of doing all this a shooter came up and started talking to me about reloading and asking what I was doing. I volunteered up the information and he asked if he could stay. Sure, I'm all about learning so why not right? I loaded up 8 rounds in my kmber HD and took aim and shots are:
- Chroney registered 1156 : Wow that way hotter than the 900 I was looking for. WTF?
- Chroney registered 338: WTF? Is the chroney screwed up? Maybe that explains the first shot?
- Chroney registered 1175: Wow, ok twice in a row. That seems really hot. Maybe I need to see how the next shot goes and call it quits.
- KABOOM
Well, not exactly. I've gone back an forth on this point during my 1 1/2 drive back to Indy and I have two working conclusions:
- maybe the load was way too hot (like 200 FPS too hot) to begin with and that was the problem. I was running well above target on the chrony prior to the kaboom and maybe I had a week case in the lot
- However, when I came home I looked at other double charges and the primer was blown out (as was the case in my instance) and case destruction looks identical to a double charge.
I can't describe how lucky I am that that I got to come home to my wife and newborn with zero injury. If i was shooting a polymer gun or a gun with an unsupported chamber I am sure I would have been taking an ambulance ride somewhere. That is dumb luck and it doesn't below in the reloaders world. I thought I was doing everything right and taking all the right safe guards: but the cold hard reality is all it takes is ONE mistake. One double charge, one squip, one (pick your danger) and you can bee in a really bad spot. I ask that anyone that reads this learn from my mistake so you don't have to be in the position of counting your fingers to make sure they are still there.
To answer the next set of questions of: Why even reload then if it is that damn dangerous? Well, to be honest outside of shooting this is my second biggest hobby. I saw today my loads out-shined the factory ammo hands down. I was consistently printing with my rife at distance and that is why I do this: The fun of making ammo and the fun of shooting accurately
This happened on a Friday. I happened to get out to the range today for some shooting and I noticed a smudge on my glasses. I tried rubbing it out...until I realized it was a piece of brass emended in the lenses. I've never been one to go cheep on safety gear (But of course the idea is always not to make dumb mistakes), but I went with theses for my range glasses:
http://www.midwayusa.com/product/26...anced-shooting-glasses-smoke-and-clear-lenses
and it would appear they were highly effective in keeping shrapnel out of my eye.
Here are some images of the shrapnel. I tried to identify the piece with a circle and an arrow.
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