Derp

I was reading Tam's post this week about the pistol not going bang and the gentleman continuing to feed it squibs. And I thought to myself, "damn, I better be careful." No, I didn't think "what a dumbass loser for reloading squibs." Though I did think "who hammers more bullets in when nothing is coming out?" I did reload a squib once. Luckily I was able to knock the bullet out of the bore. That one must have had powder in it. Why? Read on.

Did I say once? Because I did it again today. 4 squibs, no powder. And I know exactly what I didn't do. I didn't do a double check, by looking down the necks with a flashlight to check for powder. I have a routine for reloading 300 BLK, and when I switched back to 6.8 SPC, it was different. So all of my checks were tossed out, too. I can even visualize where the empties were sitting on the loading tray.

I developed my routine simply to reduce the number of cases sitting open with powder on a reloading tray, just in case I have to rush off and do something IMPORTANT! in the middle of reloading. Then come back to find half of the cases full and half empty. So I try to limit the number I drop powder on to 15 at the most, then immediately seat bullets. Lesson relearned.

At least none of these left the case. They were at most .010" longer. I did look down the bore from the breech end each time (AR15 for the win there!) to check for obstructions, until I was embarrassed enough to take my crap home to ponder it. Funny thing, once I got past the four, I'd have had smooth shooting from there on out. All the other cases weighed +/- 0.5 grain of each other.