|
Reloading at Sportsman’s Park – Part 4: Tales from the bench!
Earlier I promised to talk about mistakes any re-loader can make, and how to try and prevent them. I will start with a catalogue of things that have happened to me, and at the end describe my routine to try and keep them from happening again.
The messiest mistake I have ever made has been leaving the plug out of the shot bottle top and then tipping it back. The dumbest mistake I ever made was doing the same thing later with the powder bottle. Trust me, shot and powder exit the bottles at an alarming rate when the plug is left out. ALWAYS check for the bottle plugs before tipping them back!
The scariest mistake was when a BB from an earlier spill eventually found its way into the primer seating hole. I noticed a strange noise on the down stroke, and it took about 5 pulls before I realized that the cracking noise was the primer detonating as it was pressed down on the BB. Fortunately, the powder is dispensed on the upstroke, so that the detonated primer had no powder to ignite. ALWAYS thoroughly clean your press after a spill, and don’t crank the music so loud that you can’t hear what your press is telling you!
The scariest urban legend I heard was that your homeowners insurance wouldn’t cover your house if a fire ignited stored powder. I contacted State Farm Insurance and was told that homes contain many flammable substances like propane tanks, paint thinners, gas cans and even gunpowder. The agent cheerfully told me that yes, my home would be covered, but be careful since they would not cover any injuries to myself.
I have committed many mundane mistakes, like not noticing that a primer failed to drop. On stage two, powder will drop since there is a hull present, but the absence of a primer means it just pours out of the hole in the de-primed hull. With any press, ALWAYS observe the primer drop and make sure it goes into the right place. The rule is: if you didn’t see the primer, it isn’t there! On a MEC, a primer might fail to drop or go into the primer seating hole 1 or 2 per hundred. But of course, if you forget to fill the primer tray, that incidence increases to 100%. When you fill the primer tray, failing to put the plastic cover back on will result in live primers being flung around your workbench.
Along the same lines, if you forget to refill the powder or shot bottles and run them dry shot shell quality really suffers. Think it’s hard to forget things? You need to take a break from reloading when you forget to put a wad in. If you do, don’t waste your time trying to separate the powder and shot in the bottom of the hull, just dump them in the garbage and rerun that hull starting at station 2 (without a new primer, of course) at the end of your session. If there is no hull at station 2 for any reason, make sure the charge bar locks to the left when you pull the handle. If it doesn’t, the bar will pick up shot and dump it on the empty station 3 with the next pull. This is very important when trying to end a session and finish the shells still on the tray.
The most mysterious mistake I ever encountered was when shot did not drop into the shot cup. This is readily evident by looking at the shell at station 4 before pulling the handle, or anytime after that since the crimp will be totally caved in. In this instance the bottle was full of shot, and the charge bar was moving with the handle pulls. I tried it again and still no shot, but I could hear shot entering the ramming tube. I poked a piece of wire up into the rammer tube, and had two ounces of shot to clean up as it dropped all over after I relieved the jam. Somehow, the shot had gotten lodged in the 16 gauge wad rammer tube, and was stacking up in it. I have no idea why this occurred.
You may think that I am a lousy re-loader with all the mistakes I have made, but they are not hard to make. The important thing is to learn from mistakes, preferably the ones made by other people. I now have a routine that has prevented all the above mistakes for the last 3000 rounds. On the down stroke, I look only at the charge bar to make sure it fully travels to the left. Up until about half way through the upstroke I keep watching the charge bar and the charge bar will have traveled completely to the right. As I finish the upstroke, I look down to check that a primer has dropped, and that it falls into the primer seat hole as the tray rotates. Place a spent hull in station one, and as you place the next wad onto the press at station 3, look at station four to make sure you can see shot in the shot cup. If you do this every time you will catch common errors, like no primer, no wad, or no shot. I only reload in 200 shell increments. This takes a little more than a half hour. Before I take my “8 box break,” I make sure that the primer tray, shot bottle, and powder bottle are full, and that the spent primer catch tray is emptied.
This routine will catch all mistakes except no powder dropped. The only way to absolutely know that there is powder in each shell is to pull it out and look and/or measure. This would drastically slow the process down. Instead, by making sure the powder bottle is full, that the bar moves completely left and right, and measuring the powder in one hull per box, I have not had a squib in a very long time. The squibs I have had were when I first started reloading, and I think I made errors when I took shells on and off the tray to fix mistakes, or ran the powder bottle dry. Having a routine and vigilance is the key, so don’t reload while watching T.V. or reading the Naperville Trapshooter.
In part five I will describe some problems that the NSC steel target load recipe can have on the MEC press, and how you can solve them. Until then, I’ll see you on the line.
Tom K Member, NSC
|
