today was my first

[rexican]

Today was absolutely beautiful and to make it even better, I had an errand to run a couple miles from my range(which is 40 miles away). I am pretty much out of my own reloads, so I thought I would run a couple hundred rounds through my marvel conversion and a some of my dad's mixed 38 supers out of the pt1911 I had drift adjusted the rear sight on. He is the complete opposite of me when it comes to reloading: he keeps no records and will just throw a bunch of different batches into the same box. He has gotten a lot better, and will even separate headstamps for rifles now. In the box he had given me were lead, fmj, and 158 gr. loads he had made by resizing .358 bullets down to .355.

Everything was fine until I loaded 4 of the resized rounds into a magazine. The first 2 rounds had very little recoil, and I moved to the next target. Then I remember watching the front sight, and the feel of the trigger on my finger... then somebody slapped me across the right cheek. I honestly didn't know what the hell had just happened, but there was oil or something on my glasses. I locked the slide back and hit the mag release, but no mag dropped into my hand. I looked at my hand and it had parallel black lines across my left palm. I look at the ground and see the magazine and spring.... At that point I knew exactly what happened.

I turned around (I was in a tactical bay by myself) and set the gun down on my tailgate.

It looks like the unsupported part of the shell ruptured and melted the lead nose of the last hollowpoint in the mag.

The slap I felt turned out to be powder hitting me in the face; it was red for an hour or so, and just a couple specks of blood. Luckily, I had those massive clip-on sunglasses over my normal glasses, so I was just peppered lightly on the tip of my nose and above my lip. My hands are fine, they're usually brown, but were red for a little while. All in all, I was pretty lucky to get away with some powder burns, a cracked grip, and busted baseplate. Seeing Grant22's accident recently kept me thinking that it could have been a lot worse (I had my own primer incident 10 years ago with a RCBS hand priming tool that took some weeks to heal from). I have plenty more mags, and now I have a clear project for that gaboon ebony I got last month.

[JKSNIPER]

Rexican,

A much older and wiser person here once gave me some free advice and now I pass it on to you.

NEVER use reloads loaded by someone else unless you KNOW that person to be as detail oriented as you are about loading for your pistols.

I love my Dad a lot but would NEVER use ammo loaded by him 'cos he sounds a lot like your Dad.

Dad's a definite factory ammo kind of guy.....can't be bothered to keep track of all that stuff we keep track of and think of as part of the "fun" of loading your own ammo.

Good luck hombre and I'm glad you're ok.

JK

[grant22]

Bummer dude and glad to hear you're alright. Also,good job on wearing your eye protection!

Every day is a learning experience, I'm guessin you'll just be using your own reloads from now on.

[rexican]

haha, thanks guys.

JK, I was reading Brian's book this morning (specifically the part where he says he will never shoot someone else's reloads nor allow someone else to try his major reloads in their gun), so I shook my head and grinned at the irony a little while after it happened.

My dad has been reloading longer than I have been alive... but I approach it completely differently and have even taught him a thing or two(when he'll listen to this whippersnapper ). He has gotten better about it recently, and these reloads were about 5 years old.

I have 2k 40 bullets waiting to be reloaded, but I'm waiting for my chrono to get here to work up a major load. Best wishes for a speedy recovery, grant.

[grant22]

haha, thanks guys.

JK, I was reading Brian's book this morning (specifically the part where he says he will never shoot someone else's reloads nor allow someone else to try his major reloads in their gun), so I shook my head and grinned at the irony a little while after it happened.

My dad has been reloading longer than I have been alive... but I approach it completely differently and have even taught him a thing or two(when he'll listen to this whippersnapper ). He has gotten better about it recently, and these reloads were about 5 years old.

I have 2k 40 bullets waiting to be reloaded, but I'm waiting for my chrono to get here to work up a major load. Best wishes for a speedy recovery, grant.

Thx dude!