Common Mistakes When Reloading Firearms-Part One

For people who use guns, reloading is a very common thing, but we must avoid some common mistakes about reloading to prevent danger from happening.

1. Inadequate Crimping

If you don't crimp enough, certain cartridges can give you real trouble. Primarily, these are magnum revolver cartridges and straight-walled cartridges loaded for lever-action rifles. Cartridges loaded into the tubular magazine of a lever action rifle undergo significant pressure from the magazine spring, which compresses and exerts rearward pressure to feed cartridges into the action. The more cartridges stuffed into the chamber, the more the pressure increases. If bullets aren't crimped adequately, a bullet can pop right down into the cartridge case, leaving your rifle crippled because it can't feed a short, sharp-rimmed case out of the magazine and into the chamber. So the solution is to crimp your bullets just the right amount. Sometimes, experimentation is necessary to figure out that magic quantity.

2. Cracked Cases

Microcracks around the neck, shoulder or base of the cartridge case often go unnoticed. At a good situation, escaping gasses seep through the action, and sometimes into the face of the shooter when cracked cases are fired. At worst, the case can rupture completely, leaving brass in the chamber. Cracked cases may also blow superheated gasses rearward or even propel case fragments through the action. Before reloading, you can turn each case in your fingers and examine it carefully to search for cracks.

3. Cases Dented by Sizing Lube

Excessive application of sizing lube can cause divots in cases. Most reloading dies are built with a tiny vent hole to assist excessive lube in escaping, but such holes have limited efficiency. When too much lube is applied, sizing is very easy, but excess lube builds up in the die/case shoulder area. Because lube has hydraulic properties and is not compressible, the buildups create dents in the malleable brass cases.

4. Excessive Powder Charge

This is the scary one that everybody talks about and avoids. But it seems that magnum rifle cases are usually at the least risk, since they use slow-burning propellants that just barely fill the available space. Handgun cartridges, on the other hand, are often easily double charged. When loading with a single-stage press, charge a complete case trays' worth of cartridge cases. Before seating bullets in them, use a flashlight to scan the tray for any cases with powder levels that appear high or low. If you're loading with a progressive press, spend the money for a powder level check system and install it.

Here we talked about 4 common mistakes when reloading firearms, later in our article we will talked about more with you.