Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Here's what happens when you grab the wrong can of powder

Luckily he survived:
http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=553905

Look on the bright side.. Blew up a Salvage.

I'm not sure how people can make a mistake like that regardless. Inexcusable. Idiot -

He is humbled by what happened and shared it with others. Takes guts to come out and show what he did.

Best wishes for a full recovery.

Ed

Steve Timm (dogzapper) had an excellent article on that in one of the Wolfe publications a number of years ago. His problem arose from two canisters that were colored very much the same. He advocated having different powders identified by very obviously differently-colored labeling for canisters (a very good idea). I was disheartened when Alliant gave up their color-coded labels and now Hodgdon is following suit.

I had a customer bring me a 700 bolt one time that had a 221 fireball case welded to the bolt face.

He said the last time he loaded, he could have sworn he was loading for his fireball. He went back to the loading bench and started loading somemore up.

Went to the range and when he pulled the trigger, he knew he had screwed up. Opened the bolt and found the case welded to the bolt face. Went home and checked his scales. They were set on 31 grains instead of 21 grains.

No idea what type of poweder he was using but it diffently made a mess.

Snyper: Great "reminder" for every handloader!
I am thankful he did not loose an eye in this incident!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

I keep all the componets for a round in the same container


Brass

Primers bullets

powder

Snake

Good friend has reloaded since the early seventies. Used IMR 4350 in everything from 22-250 to 300win. A few years ago he got a 222. Loaded some 30-06 for a friend and son. The dads 760 kicked, smoked, and got tight. Dad shot again and locked it up. Said to son; lets see how these shoot in your 760. Locked it up. You cant make this [bleep] up. You guessed right 4198 looks like 4350: sort of

I don't store my powders in my reloading room.

Only one powder goes into the reloading room for reloading. When I'm done, the powder measure is emptied back into that one powder container and it leaves the reloading room before I set up for the next reloading session.

So far, so good.

my powders are in a rubbermade tub, only one can out at a time when reloading, so far so good.....seen enough pics like the above to be a bit paranoid....

Can someone run the calculations on that blow-up load? 7-08, 120 grain bullet, 49.5 gains of TiteGroup. Wow.

Pathological about the details -- it actually IS a lower level of rocket science. Serious business (hence all the warnings). Glad he could share...

I usually pour all my powders together into one big tub and shake it up. Then I have a do-it-all powder for every application. I use a little less in rifle cases and a little more I pistols to compensate for the different burn rates. It saves a lot of time and space...

Thanks for the post.

Not to self (newbie): Double check everything you do. Take nothing for granted.

DITTOS. Any one of us could have done that.

If only drugs were legalized, this would have never happened.

Well,....no.

Handloading is something that's done very methodically with a lot of attention to detail,...especially the part which involves propellant.

I'm not above making a mistake here and there regarding some things, but I won't mistake one powder for another.