I screwed up loading some .223. What would you do?

[Notalentbum]

A few weeks ago I was loading some .223. Somewhere along the line I missed seating a primer and didn't catch it till I noticed excess powder in the hopper bin. I found the shell with missing primer and set it aside. When I finished, I used my impact bullet puller to remove the bullet and recover the remaining powder. I figured I'd just dump the powder in my scales and use my trickler to bring the charge up to weight. I then seated a new primer with my lee manual primer. I set the shell back in my 650 press and reseated the bullet. I tossed it in the hopper bin with the last hundred or so I had loaded. Then I took the bin and dumped it in the ammo can with the rest of what I had loaded that day. I was done for the day so I shut off the lights and headed off to other projects.
The next day I went down to clean up my mess from the previous day of reloading when I noticed the full charge of powder still sitting in the tray of my scales. So, I now have a round in a box of roughly 1000 rounds with no powder.
What would you do?

Matt

 

[17 squirrel]

Pick each one up and shake it, if its not a compressed load most likely you will hear it.. Well or not hear it. You could run them through your scale also..

 

[Gluemanz28]

You have one choices as far as I can tell.

Weigh every round until you find it.

I would not shoot them until you find the squib.

 

[Leo]

Weight them. That usually will not help with pistols due to variance in components being as much a powder charge. In the .223 your powder probably weights over 24 grains, and most .223 brass is within 5 or 6 grains, so you will be able to find a light one.

 

[BGDave]

Pick each one up and shake it, if its not a compressed load most likely you will hear it.. Well or not hear it. You could run them through your scale also..

No fun, but this is the answer. Once bought some repack 5.56. After a couple no powder rides I ended up shaking a bunch. Oh, and thank you vendor at Crown Point gun show. These were headstamped TZZ. Lucky me.
Edit to add Leo is also correct. Electronic scales are the bomb.

 

[indyjohn]

Weight them. That usually will not help with pistols due to variance in components being as much a powder charge. In the .223 your powder probably weights over 24 grains, and most .223 brass is within 5 or 6 grains, so you will be able to find a light one.

And then shake THOSE...

 

[Notalentbum]

I had already found it by shaking but I wanted to verify that finding it was imperative rather than figuring I'd hear it when I shot it. I never rapid fire due to only ever shooting at Atterbury but I was still scared that I might miss it. I haven't had a squib yet and would prefer to never have one.

Thanks for the reassurance!
Matt

 

[natdscott]

Good advice here, gentlemen. Sound, and safe.

Nicely done.

-Nate

 

[Broom_jm]

I had already found it by shaking but I wanted to verify that finding it was imperative rather than figuring I'd hear it when I shot it. I never rapid fire due to only ever shooting at Atterbury but I was still scared that I might miss it. I haven't had a squib yet and would prefer to never have one.

Thanks for the reassurance!
Matt

You don't want to shoot those to find 'em...unless you like trying to get a stuck bullet out of the rifling in your barrel.

Glad you found it and avoided any serious problems.

 

[throttletony]

I had already found it by shaking but I wanted to verify that finding it was imperative rather than figuring I'd hear it when I shot it. I never rapid fire due to only ever shooting at Atterbury but I was still scared that I might miss it. I haven't had a squib yet and would prefer to never have one.

Thanks for the reassurance!
Matt

You don't want to shoot those to find 'em...unless you like trying to get a stuck bullet out of the rifling in your barrel.

Glad you found it and avoided any serious problems.

Glad you found it.
I had one squib in my 357 -- not fun. I can imagine it's even more complicated in a rifle.

This was a good thread and a good reminder to be diligent when loading.

 

[lizerdking]

Primer wouldn't be enough to cycle the bolt in an AR so you'd know when it happened, but it would be enough to lodge a bullet in the barrel and cause a pain in the ass of beating a bullet back out.... So yeah, weigh em

 

[natdscott]

The trouble is, with a lot of "modern shooters" and some of the combat/action games that are played with what I'll call 'Sporting Tactical' rifles is that they all want to clear and run malfunctions.

Standard Operating Procedure for a stoppage involving a round that did not go bang is to cycle the bolt, strip off a new round from the mag, and resume active fire. In this case, that procedure results in an empty casing popping out of the action. The astute observer or operator would immediately recognize a serious problem in this result, and take the appropriate stoppage action: cease fire.



The less astute observer just proceeds rack-and-go, and blows up their rifle and/or hands and face.

-Nate