ArizonaShooting.com

Was loading up some .45acp at my buddy's place just 2 minutes ago, when BLAM!!!!

I've been using left over range pick-up CCI brass,...which I DO NOT like. The primer pockets are just a scoshe too small, and with no radius to the lip, so I end up crushing a lot of primers. I've tried to use a deburring tool to chamfer and bevel all the ones I find, but some still make it through the inspecting and cause me trouble.

That's it. I'm never using this crap brass again!!

I've crushed thousands of primers over the last 20 years of handloading and never had this happen before.

I was loading Winchester standard large pistol primers.

My ears are ringing, I got some sort of crap from the inside of the casing in my eye. I think I have a burr of brass shaving embedded in my thumb. I'm done for tonight. Time for some liquor.

LOUD AIN'T IT.

I've blown more primers loading .45ACP than any other caliber.

Just be careful for the WinClean crap. It's normal .45 ACP, but uses a small pistol primer...

Wow, sorry to hear ATFS...hope the eye self repairs quick!

Ranger...do you know if the WinClean 40 also uses small pistol primers as well?

Dang, atf!

Glad to hear you aren't seriously hurt!

I would assume so. Regular .40 S&W uses small pistol primers as well.

Damn!! I guess after a while, something like this is bound to happen to someone sooner or later. I hope your allright and I hope you've recovered by tommorrow!

HEHE, DOH! I knew that, but my noob came shining through just then, didn't it?

I thought I just detonated one primer, directly under the case it was supposed to be seating in. Turns out the whole magazine went off!! I couldn't tell at the time, cuz my bell got rung so bad. (I thought it was kinda loud for just a damned primer.)

The plastic primer rod for the primer warning system is embedded in the ceiling!

The whole mechanism is jammed, and the ram won't come all the way down or go all the way up.

Dismounted the primer feed assembly and magazine, and the primer feed tube is stuck inside the steel protective shroud. Either jammed in with blown primers or ruptured. Can't tell yet. I'm gonna have to just take the whole damned thing to Dillon and have them see if they can get it apart.


The odd thing is, the pressure required to operate everything was much stiffer today than when I used this machine last week. Nothing has been changed or altered since that time, and it was smooth as buttah then. Today I come in to start loading up some more of the same stuff, and for no apparent reason, the upstroke and downstroke of the ram required some strength behind them to get it done. I looked everything over many times trying to figure it out, and added a little gun oil to the ram piston to see if that would ease things up, but no dice. But it didn't seem to be causing any hazard or malfunctioning in any way I could discern, so I just started cranking out ammo and put up with the extra effort needed to do it, hoping whatever it was would free up sooner or later. I must have completed about 150 rounds before the detonation. No crushed primers before the big one, but I could feel the primers catching on the lip of the primer pockets of some of the cases as they shaved a hair of brass here and there on the way in.

The house smells like an indoor range now.

Did I mention I'm at my buddy's place? I'm the only one here. (They trust me like that, especially when I load up ammo for them and they don't have to.) I got some splainin' to do.

Sounds like you are really lucky to escape somewhat unscathed!

I've been googling "Dillon 650 primer magazine detonation" and am surprised to learn that this is not uncommon with this design. Apparently, Dillon must have goofed up designing the 650 with this system instead of what you find in the 550 and 1050, because these are experiencing a much more frequent rate of detonations like this than the other Dillon designs. And almost all of them were with .45acp; only one I read was with something else - .38spl.

On my 550, there are small pin-hole in the blue bearing-part of the lower body...where the cross-member rotates to lift the main plate holder and such.

Oil holes, my friend.

Mine was really hard to move yesterday...and getting worse. Saw those, squirted a little oil in it, and voilá!

I worked with energetic materials for several years (airbag propellant) and would like to suggest to all reloaders to wear safety glasses at all times while reloading or otherwise handling primers and powder.

Hope your peepers didn't suffer any serious injury ATF.

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And hearing protection at least while priming.

Glad to hear you are alright. There was a post recently on the brianenos.com forums about a primer tube exploding and taking a thumb off at the knuckle. Could have been a lot worse. Let us know what Dillon finds went wrong.

I know exactly what happened.

You need to clean the yellow dust off of your priming station. That caught a spark from the first primer and caused everything to go off.