Quote:
Originally Posted by DeplorabusUnum
Thank you all for the replies. I've been thinking about the possibility of no powder or low charge, and can't really think how that would happen.
I reload on a single stage RCBS press. I drop the first charge from my RCBS Charge Master digital scale. Once the pan has the proper charge, I drop it by hand through a powder funnel into the 1st case. I move the funnel to the next empty case, and while the next powder charge is dropping in the scale pan, I take the loaded case and run it through the seating die. I make them one bullet at a time. I never load a second case until the previous one has a bullet seated in it.
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You're hitting on one (of many) aspects of reloading I'm really intrigued by: The really nitty-gritty details of how we do things......the process steps.
If I'm following your summary above correctly, one scenario I could imagine is you inadvertently moved the funnel from an empty case to an empty case, thinking powder had been dropped when it hadn't. (There have been many times my mind has instantaneously gone off and thought about something unrelated to loading - and when my consciousness is back on the bench - I realize I've been doing things and "not really thinking about it". It's easy to say "Well - I don't do that.", but I think it's inevitable. Do I have that dentist appointment tomorrow? Am I out of cookies? I wonder if I should cut the grass tomorrow or tonight?)
We all need to make our processes that work for us, but I've found I do better if I design my processes so that the steps are very small; not doing too many different things at once. In this context it actually might be safer, for example, to charge numerous cases, check powder levels visually, and THEN seat bullets.....as others have said.
Many people put uncharged cases in the loading block with primers up, and only turn them over when they put powder in. That certainly works for a whole bunch of people. I don't like this method. I put primed cases in a small container on the bench (just all dumped in there). I pick up a case, charge it, then put the charged case in the block. All of my processes move the "to be processed" cases from the left to the right. So no matter what step I'm on (decapping, sizing, mouth expansion, priming, charging, seating) the items to be processed always are on the left. And the completed items for that step are placed on the right.
A few weeks ago I was loading some test loads - just a few rounds. I violated one of my above process methods, and I accidentally seated a bullet on an empty primed case. Fortunately with how many rounds I planned on loading (I realized I had one more seated round than planned) I discovered my mistake before leaving the bench. Scared the &*%# out of me.
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