At the range with my usual reloads of 4.5 grains WST beneath a 125 moly round nose. Dillon 550b. The fourth die is a Lee crimper which is basically on auto pilot all these years. It's the round I've shot at least 3000 times.

Then my 9mm fails to feed. Again. And again over and over. Thought it was a mag issue but all 4 mags doing it? Maybe the new pistol is broken. Head home to test out dummy rounds in 4 mags with no change.

Strip firearm. May as well clean while I decide what to tell firearm mfg. Wait, what is that?? There is a 125 grain moly round nose stuck about where the grooves start. Unbelievable! Now I realize why there was powder all over.

Wonder why a squib occurred after so many hundreds and thousands of perfect bullets.

I am new to reloading and am in to it about 2000 rounds.
I have been trying different bullets and through my tests I have found why I got a squib the other day.

I was out there and ever now and then I would just get a {poot} and each time it was a squib.
Of course, this frustrated me...

My buddy said, "I bet you didnt put a charge in a whole tray of primed brass"
I thought, I am so maticulous about the process... this cant be!
but I have a 3yo and she frequently likes to gain my attention no matter what I am doing.
I weighted the entire batch and found about 50 rounds (just short due to firing a couple).

So with this said... I would weight your rounds and see if you made the same error I did...
OK stop laughin at me... coulda happened to anyone... lol

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)))X~ silvercn ~X(((

I have seen this happen with two revolvers-bullet stuck between cylinder face and forcing cone, and an M16A1-slug stuck in barrel. I wanted to empty the magazine of my Colt .380-slug went pffftoop-fell just outside of the muzzle-solvent or oil had seeped from magazine into the cartridge.

That's the issue right there. Nearly every problem I have heard of with reloads involves a progressive. Just be glad that the bullet stopped far enough back in the bore that it prevented another round from being chambered.

You probably want to consider a change to your reloading routine, such as a mirror and/or strong light to inspect each powder charge before the bullet gets seated.

I have been reloading for almost 40 years and have had a few squibs along the way. I had them with my single stage and with the progressive. The fact that there was "powder all over" may indicate that you didn't forget to load the case. It is possible you didn't load enough or for some reason, it may not have ignited. It could have been the lack of a crimp, bad primer, the powder may have been contaminated, or the primer could have been in sideways.

I'm posting this to admit a mistake and maybe education someone else.

Turns out my OAL was a bit too long on this one bullet and when I forcefully ejected the round the bullet stayed in the chamber while the casing and powder came out.

I did not know the barrel was blocked for a long time while trying to rack another round in all the mags.

Thanks to everyone for chiming in. I learned from those posts.

So it wasn't a squib after all. Actually, that's a good thing because it means you really didn't make a mistake when loading those rounds other than the excessive OAL.

Hey, thanks for posting this, we can all learn from the small mistakes of others and hopefully stop mistakes of our own. (or at least keep them as small)

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Freedom is never free!!
SWCA #3437

I've been reloading for 30 years, but last summer I decided to do a tear down and clean my Dillon. "Somehow" when reassembling the powder measure, I got the upper bar in upside down, and guess what, about 30% of the time it drags on the little square derlon pad and doesn't drop any powder. Luckily I only loaded about 25 rounds, as I was working up a different load. took to the range with my Colt OM Heavy barrel Target, and shot the test loads. I had 3 squib loads, (knew what happened and knocked out with range rod) in about 12 shots. I was perplexed, and went home and studied the Dillon, and that's when I discovered I had assembled the powder measure bar incorrectly. It happens to us all regardless of how much experience you have.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

When you are cranking through rounds on a progressive, it pays to either have one of the various powder check mechanisms or visually inspect each round before placing the bullet for seating. I have both. So far, no squibs or doubles.

There's a lot going on with a high volume progressive, I believe you should use all the tools you can to produce quality ammo.

All my reloading has been on a single-stage press and I've never had a squib. A dud, yes, most likely a dead primer, but fortunately no squibs. I did have one water-soaked, reloaded shotshell go paaatoot! The wad stopped in the choke. It was, "What the heck was that?" Fortunately no followup shot.

When I first started loading, I had a couple scares:

#1: was using my Lee anniversary kit to load .38 specials: 158 gr plated bullets on top of Green Dot (I forget the load) I was using a Lee perfect powder measure, which was throwing very inconsistantly. I had a really light one go off. I was about to dismiss it, but thought "I better check that one..." fount the bullet was stuck right at the muzzle. Must have been a really light charge.

#2: loading Green Dot again, this time 148 gr HBWC for my Clark .38. Had a malfunction, next round wouldn't feed. Looked in the breech, found a stuck bullet, preventing the next from chambering.

I swore off Green Dot because it meters so poorly, and I am now a believer in the RCBS lockout die.