Woe is me... An unfortunate goof

Since today was a holiday, I figured I'd use the time to get in some reloading. But woe is me, as I noticed something very wrong after loading several hundred rounds of .223. I'm loading on a Dillon 550 with brass that was already pre-processed. So in station one I have an RCBS decapping die that I use to knock stray grains of tumbling media from the flash holes.

The issue is that after several hundred rounds I noticed that the decapping pin was missing from the RCBS decapping die. After removing & examining the die I see that the pin and retaining cap are gone. Not broken, but they had come loose and fallen off the threaded rod. I wasn't able to find them on the bench or the floor so my fear is that I have a round of ammo with a retaining cap & pin inside with a full charge of powder. Ugh...

So there lies the dilemma... Pull the loaded ammo until I find the rogue part(s) or hope it behaves like a duplex round and out the muzzle it flies.

I already know the answer: better safe than sorry.

Woe is me

Weigh them all, hopefully it’ll be obvious.

Got a big magnet?
That might make the one with the rod in it move for you.

Magnet?

Pink_Vapor said:

Weigh them all, hopefully it’ll be obvious.

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I 2nd this.

It narrows down which ones need pulling. Example: I was loading some 45/70. About round 85 of 100 I weighed the powder charge and it was 10gr heavy, noticed the culprit and locked it down. Printed one with the exact load, weighed it. Went back through all the finished ones and found the 15 that were heavy. Sure beats popping all of them!

Yes, a strong rare earth magnet will attract the steel decapping pin and nut. Nothing else in the loaded case will be attracted to the magnet.

Weigh several pieces of empty brass. I think you will see enough variation to make weighing loaded rounds inconclusive.

There's also the possibility the pin and the retainer might not be in the same case.

I'd certainly try weighing and magnet before I just started randomly pulling. One or the other method should give you something to go on.

I just got back from the garage and I too had same idea to weigh loaded rounds. I used a spare cap and pin, which weighed 25gr. With a loaded round coming in at 180gr, it was just a matter of time before I found the "heavy".

Sure enough, after weighing around 250 rounds I found the rogue cartridge! Crisis averted.

EDIT - I do like the magnet idea though and never would have thought of that. Time to go buy a strong one

Lesson learned boys & girls. Always check that decapping die! Such a small part would have caused a BIG headache

Wow... this thread could have ended veeeery differently. Nice catch!

What did I win?!?

OP- glad you figured it out.

Stuff like this is why I take my time, use my Lee turret press as an indexable single stage & double check every single round between operations.

I also don't shoot matches or need to crank out 1000's of rounds at a time, so there's that.

Pink_Vapor said:

What did I win?!?

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Respec'.

Pink Vapor, if you were anywhere close I'd be buying you a drink for sure.

And yes... this could have gone very badly if it wasn't for a minor glance at the decapping die. My Dillon has a spent primer chute to a small bin on the floor and I happened to notice that tumbling media WASN'T accumulating in the bin, which prompted looking at the decapping die. I figured that I just broken a pin, but nothing like the whole cap coming off.

Learn from my mistake boys & girls! Check those decapping pins

There is also the question of whether the tumbling medium was not knocked out of the flash holes of a bunch of the rounds after the pin fell off the stem and whether this presents a danger.

I'm sure that more than a few sneaked through Charlie, but I've never had a problem with it. When I was shooting my M1A competitively I had that happen with a 1,000 round lot of .308WIN that I loaded. I never noticed an issue with the ammo as the force of the igniting primer was probably sufficient to knock that single kernel of media loose.

But a good question

nbkky71 said:

Pink Vapor, if you were anywhere close I'd be buying you a drink for sure.

And yes... this could have gone very badly if it wasn't for a minor glance at the decapping die. My Dillon has a spent primer chute to a small bin on the floor and I happened to notice that tumbling media WASN'T accumulating in the bin, which prompted looking at the decapping die. I figured that I just broken a pin, but nothing like the whole cap coming off.

Learn from my mistake boys & girls! Check those decapping pins

Click to expand...

Thanks, for speed I preferred @Toprudder more gooder magnet idea.

Glad you found it! I'm surprised the pin and retainer weighed that much, but glad it did. Good job.

Dats why I use a decapping die. More time but less trauma.

You are correct, I misread the post.