mossy33oak

wow, am I shook up, I was throwing some rounds together tonite, and was adjusting my seating die, with the primed cases (no powder). I went ahead and then used my inertia bullet puller to removed the bullet that I was using as my dummy round. Well I gave it one whack and the bullet didnt come loose, I gave it another, and pow! the primer went off!!!! Now what could have caused this to happen? What if this was a live round that I wanted to break apart? I am seriously thinking about not using it anymore. Has anyone else ever had this happen? Did I do something wrong? As a side note, I was whacking it on a rug, on my concrete floor. Could there have been some kinda static electricity thing going on? I could not find the primer, it was launched up into my ceiling then bounced who knows where, the bullet did not come out either until I collected myself, (and cleaned the crap outta my pants) and gave it 3 more hits.

any thoughts??

HighDesertWolf

the bullet didnt come out??? thats odd between the inertia and the pressure from the primer should have spit that bullet right out. My guess is if the primer went off you maybe seating your primers to deep to the point where they are crushing thats about the only thing i can think of that would cause a primer to be unstable like that. Ive pulled hundreds of live cartridges with a inertia bullet puller and never had any problem.

m.t.hands

with my puller the primer is towards the ground/bench, not sure of what puller your using, but this is the first time of heard of this happening,

, live round or not a primer is very dangerous, were you wearing safety glasses[:-], the reason i ask is i had a childhood friend do something very stupid and he lost the use of one eye

Mykey

I'm glad you're ok and the safety glasses were my first thought as well when i read this post. I know lots of handloaders that never put on a pair of safety glasses when reloading but it is the most important piece of reloading equipment on my bench. When people ask for reloading advice thats the first thing i stress is wearing safety glasses while reloading and especially when handling primers and powder. You can't never be to safe and for me safety glasses are just as important as wearing a safety belt in a treestand. As to why the primer went off i really don't know unless it was a seating issue like already mentioned. I've never had it to happen to me but it had to be a scary situation no doubt. Again, glad your ok.

bigcountry

Holy cow. I have took apart several rounds (loaded with powder)_. RCBS always assured me that primer wouldn't go off. But this makes me think a tad. Were you using Federal primers?

mossy33oak

I was using the Cabelas bullet puller, the kind that looks like a hammer, you unscrew the end cap, insert your round in a collet, screw the cap back on with the round in place, and whack the other end on the rug. The bullet then falls into a piece of rubber located inside of the end you hit against. Luckily I was bent over at the waist and my hand was about two feet to the left of my head, so the primer wizzed past my ear. For the few rounds I actually pull loaded, I think I will discontinue this practice, and save it for just pulling dummy rounds. I dont think anyone could talk me into using this device again for live rounds. What would a 160 gr accubond have done being set off 10" from a concrete floor with my head about 2 feet from it?

HighDesertWolf

would have been like a M-80 going off 2 feet from ya with possible shards and slivers of brass flying in every direction wouldnt have to worry much about the bullet traveling at a high velocity since the case alone with no rifle chamber will only hold about 500 psi before bursting which is still enough pressure to get things moving at a couple hundred feet per second.

Rodsmith

I am relatively new to the reloading scene and after reading this I was wondering. Does anyone make a die persey that fits into the press and removes the bullet? Kinda like a lee factory crimp installed backwards so the compression on the upstroke grips the bullet and safely removes it without all this banging on the ground crap. That has never set well with me, now even less!

Briman

I think RCBS makes collet bullet pullers- you use one specific to the caliber that you are pulling and they screw into your press like a die.

I don't pull too many bullets. If I need to pull bullets, I run the cartridge up into the press without a die, grip the bullet with a pair of side cutters, and then lower the cartridge.

It nicks the bullet up a little, but the bullet is still usable.

stress-relief

I use an RCBS collet bullet puller on my reloading press, it works very well. You do need to buy a collet for the various bullet calibers but the collets aren't very expensive.