What's your Biggest non-hazardous mistake?

[#1hotshot]

I had my first and hopefully my last AD while sitting in my easy chair. I took a Springfeild 1911 in to fix a FTF problem. And after checking the safety's I discovered the grip safety didn't work. So then I decided to try and figure out the FTF problem with live ammo (not a good ideah I know) in my defense no one was home but me. I put a round in the chamber to manually feed and extract to possibly find the problem. And when I moved the safety to the safe position the gun went off. I'm glad that the gun was aimed at the wife's chair all the foam slowed the bullet down enough to keep it from going all the way threw the piano chair. OK let the ball busting begin

[parkerdude]

I was fire forming some new 300 Win Mag brass and heard of using some "Cream of Wheat" cereal as a partial case filler to allow smaller charges of pistol powder.

I forget the amount of "Red Dot" powder I used but about a tablespoon of cereal and a small bit of polyester upholstery filler to hold it in place.

I drove like 35 miles to the range, put the first case into my rifle. Thank god it was a Ruger #1, the action is an absolute TANK.

The first round had more kick than I thought was right. The extraction lever was a tad stiff.

I add a little more pressure, and the "trap-door" lowered, the first thing I saw was the primer fell out of the belted magnum case.

I picked the primer up and dropped it back into the primer pocket. I could shake the case back and forth and hear the primer rattle.

I packed everything up and drove home.

That was pretty high up the "STUPID" list, even for me !

[BallisticTools]

Well since people have strayed into "hazardous" territory anyway, I'll give mine.

There's a certain web site up regarding loading 7.62x39 subsonic that has a comment that says something like "light 357 magnum loads should be OK" since the case capacities are almost exactly the same and the bullet weights are in the same range. Bad logic.

I was attempting at the time to replicate a 300 blk subsonic type load, except in x39. Anyway, so I tried 12-13 grains (I think?) of H110 under a 230gr projectile. I didn't want to reduce the load too much because I had seen all the warnings about underloading H110.

When I pulled the trigger it felt like a 50BMG went off next to me. I didn't have a magazine in my vz.58, and the pistol grip is close to the mag well. A chunk of the bolt face flew off and broke the knuckle of my middle finger. The rest of my right hand was peppered with powder burns.




As a testament to the ruggedness of the vz.58, all it needed was a new bolt, no other damage to the gun. My middle finger is still stiff though. Dr said I had a little bit of metal in there but nothing to worry about.