I’m not sure if the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil could set off a tornado in Texas, but I do know that there are some pretty large forces at play in a reloading press and a small error can lead to larger problems and sometimes, those problems may not immediately seem related.

A bit more than a week ago, I was in the workshop on a Friday night loading up a few boxes of 45ACP to take to an IDPA Classifier match when I started hearing a metallic creaking noise from the press on every round. I didn’t see an immediate cause, but successfully continued loading. The ammo performed perfectly for the match.

On the Sunday after the match, I was in the workshop while the horses were munching and decided to finish off the remaining plated bullets I had left since I have an order of polymer coated bullets enroute. I spent a little more time trying to track down the mysterious noise and while I saw a few signs of some extreme forces, such as evidence of flex in the ram at the top of the stroke probably due to the resizing die being set too low, I did not locate the source of the sound. However, on one particular stroke, the handle broke off in my hand.

I examined the break and discovered that the lower edges had wear on them that would seem to indicate that the lower edge break happened first and it would make sense that the metallic noise I heard may have been these two surfaces rubbing together. I thnk that if the whole thing had broken at once, both breaks would be clean.

During the week, I receive the replacement parts, which were very easy to install.

Not surprisingly, the press did not make any creaky noises with the new parts and I was able to finish off all the plated 45 bullets.

The broken part did rear it’s head later in an indirect way. Last Friday night I really wanted to go to the regular CTIDPA match in Weatherford but with the 10PM finish time, the solid hour’s drive home from there and with my wife home recovering from back surgery, I didn’t want to be so late getting home after an already long enough work day. I elected to just stop at ShootSmart for an hour or so of live fire practice in a private lane.

I shot about 200 rounds of 40 S&W, mostly in the Glock 20 with a Lone Wolf conversion barrel. I was mostly working on draw and grip. The thumbs forward grip is a little short of intuitive for me at this point, but it’s general success and wide acceptance would seem to indicate that it is worth learning. For whatever reason, I seem to be able to do it pretty well with the Colt, but my hands forget what to do with the Glock. The two things I found myself doing was either pressing upward on the the slide release with my strong thumb, which can make the slide lock open with rounds still in the magazine or somehow, the index finger of my support hand kept trying to wrap around the trigger guard. I’ll keep working on it.

I also ran about 50 rounds through my Kahr CW40. It is a sexy little pistol, but it can be a little punishing to shoot. It’s pretty small in my hands and the trigger pull is veeerrrrrryyyy looonnggg. These two combine to make the trigger guard hit my trigger finger with a bit of regularity. In any case, with an upcoming sanctioned BUG match and a BUG practice match before that, I thought it wise to get a few more rounds downrange from the Kahr. I have three 6 round magazines (and one seven round) in hand and a holster and magazine pouch on order. Hopefully, the holster will be there before Thursday’s match.

Anyway, you may have forgotten (or thought I had forgotten) that I was talking about the tentacles of failure propagating from the broken reloading press. Before the handle broke OFF on that Sunday, I had been chasing the mysterious noise. This process involved gyrating and orbiting around the press during various stages of the process in an attempt to localize the racket. In so doing, I apparently ran at least one round through the powder stage without a drop and subsequently missed the empty case when I placed a bullet. I found that round at the range on Friday night.

They aren’t supposed to stop there in barrel. At least it didn’t happen in a match. There is not a provision for reshooting a stage when stymied by a squib; in fact, it’s specifically address in section 4.3 of the rules, and if there were, it would kinda be akin to re-running a race because you pooped your pants.

Sadly, that was in only about the 2nd or 3 magazine through the Colt in drawing practice. I had found that I was able to group 8 rounds very nicely, surprisingly nicely actually, using the thumbs forward grip and I was wanting to play with that some more when the squib hit the brakes.

Removing a squib is not particularly difficult with a couple of suitable tools, namely a ram and something to drive it. Most commonly, a tough wooden dowel or brass rod and a hammer will do the trick. Something that wont scratch the barrel but is tough enough to drive the slug out. I did not have anything suitable with me, so I just shot the Kahr a bit more and called it a day.

Perhaps needless to say, the rest of that box of ammo is suspect due to my distraction while loading it. Chances are pretty good that I found the one bad round, but I’ve thought that before, too.