Had my first Squib Load last week...

[DrMoebius]

Quite a while ago I got one of those snake neck LED desk lights from IKEA, $10. It works perfectly to shine down into the case. You cannot miss the powder in the deepest cases with that light.

That's exactly what I imagined using. Thanks for telling me where to find one.

Welcome to the Club, OP!

Yeah, my shooting partner who has decades of competing under his belt says it eventually happens to everyone who reloads. Just my luck, it happens in my first ever batch. I guess a close call and good scare early on saves on doctor bills later.

[damndave]

Glad you're ok. Could have been disastrous.

[zomie]

This is why I don't let people shoot my reloads. If you want to fire my guns, you need to use factory ammo.

I had a 357 round squib once. I trained the person fairly well though. They stopped instantly and said it didn't feel the same as the last round can you check it out. Sure enough, one of my reloads squibed and a new rule was made. It was done on a progressive press and the load before it and after it were fine. I am not sure why the disk powder measure didn't drop the load. It still has me questioning that press and it has loaded 1000's of rounds successfully.

It was a FMJ and we couldn't remove it with a cleaning rod. It took some aluminum bar stock and a rubber mallet with a padded vise.

They will shake you up for sure.

[DrMoebius]

My 7mm mag had hangfires a'plenty until I switched to magnum primers. That's one case where magnums were absolutely necessary. Not a squib, though. So far I haven't had to pound one of those out. Or tap, as you say.

"Tap" was a bit of an understatement, on my part. It took him about 5 hits with a small mallet to break it loose.

[ShootinMedic]

OP what primers are you using?

I had a LOT of squibs on my first batch of .40. I was getting at least one every mag. Unfortunately I loaded 1K after getting the load right. I pulled 50 and they all had powder so I couldn't figure out why I was getting so many squibs. After a lot of digging online, I found that the wolf/TulAmmo primers that I was using were a lot softer than the other "more expensive" primers and are prone to being seated to deep or not deep enough by inexperienced reloaders like myself. I found that with a progressive, it was hard to tell initially how far to seat the primers.

I went through the bucket of rounds with a hand primer so I could feel how deep the primers had been set and tossed the ones that had been set to deep and finished seating the ones that had not been seated enough.

After doing that, I finished the 800ish rounds and went from a 10-25% squib rate to 0%. I kept shooting them for a bit because I didn't know any better at the time. Luckily, the squibs wouldn't let another round chamber so I didn't loose any fingers.

The moral of my screw up is that you can have squib rounds that are charged with powder. It might be a primer problem. My understanding is that if you seat the primers to deep, the anvil gets out of position and it won't ignite the powder very well. I now pay a lot of attention to the priming stroke on my press (550B) as well as visually checking the powder in all of the rounds and haven't had any more issues with squibs.

I consider myself very lucky that it was a relatively easy lesson to learn and I wasn't injured nor was my gun. I also will never let anyone else shoot my loads and probably never will. Good luck with your loading and above all else, stay safe!

[chozenfew805]

Good to hear that your first Squib wasn't a disastrous one. As diligent as I try to be during my reloading sessions I'm still waiting for my 1st one

[Full Clip]

Yep, I'm part of the My Little Reload Squib Club as well.
Happened during a live-fire training class and the bullet stuck in the barrel of my XD-45 just far enough that I couldn't see it but the next round would not chamber.
Thank god.
I backed off the line, tore it down and found the bullet. No damage to the barrel, so I removed it, my instructor inspected everything, I reassembled, and I returned to the line. But if that bullet had made it another centimeter of so down the tube... BOOM.
Needless to say, I now pay even closer attention to everything...

[rconnerley]

Scary stuff, glad your safe!

The only time, I know of, that I missed a powder drop I got really lucky. It was in 30-06, I guess due to the large case volume the primer firing did not push the bullet out of the case, either that or my guardian angel was working overtime and that primer was bad too. I thought it was just a misfire until I pulled the bullet to scavenge the powder and found it empty. I took a moment and gave some thanks.

[DrMoebius]

OP what primers are you using?

CCI 500 w/ Power Pistol powder

I now pay a lot of attention to the priming stroke on my press (550B) as well as visually checking the powder in all of the rounds and haven't had any more issues with squibs.

I was also using a 550B. And this being my first time reloading, under my buddy's watchful eye, I had at least a few hesitant/incomplete lever strokes and forgotten projectiles.

This was the only squib load out of ~900 rounds loaded - thankfully. I tried to do the whole batch in one sitting, which is a recipe for disaster. I now appreciate that there is no room for fatigue, or lack of focus, in reloading. I will only do smaller batches stretched over multiple days.

[damndave]

This was the only squib load out of ~900 rounds loaded - thankfully. I tried to do the whole batch in one sitting, which is a recipe for disaster. I now appreciate that there is no room for fatigue, or lack of focus, in reloading. I will only do smaller batches stretched over multiple days.

I know what you mean. I try and limit my reloading to 100 rds per batch, then stop to reload the primer tubes, then go on again.

[JoefromPA]

I haven't had any issues with my reloads yet, but i grew up shooting and hunting with flint lock muzzleloaders. Nothing hang fires better than a flint lock, and that's if it even goes off at all.