Here's a gallery of pics showing my extreme carelessness in reloading and I would like to serve as a reminder to the public to always double check you are using the appropriate powder and that pull-down military surplus powder is NOT the same as it's canister grade equivalent. Start at least 25% down from normal STARTING loads and work your way up. A bullet lodged in the barrel is better than what happened to me.

The nice folks at The High Road were nice enough to point out to me. I used the wrong powder. A carbine powder that is not suitable for a .308 rifle round.
OK, on to the pics. First, here are 3 cases in the order that they were fired. The first one was 44.0 grains of WC820 pull down over a 147 grain FMJ military surplus bullet. I touched this off in my Century Arms R1A1 FAL knock-off. The second and third were part of my test loads I made and fired in my CZ 550 Varmint Laminated.

In the future I don't plan on loading this powder in my rifle again, see as it's totally inappropriate and I have 8 lbs of WC846 pull-down (the correct powder) right over there. . . labled as "H-110ish". Time to find my Sharpie.



The next pictures are the results of the ka-BOOM! on my rifle. I had shrapnel in my face and hand but fortunately it was all minor and my eyes were unscathed. I attribute a lot of my lack of damage to the extremely well made DSA scope mount who's heavy aluminum construction deflected most of the energy away from me. Incidentally it flew 6 to 8 feet in the air according to witnesses. I have new clamps on order for it but I don't think the scope will still be zeroed ;).













Gun is spare parts now. Upper reciever and barrel are bulged and unusable. I might still get another FAL someday but it's not currently on the list. I got off easy, although the shrapnel working its way out of my thumb those couple weeks was really annoying. It came out of my lips much quicker ;).

Back