Overcharge

I had a bad day at the range. After several tens of thousands of reloads, I had my first overcharge today. I was firing my Taurus 817 .38 SP snubby. After the first couple of dozen rounds, one went bang instead of "bang". The Taurus was completely locked up. I finally managed to get the cylinder open and the remaining live rounds slid right out, but I couldn't get the brass from the overcharged round to move forward or back without tools. Since I hadn't brought anything else to shoot, my day was done.

When I got home to my workbench, extracting the bad round was no big deal. The Taurus seems none the worse for wear, and I hope to get it back to the range tomorrow. Lessons learned? Well, four:

1. Take a backup gun to the range in case of a malfunction that you can't fix.

2. Drink one to the folks at Taurus. They make a rugged revolver. :drinks

3. Be even more careful in reloading procedures. How? I'm not sure, yet. I use a Dillon progressive loader that automatically advances the case after it's charged, so it's pretty difficult to overcharge one. Nevertheless, I must have done something wrong, because no one else was there when I loaded that round (darn it!).

4. Mind your eye protection. It could have been worse.