The below pictures are from last week, a friend let somebody shoot 38 special re-loads that were purchased at a gun show in his handgun. The revolver is a S&W Airlight PD chambered in 357, no problem shooting 38's through it right? The picture will speak for itself.
Being the type of person who wants to know why this happened he let me take the gun and ammo to do some research, so out came my trusty reloading tools, a scale and my calipers. I weighed each cartridge first, I know that I should not have been amazed but I was, the range was from 199.0 grains up to 209.9 grains, all had the same JHP bullets seated in them. There is almost an 11 grain swing, the bullets and cases are the same. Sounds to me like double and triple charges were put into the cases although I have not yet taken any apart to formally verify this by weighing the individual componants. The finished cartridge lengths are also all over the place the majority well below the specified lengths in re-loading manuals.
Fortunatly nobody was huurt, the shooter was hit on his safety glasses by a flying object, no damage, strike one up for lady luck. Notice the shell case and bullet, we believe that is the one which caused the damage. It appears that the shell case burst before the projectile could leave the barrel, instant hand grenade!!!!!
We need to educate everybody we know about purchasing re-loaded ammo from people that they do not know, .... I wonder how many of the people with baggies full of ammo are licensed to re-load and sell?
