Severe injury in freak reloading accident

Same thing happened to one of the guys on my pistol team about year and a half ago. He actually got it a little worse as he can't move one of his fingers. He has been reloading longer than I've been alive and is a national champion. In short, he knows a thing or two about guns and reloading. His accident was caused by static electricity. Read the beginning of your reloading manual, they talk about the dangers of it in there.
 
I'm guessing that grounding your press would help fix this? Scary [hmmm]

ETA: Nevermind, thought about this and grounding could make an ESD discharge worse. The ESD mat has the advantage of bleeding charge off slowly. Maybe Ill start using my hand primer more.
 
Last edited:
Marcus5aurelius said:
Shit our reloading bench is the same room as the safes so we run a dehumidifier in there constantly...This could be bad [thinking]
Click to expand...

No way with a dehumidifier running are you going to get to 9% humidity. Thats desert dry air, not something we will see around here unless you can seal the room and just run the dehumidifier constantly, and even then I dont think the mechanics of a normal humidifier would take water out of the air at that low of a point. 30% around here would be real low, like woodstove running a in tight house low....

Considering this seems to be ultra rare I would guess that more people have been injured from crushing / dropping primers than in this way.
 
I dehumidify my cellar to about 53-55% in the summer and in the winter it frequently gets down to around mid-30's.
Never single digits. As soon as the outside humidity rises so does the cellar environment as my house is old and I
haven't found all the cracks yet (probably never will). I have a good temp/humidity setup so I can monitor the
environment in the cellar. If you are concerned about the humidity, about an hour before you start reloading,
put a pan of water (partially filled five gallon bucket will do) in close proximity to your setup. It will help as the
dry air will suck up the water. It won't be quite as humid as South Carolina low country, but it will help.
 
This guy should buy a couple of powerball tickets, stat....

I've heard of the magazines going up (particularly in the 650) but never anything like this.

Well, so much for having the 12 year old load the primer tubes. Even if the chances of this happening are .00001 in a million, The SO would shoot me if that ever happened while she was loading primer tubes.

Then again... they said it was 9pct humidity.... I'm sure that had something to do with it, too. Here in the northeast I don't think it ever gets that low, not even in the dead of winter.

My guess.... the guy's press is grounded (or he was) and pulling the pin out was enough to make an arc jump between the metal loading tube and the press- the arc hitting the anvil of the bottom-most primer... What's really weird though is the tube kinda blew up in the middle, but who knows where it started.

-Mike
 
Bendad97:2107766 said:
This is why I still prime with my caveman Lee Tool.
Click to expand...
This Neanderthal does too but only cause I like to feel the primers seat, never would have even dreamed of exploding primers.
 
Bendad97 said:
This is why I still prime with my caveman Lee Tool.
Click to expand...

So having the primers blow up in a tray next to your hand is better than having them blow up in a tube? Maybe if you just use one primer at a time, but in general any priming tool that holds primers can blow up. Although you could argue with a hand primer the primers are less confined, so I would guess if the tray on one of those things went up, maybe only half the primers would blow up before the tray disintegrated. [laugh]

-Mike
 
That's it. It's settled. I'm never reloading again. [wink]

You're right even with the dehumidifier it brings it down to about 30% which should be fine. I try to remember to wear safeties when I reload and this just means that I'll be more adamant about it from now on.
 
I always wear glasses and rubber gloves.

Sent from the Hyundai of the droids, the Samsung Replenish, using Tapatalk.
 
Im thinking it's possible that in the act of picking up those fifty primers to the primer pick up tube, just the friction from the primers going thru the little nylon or plastic p/u tip was enough to cause a static charge to build up in the pickup tube and in his body. When that tube contacted the metal in the primer storage tube on the press, a discharge occured causing sympathtic detonation of primers in the tube. This electrical charge could also have been helped along if he had on nylon soled slippers or shoes, on a wall to wall type carpet in a very dry climate. Also dont know what kind of table or bench he had the press bolted to.
 
Moderator said:
Same thing happened to one of the guys on my pistol team about year and a half ago. He actually got it a little worse as he can't move one of his fingers. He has been reloading longer than I've been alive and is a national champion. In short, he knows a thing or two about guns and reloading. His accident was caused by static electricity. Read the beginning of your reloading manual, they talk about the dangers of it in there.
Click to expand...
Is his first name Bob? If it is he shot an outdoor bullseye match that I was running shortly after this happened and I spent the day reloading his magazines for him, but he still spent the day shooting.
 
Wow, I'm officially pretty freaked out.... We reload a lot and particularly in the winter when conditions are very dry.... Will definitely have to rethink my setup to minimize the chance of a static discharge.....[thinking]
 
Hmm. I'll definitely be monitoring the humidity when I reload. Here's an somewhat-related experiment with black powder and static electricity:

sparks1.jpg


http://www.ctmuzzleloaders.com/ctml_experiments/sparks/sparks.html

I'd love to try something like this with a primer, although the primer would need to be enclosed in something for safety.
 
bsimardjr said:
Is his first name Bob? If it is he shot an outdoor bullseye match that I was running shortly after this happened and I spent the day reloading his magazines for him, but he still spent the day shooting.
Click to expand...

Yes, it is. If you loaded his mags and talked with him, then you are aware that he knows his stuff when it comes to guns and reloading. He never knew static electricity could set off his primer tube. He is very open to telling the story, and warns everyone to read the whole begining of their reloading manuals.
 

Similar threads

Third World Reloading
Replies
18
Views
321
38ExtraSpecial
38ExtraSpecial
reloading 270 WSM
Replies
0
Views
32
wjsmall97
W
Reloading dies many to choose from
Replies
2
Views
128
Patriot Firearms & Ammo
Patriot Firearms & Ammo
45-70 reloading
Replies
22
Views
381
Tekoa
T
Reloading deals
Replies
1
Views
173
Chevy 2 65
Chevy 2 65
Back
Top Bottom