Since the whole purpose of neck sizing is to keep the case filling the original chamber, you should never use neck sized brass in a different rifle without at least full length sizing before reloading.
I have heard of one other event like this that caused a fatal injury. In that case, the gun was horizontal on a bench and someone behind the gun was struck with the flying case fragment.
Removing a loaded round stuck in the chamber is a task fraught with danger as the explosion is confined by the chamber walls. Both ends of the barrel need to be respected as potential sources of flying objects. Placing the butt on the ground would have absorbed the case head with no damage.
GGaskill wrote: Sorry, I didn't know you were going to have this problem or I would have told you.
Oh, I know you would have, and your input is excellent, because after all the main purpose of this forum is to educate and you did that well.
You would think that a guy who had reloaded since 1973 and had been shooting since he was 10 (if you don't count bb guns), would know stuff like this. I guess most of us have gaps in our knowledge that we don't realize. At least I learn from my mistakes. Honestly, I have read volumns on reloading and until this happened and I mentioned it on this forum, I had never seen anything in the manuals about not using reloads from one gun in another when neck sizing only. I have switched reloaded ammo around in my AR10's all the time with no issues, but I use small base dies and resize the whole case for them.
That was a wake up call for me in terms of gun safety as well and at least I had enough sense to not have any body parts over either end of the gun.
I suppose I can go out and take a picture of the hole in the mule, but I already replaced the stock on the 308 and threw the old one away. I also threw away the damaged floorplate, which was bent into a horse shoe shape. It turns out that Howa makes the floorplates on the Weatherby Vanguard and a floorplate stamped in big letters "HOWA" will now adorn the Weatherby, that is assuming the gunsmith is ever able to get the stuck bullet case out of the chamber.
I suppose I can go out and take a picture of the hole in the mule, but I already replaced the stock on the 308 and threw the old one away. I also threw away the damaged floorplate, which was bent into a horse shoe shape. It turns out that Howa makes the floorplates on the Weatherby Vanguard and a floorplate stamped in big letters "HOWA" will now adorn the Weatherby, that is assuming the gunsmith is ever able to get the stuck bullet case out of the chamber.
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