Do you wear eye / ear protection when reloading?

[taliv]

I’ve set off a few dozen primers while reloading. It’s not fun and my ears ring a bit so it prob is doing some damage but not nearly as loud as a loaded round indoors. I don’t wear ears. I sometimes wear eyes and usually wear gloves

[Ron3]

I’ve set off a few dozen primers while reloading. It’s not fun and my ears ring a bit so it prob is doing some damage but not nearly as loud as a loaded round indoors. I don’t wear ears. I sometimes wear eyes and usually wear gloves

That sounds like way too many.

[Bimmer]

I’ve set off a few dozen primers while reloading...

That sounds like way too many.

Agreed... "A few dozen" seems like a lot of primers to have set off!


Knock wood, but in 25 years of reloading, I've never set off a primer.

Maybe it's just dumb luck, because I've definitely mashed a few live primers.

[taliv]

once was on a single stage, it was actually not in a press per se, but in the forster primer seater tool. the forster primer "tube" has the primers in sideways, so they don't have the same sort of theoretical problem the dillon primer tubes have where all the primers are stacked on top of each other and could all go off at once, blowing through your ceiling. however, it has another design problem that makes it fairly easy to drop two primers into the hole, which is what i did. only one of the primers detonated, and it was the one in the primer pocket (unfired lapua 308 brass). when it exploded 100% of the blast went through the case and out the neck. unfortunately, the 3rd finger on my right hand was about 1 inch from the case mouth (you hold the case with your hand while priming) and caught the brunt of the blast, leaving lots of specks of black embedded in the first two layers of skin. it was numb for 30 seconds or so. kind like setting off a firecracker in your hand. i suspect that if my finger had been covering the case mouth under pressure, i would have been seriously injured. i'm a lot more careful about making sure none of my fingers are in the way when i prime now.

all the rest were on the 1050. i bought about 5000 never-fired pieces of lake city 223 brass during the W administration that had been "de-milled": pulled, emptied and had the primers made "chemically inert". whatever chemical they used to kill the primers weakened them and also made them stick to the sides of the primer pocket (corrosion, i believe)

anyway, in about 1 out of 100 of these cases, the decapping pin would rip the top of the primer off, and leave the sides of the primer stuck in the primer pocket. the swaging station would compress it, but not enough. and most of the time, i'd just crush a primer in there, which would lock up the machine and i'd have to disassemble the entire primer assembly to fix it. but occasionally, it would detonate the primer.

unfortunately it was nearly impossible to feel on that press, or detect somehow and prevent it.

[markm]

Ear protection I wear when I’m running my RT1500 case trimmer and shop vac to remove brass shavings.

Good point. I do wear ear pro if I'm trimming long cases on the Giraud.

[Coal Dragger]

The shop vac running is the main culprit for an elevated noise level, the RT1500 isn’t too bad.

So ear buds for music or a podcast and muffs over the top. Takes some drudgery out of case prep.

[derek45]

I always wear eye protection when I'm reloading.

I wear ear protection when I'm processing rifle cases. I use the DILLON trimmer and a shop vac.

[derek45]

doubled

[T2C]

Since I have accumulated enough birthdays to have my vision affected, I wear safety glasses 100% of the time when I reload. I wear magnified safety glasses, so I can see what I am doing. Safety Glasses USA sells safety glasses with different degrees of magnification at reasonable prices that I also wear while working around the garage.

[jsbhike]

I wear reading glasses so I have eye protection on but nothing for hearing. While it is possible for a primer to go off while reloading, I have not encountered it yet but I hear of others on the forums. Likely it is a small chance it could happen.

If you mean reading glasses like the ones sold in dollar stores and pharmacies, they make safety glasses with bifocal sections that are the trick.

https://www.fullsource.com/elvex-rx-200/

Just don't get full lens magnifiers. I didn't catch that on an order once.