Jim Taylor
Little-Known Reloading Phenomena
Wednesday, February 07, 2024, 07:52

I discovered this during an extended session of prepping brass and reloading. I had approximately 2500 fired 9mm cartridges and had spent weeks sorting them by headstamp and then resizing, depriming them, neck expanding and then priming. Then I loaded them all. It was a massive undertaking using my old RCBS Rockchucker. I handled each piece of brass at least 7 times during the entire reloading process (and it was 8 or 9 times with some) which adds up to handling at least 17,500 pieces of brass.

Finishing I felt like I had run a marathon! As I cleaned up and reorganized the loading bench I ran across a massive rifle cartridge that I did not recognize. I wracked my brain but could not remember having such a HUGE cartridge in my collection! Wondering what it was and where it came from I picked it up and looked at the headstamp. It read: "WW Winchester .30-30"!!!!
That put my head into a spin for a bit. Then I picked up another huge cartridge that turned out to be a .45 Colt!

I finally figured out that weeks of handling the little bitty 9mm cartridges had gotten my brain into a rut thinking that the small round was "normal" and thus any of the cartridges that I used "normally" looked abnormal.

I told Mic McPherson about it and he shared a story about a similar experience that he had. I am sure it's common but since I don't mess with the little cartridges all that much it had a real impact on me.