The Arizona Rifleman talks about problematic reloads, namely loads made from demiled components.  You see, the United States government is forbidden from surplussing ammunition these days, thanks to our last gun hating Commander-in-Chief, Bill Clinton. But it’s not illegal to dismantle surplus into their components and sell those. I’ve been using such lake city brass for a while now. You have to be careful, because as he mentions, the components can get damaged or deformed as they are demiled.
UPDATE: Fixed the link. But the article on Depression Porn by Virginia Postrel was pretty good.
Virginia Postrel is writing about demilled ammo now? ;-)
Kidding aside, it would behoove us all to have good working knowledge about how and why ammunition works, even if one doesn’t reload one’s self. Admittedly, one can go pretty far dealing with things as “black boxes” (I don’t care how it works as long as it works), but one is better off knowing. Why, if one were inclined, one could go read an article at Wikipedia (okay, I wouldn’t use it as a sole source either) that discussed the inner workings of primers. Had links to PDFs of the original Boxer and Berdan patents and everything.
Shit :)