What did you do in the reloading room today?

A friend brought me about 20 lbs of range pickup, mostly 45acp but also a lot of rifle and revolver calibers, including .308, 30-06, 30-30, 8mm, 7.62x54R and x39 (brass and boxer primed), 45 Colt, 44mag, 44spl, and a few 44 Russian. Got everything sorted and decapped. Oh, and some 50 AE as well - getting close to critical mass on those, soon it will be time for me to go out and buy the dies and bullets for it. And a gun, too! :D
He must be a great friend to do that!
 
What do you guys typically do with the "brass-for-which-you-own-no-gun"?

I have handfuls of brass for calibers I used to fire, plus brass for things I've never owned, and likely never will. I never have the heart to just toss the stuff in a recycle bin, though.
I've saved up most of the brass I collect. Sometimes I sell it or trade it, sometimes I give it to someone that can use it. If it is an interesting (to me) caliber, I keep saving it up until I have enough to make it worthwhile to load, and then I get the gun for it. The only brass I toss is brass that can't be used, either damaged, or Berdan primed, etc.
 
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What do you guys typically do with the "brass-for-which-you-own-no-gun"?

I have handfuls of brass for calibers I used to fire, plus brass for things I've never owned, and likely never will. I never have the heart to just toss the stuff in a recycle bin, though.

Save it for the gun that fires it. Got everything I need for .38 but no wheelgun. I have a drawer specifically for 38 and 45 brass and bullets that I found a stupid good deal on. Or if I run into somebody that I feel could use it, it may get gifted.

Hopefully I’ll just end up with that k6s I’ve been eyeballing since it was released. Then I’ll have a valid reason for my component hoarding. Lol
 
Stuffing Mags for a class this weekend.
Also, the "Mag Pump" makes light work of all the loading.

@Metalliman27055 think I have enough? Lol
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If that’s for the handgun combative class. I have about 15 Korean g19 mags I can lend you. I’d hate for you to keep Dave waiting while you are getting a thumb workout. Lol
 
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Save it for the gun that fires it. Got everything I need for .38 but no wheelgun. I have a drawer specifically for 38 and 45 brass and bullets that I found a stupid good deal on. Or if I run into somebody that I feel could use it, it may get gifted.

Hopefully I’ll just end up with that k6s I’ve been eyeballing since it was released. Then I’ll have a valid reason for my component hoarding. Lol
^this-

I had the dies, brass and projectiles for 45Colt long before I bought the pistol. Just knew that was what I wanted.

Other stuff like 45-70 brass, just hangs around until I run across someone needing it or make it a PIF.

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Haven't ordered the Blue Bullets in several years but thought I would revisit them for a couple reasons. Ive heard they changed their process up to eliminate the smurf finger, and it actually says so right on the pack. I also have a gun that hasn't been as accurate as I was hoping for with coated bullets in .356-.358 diameters but shoots jacketed real good so thought I would give the .355 Blues a try, cant hurt. Loaded up a few last night over some Accurate #2, plan to give them a try this weekend.

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Loaded up 700 .223 rounds for AR plinking and converted the press over to 9mm. Tomorrow will be my first time loading 9 on the Hornady rather than the Dillon SDB. While setting it up I rediscovered a couple reasons that I am frustrated by the primer feed on the Hornady, I hope that I got the issues sorted out.
 
I did not have enough of dirty 45acp for a full load in the wet tumbler, so I threw in some assorted other brass (460, 45 Colt, 44mag, 44spl) and ran a load. Sorted it all back out after it was done. I like bright brass!
 
Today was a mashup of "what did you do...reloading room" and "what did you do...garage".
Last weekend I removed the Lee 3-hole turret press and mounted the RCBS turret press in it's place. I also re-did the setup of the 32ACP dies that were in the Lee, but in the RCBS.
A few days ago the 2 extra turrets I purchased arrived. I had been thinking about some sort of storage solution since I had one for the Lee turrets.
Turret holder 1.0 was a repurposed wireframe cassette tape holder, with certain wires cut and bent back.
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I searched around for a large turret holder, but only one I found was made by Redding and they are rather proud of it.
Turret holder 2.0 are fabbed from bits laying around the barn.
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Now, I've never been one who cared if it looks a little wonky as long as it fulfills it's purpose. That said, I want to replace the top wingnuts with regular nuts when I can get out to the gittin place. So these will be tweaked a bit later.
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Played around a bunch today. Started out with 100 - 45 ACP using some Bullseye under a Hornady 200 gn FMJ C/T. Then 50 380 ACP using Bullseye under a Precision 95 gn lead round noise. These are a bitch to load if you have big fingers. Next up is 20 - 6.5 CM and maybe 100 223s. Might try the 62 gn Hornady FMJ in these 223s. Never load that bullet.
 
You need some 124’s and some E3
Haven’t tried E3, but my immediate issue is that I have many thousands of these plated 115gr hps and many pounds of w231 and bullseye, and I’m trying to make something worth shooting. Increased COL to see if that helps.
 
Is it a trick of the light, or is something funky going on with that primer?

View attachment 111869


What's your case-prep for .223 on the 1050? Do you just take clean brass and run it all in one pass, trimming on the press?

Probably a “trick of the light”. I took the picture with a cell phone in natural light with no flash. Lots of shadows in the garage. Or, it could be a bad round. Who knows? If it is a bad round, I’ll find it.

As far as case prep for .223 (and 300 Blk), I don’t use the 1050 for it. I usually only deprime gobs of brass on a 650 w/ a Mark 7 (automated). Then I wet tumble the brass (again, in bulk). When I get around to it, I will trim, anneal & resize. I trim off the press. When time permits I will reload it on the 1050.

Right now I’ve got probably another 1000 rounds of prepped brass to reload and probably another 3000 rounds of brass that needs to be deprimed, cleaned, annealed & resized. I really need to stop picking up brass, lol.

People do it a lot of different ways and there are merits to them all but this way makes the most sense to me.




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Some days are harder than others! Today was one of those days. My first rule in reloading is "ONLY ONE TYPE OF POWDER ON THE BENCH AT ONE TIME". Well that rule should apply to brass and bullets. Long story short, had to pull 20 rounds and check the powder charge and trying to stick a 308 bullet in a 6.5 case. On Sunday I will tackle the 204 Rugers.
 
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Loaded up some test loads for the 9mm bullets I cast a couple weeks ago, using the Lee 356-120-TC. Trying 3.5, 3.7, and 4.2 grains of W231 (Three consecutive cavities in my Auto Disk). Had to seat the bullets at 1.035 to get them to plunk.
9mm.jpg

Then loaded up all of the Lee TL358-148-WC I had left, 100 in 38 Special and 43 in 357 Magnum.
38-357.jpg

Now I'm out of bullets that I've cast. Time to fire up the pot, I guess.:)
 
Today I tried a fun experiment.

I loaded 50 rounds of 38special using a 158g coated lead bullet. 25 were loaded on the SDB as normal and for the second 25 I sized the brass with an RCBS die and then expanded the case with an RCBS Cowboy die before running it through the SDB with the sizing die removed. The test was to determine if the brass was squeezing down the lead bullets causing reduced accuracy.

I shot 5 from one sample, then 5 from the other, alternating until, all rounds were fired.

Now I’m not a great shot, but the groups from the manually prepared brass were consistently and significantly smaller.

Was thinking about something else and tossed most of the targets on the way off the range, but will reshoot this next week, may have my wife load for me so I don’t know what I’m shooting.
 
I have a friend in from Israel and he wanted to see how to reload a round so I decided that I would show him on some 308's. He was in the military and learned to shot many years ago. Then he looked at me and said "I never thought about how the rounds were made". Ended up loading 35 - 308s with RL-15 (never used RL-15 in a 308) under a Hornady 150 FMJ
 
Took 2 days:
Finished tumbling a gallon zip lock size bag off 223 and a about 1/2 gallon bag of 308s and 6.5 CM. All brass was deprimed and resized.
 
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Reloaded 20 - 204 Rugers with Nosler 32 grn bullets over 28.0 of Varget. I really hate reloading 204s. Always spilling powder. The case is so small it takes forever for the powder to drop and I will get in a hurry and pull the funnel away too soon. Powder all over the bench.
I used to dislike range pickup 223s because a lot of them needed to decrimped. Today, I realized that is the only way to know that the brass is once fired. I was loading some 223s for a bolt action rifle and did not want to use brass that has been fired a bunch.
 
Today all I did was fashion a rudimentary recoil spring tester with stuff I already had on hand. Verified the few Wolff springs I had for my Witness pistols.
 
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