What did you do in the reloading room today?

mathandbbsauce said:
Been sizing and otherwise prepping a few hundred FC .308 brass... nothing impressive about the brass but they're consistent, cycle well, and I have >1200 of them. Craziest thing is I've had to trim every piece and its once-fired!

I have more prepped than I am going to shoot for the next several months. At this point I'm procrastinating because I can't figure out how to get anything resembling consistent powder throws with Varget so it's going to be a looooooooooong night of scooping and trickling.
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I use primarily FC brass and I have had to trim most as well. After trimming I can fire them once and then resize and measure and they’re .005-.010” over first shot. It may be the nature of 308 and have nothing to do with being FC but that’s just what I’m using atm. As for Varget I have a charge master and still use a second scale due to the random .1 and .2 over
 
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SINNER said:
I use primarily FC brass and I have had to trim most as well. After trimming I can fire them once and then resize and measure and they’re .005-.010” over first shot. It may be the nature of 308 and have nothing to do with being FC but that’s just what I’m using atm. As for Varget I have a charge master and still use a second scale due to the random .1 and .2 over
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Based on headspace clearance in my gun, these would still chamber and fire. And, for that reason, maybe I should avoid trimming until there is a failure to load (I don’t have implements/expertise in true headspace measurement). And, since I don’t have facilities for annealing, my plan is to shoot these 3-4 times and move on. By the time I’ve shot 3600 rounds, I’m looking at like $1800 in bullets, $1500 in powder, and $400 in primers so a few hundred dollars I’m brass will be nbd.
 
SINNER said:
I use primarily FC brass and I have had to trim most as well. After trimming I can fire them once and then resize and measure and they’re .005-.010” over first shot. It may be the nature of 308 and have nothing to do with being FC but that’s just what I’m using atm. As for Varget I have a charge master and still use a second scale due to the random .1 and .2 over
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I just trim mine a little bit more and have not had to retrim them. They are being shot out of a bolt action gun.
 
KnotRight said:
I just trim mine a little bit more and have not had to retrim them. They are being shot out of a bolt action gun.
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My trimmer takes them back to 0.014” below max length but maybe an extra few thousandths would do the trick.
 
SINNER said:
I love the sound of Varget “crunching” in the morning! Slightly compressed load. Velocities not impressive BUT that’s out of a SOCOM 16” so I’ll take it. Loading some free Nickel Trophy Bonded LE projectiles I won in a raffle on REDEYE RELOADING a couple of years ago.
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Red Eye Reloading’s shop is only a few miles from my house. I’ve scored some hard to find components from them. They had some H1000 when it was unobtanium. They do the gun show circuit so inventory is kind of fluid.
 
Just got some 115 gr xtp, first 6 are 8.0 gr AA7, oal ~1.08 if memory serves. I’ll see how those do in a G19 size Dagger and go from there…. I’ve got several other powders available so any recommendations are welcome. Factory Gold dots have worked well, so duplicating their performance would be good.
 
Lee Satterfield said:
Red Eye Reloading’s shop is only a few miles from my house. I’ve scored some hard to find components from them. They had some H1000 when it was unobtanium. They do the gun show circuit so inventory is kind of fluid.
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Agreed, Nik's not that far from me either, known him for a few years. He definitely has some unique "things" from time to time, picked up a Star press 45acp complete in great shape with case feeder at a great price. Bunch 230gr HST bullets, etc. His inventory changes rather quickly, and some of the pallets of stuff he gets from reloaders stopping, shops closing.

-Snoopz
 
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Finally got around to cleaning my guns from the last range trip (over a week ago :confused: ) and then decapped my brass from that trip. I counted the brass - I came back with the same amount that I shot, which is pretty good considering I didn't have my brass catching net. I lost some of MY brass, but the RSOs swept a little extra brass my way. :)

I still need to load some more 9 and 45 for the next trips, I hope to do that this weekend.
 
Loaded 500 rounds of 45acp. 200gn RMR plated, 4.5gn Clays. Light loads for my wife’s CZ.

It took twice as long as it should have. I had a small problem getting started with my 550 (poor neck tension) so I decided to replace the Lee Auto Drum measure with a Dillon after I remembered I had an Alpha powder expander/funnel I never tried. I finally got everything set back up and running. I like the Alpha funnel on the Dillon measure.

https://shootingsportsinnovations.com/alpha-dropper-powder-funnel/

After I was done, I went to print labels and I ran out of tape in my label maker. A new cartridge messed up and I had to perform surgery on it.

After that, I cleaned up the shack, putting things back where they belong.
 
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I loaded some Super 38 to try to get one of my Super 38 1911s to feed properly. I think I found the problem, a sharp edge on the mouth of the chamber, and will see if I fixed it when I can make it back to the range Wednesday. Little things matter.

This pistol, a new Colt, had a trigger pull that was rough and jerky. The sear had a rough lip on it. I found a different sear and hammer and seem to have fixed that problem. I hope so.


Edit: Wednesday . It worked well. Eighty one rounds with four different bullets with no failures. I hate to have to fix a new gun, but it will be fine as long as it keeps working the way it did today.
 
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Bought 3 30 round 300 BO magazines yesterday and load 90 rounds with Hornady 208 ELD bullets, Shooters World Black Out powder and CCI Small Pistol Mag primers.
 
I cleaned out my reloading room and made a pile of stuff I need to list on here.

Lee 4 hole turret press
a variety of die sets
Hornady tricklers with franklin scale
Hornady Lock and Load powder measure
some semi processed once fired 308 military brass
idk what else...
 
SINNER said:
Loaded some of my new Swiss P 168gr 308’s I got from @RavenRocksPrecision . I shot one fast group between showers and they did great.
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Thanks. We found a little bit more during inventory today. We will weigh them out soon... (it's just a few quantity unfortunately)... But we have some really hot deals coming soon.
 
tdovea10 said:
I’m in load development on my 6GT. I need to get an annealer eventually just don’t know much about them
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You can spend anywhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand on annealers. There is plenty of options for sure.
How is the load coming?
 
DESi said:
You can spend anywhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand on annealers. There is plenty of options for sure.
How is the load coming?
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Yeah.. I'm noticing that as I look into it.. lol

Load is going. Running 108 ELD-M over alpha brass with H4350. I'm using the parameters the hodgdon reloading site has. Going to find a velocity node hopefully around the 2800 range and then see if magnum vs normal primers makes a difference.
 
DESi said:
You can spend anywhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand on annealers. There is plenty of options for sure.
How is the load coming?
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You should be good with the Alpha brass. They only had Hornady when I got mine, I just ordered some Alpha. I am tossing several pieces of the Hornady on each reloading.
 
679 rounds of 9mm. Why 679? That is how many primers were in the box. Don’t worry, I have more.

The session went really well until I was pouring the powder back into the bottle and spilled some - not much, though. And all but two of the rounds passed the case gauge, they only needed minor tweaking (burrs on the rim).

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Really guess its which label you read. Reloading manuals come in handy, dont have none of them there hi-tech plastic bottles, still stuck in the "metal can age" Have used it for Magnum handgun and 410 rounds. WW-630 (disc) was my goto powder for the 357 mag, still have a few # of it, @ $6.00 #

-Snoopz
 
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Toprudder said:
296 is used in some straight wall rifle cartridges - 30 carbine for instance. I’ve just never seen the “Rifle” or “Handgun” label.
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Yes I know that. I use it in 450 bushmaster among others. I just thought it was funny that 2 identical jugs had different rifle/handgun labels. I realize it is just a misprint.
 
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