What did you do in the reloading room today?
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FatboyFlash
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I swept the floor.
I'm sure I have more than 8500 now, but probably not 20k. You win.
Uhh, well, hmmm, I have 10,000 in one drawer and 50,000 stuck in a closet. Got just a little carried away. Almost all CCI-SV.
Today I sorted brass cause @FatboyFlash wants some .40. This brings me to the question, does anyone reload the tiny calibers, the stuff smaller than .380? I’m filtering out all the rim fire and putting it in a bucket for future sorting, but can’t imagine reloading the little things.
hlpressley
Member
Added a few more tools to the bench to continue the journey.
Over the weekend I made it to the range. While there, I managed to get about 2 one gallon baggie of brass. For the past 2 days, I have been tumbling, depriming and resizing them. All that is left is around 100 40 cal that are in the tumbler. Once they are through, I will run them through the Lee full case resizer then run them through the RCBS depriming die.
I disassembled my Lee Auto Drum to try to stop the leaking but now it doesn't work. Something appears to be off with the linkage, preventing it from fully rotating the drum back to the original position. Gotta keep researching the fix.
Mine leaked a bit so I tightened the daylights out of it and it stopped. Good luck getting yours back working.
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Tonight I looked at my buckets of 45 acp brass and decided that I’m just not gonna sort it by primer size and then sell it at scrap prices. So there it sits. Surely the guys that sell brass don’t hand sort by primer size, do they?
Some do, some don't. Some will offer it sorted for a slightly higher price.
Since I decap all my brass for wet tumbling, I have gotten in the habit of sorting while decapping when I get back home from the range. Doing it that way, I never have a large quantity to do at one time. I've been throwing all the decapped but dirty LP brass in a 5 gal bucket to be used at a later date (it is almost full). I have plenty of cleaned/sorted 45 brass to keep me busy for a while.
Last night I finished trimming/chamfering a few hundred 223 cases, from range pickup. I will probably run them all through my new Dillon swager.
I can already tell that the Dillon swager is going to be one of those items that will cause me to kick myself because I did not buy it sooner.
I can already tell that the Dillon swager is going to be one of those items that will cause me to kick myself because I did not buy it sooner.
Ikarus1
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yep. I have been slacker than slack lately. I did decap some of the metric ton of 5.56 brass I bought a few weeks ago. Oh and I threw some 5.56 blanks that we found (with links!) fired from a M249 on Saturday at the Pee Dee Wildlife refuge. Looks like maybe someone was doing a little Robin Sage'n down on Grassy Island Road. @Chdamn you know if they do exercises near Pee Dee NWR?
Chdamn
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Not sure. If they do it’s a different lane than ours.
Most of the blanks are lake city brass. Great for reloading. Just chop off the blank crimp.
Ikarus1
Avtomat Krishna-kov
I was gonna chop em down for 300BLK but yeah you got an idear right thar
I sorted out a 50cal ammo can worth of 45 acp LPP, decapped it and dumped it all into the 40lb tumbler with 15lb of stainless pins. Will add water, soap and lemishine in the morning and see if it does a better job than the FART, which does an awesome job it’s just small.
FatboyFlash
Senior Member
I'm be by sometime today, I want to see that thing work. I'll get up with you a little later this morning to see what's a good time.
Good to see you. Dumped it after you left, it’s really clean and the Lyman media separator worked perfectly with water. Other than having to carry the 40lb drum around and costing a fortune it’s easier in every way than the FART.
hlpressley
Member
Loaded up my very first 6.5 Creedmoor rounds this morning. Stepped out of the loading room, plopped my fat tail on the ground and all 15 went boom. Some even went in the same hole!
This has been quite the endeavour for me having never loaded rifle rounds just a few months ago to now being able to do so start to finish. It was confusing at times, expensive most of the time, but the successes so far have made it very worthwhile! I still have much to learn to improve, but I'm happy with my progress so far. A big thank you to all of you who have helped me thus far and answered all of my newbie questions.
Carry on
This has been quite the endeavour for me having never loaded rifle rounds just a few months ago to now being able to do so start to finish. It was confusing at times, expensive most of the time, but the successes so far have made it very worthwhile! I still have much to learn to improve, but I'm happy with my progress so far. A big thank you to all of you who have helped me thus far and answered all of my newbie questions.
Carry on
Trying to straighten out the reloading closet and pulled to empty boxes of 44 Mag. brass out. Reloaded them with 23.3 gns of 4227 below a Missouri 240 grn SWC. Plans are to take the Rossi 92 out Sunday.
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BurnedOutGeek
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Getting ready for rifle to open tomorrow and just realized I had no ammo to hunt with. Made up some for the 260 and 243, now just need to decide which one to take...
DaveTNC
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I wet tumbled 1000 9mm cases with my little Harbor Freight dual drum tumbler.
Found some cases with an "X-TREME ST" headstamp that stuck to a magnet. They look like brass, but must be brass-washed steel. One of them turned copper colored, that's what got me to looking at it. I found a few others with that headstamp that didn't turn color, but were magnetic.
There were also some cases with just "X-TREME" that were not affected by the magnet.
Found some cases with an "X-TREME ST" headstamp that stuck to a magnet. They look like brass, but must be brass-washed steel. One of them turned copper colored, that's what got me to looking at it. I found a few others with that headstamp that didn't turn color, but were magnetic.
There were also some cases with just "X-TREME" that were not affected by the magnet.
Freedom Munitions sells "American Steel" ammo. I will be that is where these came from.
https://www.freedommunitions.com/ammunition/pistol/9mm/9mm-luger-147-gr-rn-steel-new.html
DaveTNC
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Aah, probably so. I didn't think of that. There were several with FM and X-TREME (no ST) cases in the batch. I never bought any Freedom Munitons ammo so I didn't know they used X-TREME headstamp. I thought it was maybe empty brass sold for reloading. Looks like they may use both.
Decided on a 44 Special load with my Bayou Bullets after some testing and then loaded 100 of them tonight. Showed them to the wife because she asked me what I was doing and then she said, "what makes them SPECIAL?"
Charlie R
You can't take ammo home!
she asked me what I was doing and then she said, "what makes them SPECIAL?"
Answer: They are mine!!!!
BigWaylon
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Sorted out a full 5 gallon bucket, and about 1/3 of the way through the second. Uggh. Not sure if my back and my eyes will recover.
Hopefully you net enough SPP that you won’t have to do it again for a long time!Sorted out a full 5 gallon bucket, and about 1/3 of the way through the second. Uggh. Not sure if my back and my eyes will recover.
Today was busy. Got the Inline fabrication mount on the bench and the QR plates on the LNL, Co-ax, and SDB. Got the racks hung on the wall for the presses that aren’t in use. Sorted 5 gallon bucket into 38 special and 357. Deprimed 200 500 S&W Mag and will tumble them tomorrow. Got the LNL case feeder working with the CasePro. Started sorting dies, really who needs more than 3 sets of dies in any caliber, and how do you end up with extra crimp dies.
Didn’t load a single round, didn’t shoot a single round, but I’ll be back at it in another week.
DaveTNC
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I read somewhere that someone had found brass-washed steel cases with a CBC or S&B headstamp, I can't remember which it was. I guess I need to find a big magnet to pass over the piles of brass.
nbkky71
Well-Known Member
Got the Dillon 550 all spun up for .223 production and cranked out 300 rounds of .223 for the new service rifle tonight.
I found a bunch of old winchester brass that I had prepped years ago and forgot about, so I'm using it all up for practice ammo. This brass has so many firings on it that there is little resistance when seating a primer. I had about a dozen cases where the primer wouldn't even stay in the pocket! It all goes into the scrap bucket after this go-around
I found a bunch of old winchester brass that I had prepped years ago and forgot about, so I'm using it all up for practice ammo. This brass has so many firings on it that there is little resistance when seating a primer. I had about a dozen cases where the primer wouldn't even stay in the pocket! It all goes into the scrap bucket after this go-around
Loaded 100 - 38 Special wadcutters. This is the first time since around 1980 that I have loaded any wadcutters. About 6 months ago I bought a used set of dies just to get the setting die to load these bullets.
I used 3.2 grn of Bullseye under 148 Extreme WC. OAL was 1.273". I am guessing about 850 feet per second.
I used 3.2 grn of Bullseye under 148 Extreme WC. OAL was 1.273". I am guessing about 850 feet per second.
In my quest to finish off some of the partial bottles of powder I have I loaded up the last of my Ramshot Zip under some 125gr coated lead I had laying around. If you've never tried this powder you should, very good all around performer, lots of load data available, and is very accurate out of my guns.