The Reloading Thread

matthewmcl (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

  If you are trying to get by on the cheap, the older style vibrating bowl with corn cob media is pretty cheap, used.

Okay.  I really don't know how you did that.

I saw my uncle over the weekend and among the things he gave me was a Vibra Tek Cleaner Polisher and a bunch of mysterious orange-brown media.

What other super powers do you possess?

Other than being slow, is there any reason not to clean brass with a brush in soap and water? FIL is still unsure where he stashed his media tumbler. 
 

Ive been out to the ranges half a dozen times in the last month and picked up everything I could find other than 22lr and even grabbed some of that. In my master plan, I'm at the clean and sort phase. Keeping everything in use in my family and selling or trading the rest. I'm not in a rush to start loading yet since primers and powder are still not available. 

In reply to barefootskater (Shaun) :

I usually just use very fine steel wool to clean cases

In reply to Antihero (Forum Supporter) :

Good to know! What about the inside? Is that critical? 

barefootskater (Shaun) said:

In reply to Antihero (Forum Supporter) :

Good to know! What about the inside? Is that critical? 

I've never done the insides personally.

I can't believe how fast that added up. Judging by my bucket, I had collected 2 gallons of brass. 
 

reusable:

478 of .223. 
519 of 9mm. 
28 45-70. 
29 .44mag. 
87 .45acp. 
26 .40sw. 
9 30-06. 
11 .380. 
12 357sig. 
roughly 8lbs of scrap, either .22, .17, or damaged/flattened stuff.

and I think I've shot 100 or so .308 all of which I've kept. So I'll be keeping mostOnce I can get some powder and primers I'll find a manual and start getting set up. 

Question. 
 

Pure lead isn't ideal for casting bullets as I understand. Leaves lead in the barrel and some other stuff. I've heard of guys alloying it with stuff to harden it up, but that seems a little beyond my capacity at the moment. I've also heard of guys powder coating bullets then resizing them to exactness. Also seems a little iffy. 
So it got me thinking about actual jacketing. Would a copper electro-plating be sufficient? Stuff is supposed to be pretty thin. Easy to do at home. And the bullets could be resized. Just idle thoughts. 

You ideally want to sift the bullets of the hillside at the range then cook up in a propane powered turkey fryer to skim off all the garbage.  Cast those into ingets and you are good to cast with. 
 

Pure lead is great for blackpowder bullets but nothing else.  Tinning with Antimony is not complex and gets you to a nice smokeless powder worthy target reload.

Antimony! That's what I couldn't remember the name of. Also just did some google reading and it seems that while it could be done, it wouldn't be cost effective on a small scale at all. 
I have a nice stash of wheel weights I was hoping I could put to use. 

Just a couple notes:

A lot of the brass I see at the range is .223/5.56 military ammo with crimped primers.  A friend who reloads says to just pitch any cases that are crimped, since the primers are a bear to remove, and the primer pocket needs to be reamed a bit to fit the new primer.

The best reason to clean the inside of the case is to reduce wear on your sizing die.

Good discussion of bullet casting here:

https://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2012/3/21/bullet-casting-bullets-on-the-cheap/

Crimped primers are a little annoying, but not horrible. A lot of 5.56 is crimped, a lot is not. Checking is easy.

If you are casting, wheel weights, as noted, are handy. Tin helps, too, so using your discount on solder can also help.

If you want to coat the bullets, plating is not the easiest. People do have good luck with powder coating and baking in a thrift store toaster oven.

Lead can cause issues in a semi auto like an AR. The lever action won't care. 

If you are making plinking loads, be nice to your brass and don't worry too much about cleaning. The ammo will be messy to deal with, but still works.

Thought I'd drag this thread up again. I finally managed to pick up a set of calipers to measure things properly. I THINK that's the last tool I need. I've been sitting on a couple hundred .308 shells for a while now, most of which have been cleaned and deprimed. 
 

Tonight I thought I'd prep some shells. Started by measuring the ones I had easy access to without digging. All but one was ready for sizing. So, lube, size, check. Easy enough. Well, I don't have the powder I want to use, but I do have primers, so I primed 80 and set them aside. 
 

A guy I shoot with worked up a load using 3130 and some Sierra flats that was running 1/2" @100y so I've been waiting for some to come up locally. I need to make the rounds this weekend, but I may get impatient and pick up a lb of N150 and start with that. I have a box of 150gr fmjbt that I need to use up anyway, as well as a couple dozen lightweight 130gr projectiles courtesy of Matthewmcl. So progress is slow, but still progress. I think I've run maybe 15 rounds through the rifle in the last 14 months. A fellow should do something about that. 

Nice to see it brought back to life.  I need to find my motivation to load a few thousand 45ACP.  I finally found a spread of 4 different bullets that I'm hoping my match 45 likes.  It loved the Hornady 185 semi-wad cutter but they killed that offering a few years ago.

I have finally been putting my gear to use, also. The season is over for chrony work, though, so no new loads until spring.

My son and a bunch of his friends and I shot up a bunch of ammo last week.  I need to fire up the presses, so to speak.

Been working on finding a good recipe for 9mm and Red Dot.  Currently at 3.9 grains under a 115 grain JHP.

Did hornady stop making amaxes? Was all over town over the weekend, everyone was out. 
 

Cabelas had a lot of power in stock, cheapest was around $39 per pound.

In reply to Folgers :

The big retailer here has a bunch of pistol powder in but not a lot of rifle powder. Unless I want magnum stuff the only thing they show on hand is N150 for $41. I think I'll pick that up, as the other local places didn't have anything better. One did have 30-30 on the shelf though so that's something neat. 

Website said $41, the sticker said $48. I'm not about that. But they also had TAC for $36 and my book has those recipes too so that's what I got. 
Starting at the bottom, the manual says fmjbt minimum is 42.4gr. So I made 5. Then I made 5@ 42.9. I'll do more tomorrow if I have time and try to get 25 or 30 ready for testing. Planning to hit the range this weekend if the weather permits. 

If nothing else, they look good. 
 

Wife was going to throw away this box, but I had other plans. Everything fits pretty well, so it'll do for now. Easy to store. 

matthewmcl said:

I have finally been putting my gear to use, also. The season is over for chrony work, though, so no new loads until spring.

I'd imagine you're snowbound up there. If you find a reason to head south, I have most weekends off and we don't get snow. 

In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :

I will keep that in mind, thank you. I will be able to continue shooting at an indoor range, I just can't set up my old fashioned chrony.

In reply to matthewmcl :

How much do you rely on a chronograph when working a load?

I like to chrono any batch I put together, just to make sure my velocities are where I expect them to be.

So, would there be a reason to alter what might be an accurate load based on being too fast/slow? Say you have a consistent pattern, but maybe it's outside of a certain acceptable speed window, would that be a problem?

In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :

For me, as a newbie, it's as much curiosity as anything.  As long as it's fast enough to get out of the barrel and not so fast that it's bumping up against the recommended maximum, I'd be good with the load that grouped the tightest.

Mostly I like to look at standard deviation as a check on my consistency. 

I sometimes use tac for 223.
 

I find it cleaner burning than Winchester 748 and some others, but harder to find a reliable source for. Around ten or twelve years ago I think I was paying under $20 per pound for it.