What did you do at your reloading bench today?

Melnic · Nov 14, 2021

trimmed a bunch of 223 before wet tumbling, then trimmed a bunch of 30-06 before wet tumbling.
Primed up both batches.
I got in the Frankford Armory prep station w/ the trimmer. Saves lots of time.
I can run both hands holding one in the trimmer while moving the trimmed case through the other clean up tips. Thus, trimming time is free.
https://www.frankfordarsenal.com/ca...-series-case-trim-and-prep-center/903156.html

Melnic · Nov 14, 2021

John from MD · Nov 14, 2021

I loaded a bunch of 300 BO PC'd with GC and without. I milled out the gas check area in one cavity on one of my mold and am testing to see if the bullet is still accurate. So far, preliminary tests are positive. Tomorrow I will be shooting a larger group and, if it is good, I will mill out the rest of my mold cavities. I'm doing this mainly because I am going to be shooting them through a can and, even though PC pretty well seals the GC in place, I would hate to have a baffle strike and possible need a new can.

erwos · Nov 14, 2021

Cranked another 300 rounds of 9mm, finishing off my batch of RMR bullets. Will be ginning up a test run of the LOS bullets, but based on profile and OAL, not expecting much of a difference.

Still need to test out my 223 Rem loads off the Mark7 Evo before I get whole hog in cranking them out.

erwos · Nov 14, 2021

*double tap*

lazarus · Nov 14, 2021

Figured out my 6.5 Grendel Howa REALLY likes 2.255” COAL, 29.6gr CFE223 and 120gr Speer Gold Dots (Starline brass, CCI SRP). I am going to work more on my 31gr load and tweak COAL, charge weight slightly and see what else I can work with as it’s about an extra 140-150fps from 29.6gr to 31gr and it is for hunting.

31gr only got me a .97MOA 4-shot group.

Pictured is the 29.6gr 4-shot group (50yds).

FlokiBear · Nov 15, 2021

Placed 1000 CCI Large Pistol Primers on my reloading bench that I picked up from Cabela's in Gainsville VA for $80. There was a fair amount of CCI LPP and Federal LPP and magnum LPP. Plan to pair them up with some VV320 to make some 45 ACP this week.

steves1911 · Nov 18, 2021

Ran a ladder of 22-250 62gr speer gold dot Imr 4166. Found a pretty wide node from 33.7-34.3. Loaded up 10 more @ 34gr for further testing.

leomort · Nov 20, 2021

Well, turns out those 9mm 124gr gold dots I loaded earlier I didn't seat them deep enough as I couldn't get them loaded into my magazine. They were a smidge too long. Could of swore I measure them to correct OAL according to Speer manual. Gotta pull them and go back to the reloading bench again.

John from MD · Nov 20, 2021

leomort said:
Well, turns out those 9mm 124gr gold dots I loaded earlier I didn't seat them deep enough as I couldn't get them loaded into my magazine. They were a smidge too long. Could of swore I measure them to correct OAL according to Speer manual. Gotta pull them and go back to the reloading bench again.

What was the OAL that you loaded them too? Gold dots have a big mouth and usually have to be loaded shorter for feeding in my pistols.

leomort · Nov 20, 2021

John from MD said:
What was the OAL that you loaded them too? Gold dots have a big mouth and usually have to be loaded shorter for feeding in my pistols.

Johh,

I checked my reloading notes which were 5.5 gr Unique with COAL of 1.120" which matches Speers manual. I will go back and re-measure my loaded rounds. Maybe I messed up my seating die? I was a little concern because my 9mm 124gr hornady loads are COA of 1.060". So by comparison, those speer bullets are pretty long!!!

John from MD · Nov 20, 2021

I usually run mine at 1.100 for most middle of the road loads and have found that, at that length, they feed in all my guns. You are under the max load for that bullet so you might give it a try.

leomort · Nov 20, 2021

John from MD said:
I usually run mine at 1.100 for most middle of the road loads and have found that, at that length, they feed in all my guns. You are under the max load for that bullet so you might give it a try.

Thank you, John! I will give that a try!

Leo

lazarus · Nov 21, 2021

I found that Nu Shine and a few drops of mineral oil to thin it does WONDERS for tumbling brass. I use walnut media and I've just dealt with my brass being rather dusty (even using used dryer sheets). Man, that stuff helps out a bunch. Just tumbled about 1500 9mm cases yesterday and way less dust and shinier. Actually, the outside and inside of the cases look a little cleaner too.

erwos · Nov 22, 2021

leomort said:
Well, turns out those 9mm 124gr gold dots I loaded earlier I didn't seat them deep enough as I couldn't get them loaded into my magazine. They were a smidge too long. Could of swore I measure them to correct OAL according to Speer manual. Gotta pull them and go back to the reloading bench again.

TL;DR: You need to gin up dummy rounds and make sure that you can chamber those rounds in any gun you want to feed them in.

Explanation: the reloading manual isn't going to compensate for how your barrel is constructed, and the "right" load from a manual still may not chamber in your gun. Some barrels have long throats / freebore that will give you a lot of room to load long. Others have very little of that, and will force you to load a lot shorter than you'd like. Lone Wolf barrels, for example, have VERY short freebore, as do PSA PCC barrels (or at least this was the case when I tried on). JP PCC barrels, on the other hand, are like throwing a hot dog down a hallway - tons of freebore allowing you to load nice and long. Glock factory barrels are somewhere in the middle.

trickg · Nov 22, 2021

erwos said:
TL;DR: You need to gin up dummy rounds and make sure that you can chamber those rounds in any gun you want to feed them in.

Explanation: the reloading manual isn't going to compensate for how your barrel is constructed, and the "right" load from a manual still may not chamber in your gun. Some barrels have long throats / freebore that will give you a lot of room to load long. Others have very little of that, and will force you to load a lot shorter than you'd like. Lone Wolf barrels, for example, have VERY short freebore, as do PSA PCC barrels (or at least this was the case when I tried on). JP PCC barrels, on the other hand, are like throwing a hot dog down a hallway - tons of freebore allowing you to load nice and long. Glock factory barrels are somewhere in the middle.

Maybe I've just gotten lucky, or maybe it's because I use a Lee Factory Crimp Die for all of my handgun loads, but I've never had an issue getting anything to chamber. For a fair bit, I never even had a digital caliper - I'd just eyeball my rounds against ammo I already had - in some cases stuff my Dad had reloaded - and I'd go from there.

With semi-auto loads, there's usually a fair bit of allowable variance for COAL. Once I finally got some digital calipers, I was much more concerned about it for a while, but not every bullet has a listed recommended length, and after going and checking online, I'd find that whenever someone posted the question of "what OAL do you use for X bullets?" there were about 10 different answers across a range. I came to the conclusion that it probably doesn't matter that much, provided that it can still load in the magazine and still chamber properly.

I think that with reloading in general, there always seems to be a fair bit of allowable variance, although to be fair, some power/bullet combinations are more forgiving than others.

Take 45 ACP for instance with a 200 gr bullet using Bullseye for a powder. I've read about loadings as low as 3.0 using lightweight slide springs. Lyman lists 3.4 min to 5.7 max for 200 gr JHP. That's a full 2.3 gr allowable variance while staying within safety margins. If I'm loading somewhere in the 4s and I'm loading for range fodder ammo, I'm not going to quibble over a tenth or two of a grain variance in my metering.

I think that part of the reason so many guys won't get into reloading is because they have this idea that things need to be ultra-precise or you can cause a kaboom, and that's just not true at all. A person should want to be precise for consistency, but generally speaking it takes a fair bit before things start to get dangerous.

erwos · Nov 22, 2021

trickg said:
Maybe I've just gotten lucky

You've gotten lucky, and I don't mean that as an insult. My advice all stands. Bullet profile and chamber dimensions can make a big difference in what you can feed to various guns. A Lee FCD will not fix that.

trickg · Nov 22, 2021

erwos said:
You've gotten lucky, and I don't mean that as an insult. My advice all stands. Bullet profile and chamber dimensions can make a big difference in what you can feed to various guns. A Lee FCD will not fix that.

So....if the Lee FCD is specifically designed to bring every round back to factory ammo spec, and most guns chamber and fire factory ammo without an issue....I doubt if I've gotten that lucky.

On a side note, the issue we were discussing wasn't really about chamber dimensions - he was having an issue loading in his magazines because his OAL was longer than the magazine accepted.

erwos · Nov 22, 2021

trickg said:
So....if the Lee FCD is specifically designed to bring every round back to factory ammo spec, and most guns chamber and fire factory ammo without an issue....I doubt if I've gotten that lucky.

Lee FCD has no impact on the problem I'm describing. It manifests itself as the bullet hitting the rifling your barrel and either preventing your round from chambering, or potentially shoving your bullet further into the case as the bolt/slide forces the issue. If you're particularly unlucky, it can also manifest itself when the rifling HOLDS the bullet and you wind up with the equivalent of a squib when you manually eject a (formerly) live round. A fun thing to do is to measure the OAL of your ammo AFTER you chamber it and manually eject it. I would posit that a great many loaders would be surprised at the bullet setback they see.

You are correct that he had a different problem. But it's indicative of not checking your loads properly before committing to them.

trickg · Nov 22, 2021

erwos said:
You are correct that he had a different problem. But it's indicative of not checking your loads properly before committing to them.

On that we completely agree.

It's possible that the reason I've never had an issue is because I'm not trying to do anything different - I just want to load good ammo that shoots well and saves me some money, and to that end I've succeeded pretty well. I am pretty careful about it though.

What did you do at your reloading bench today?

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