Precision reloading steps
- Thread starter Pcaps
- Start date
I agree, if you cannot "shoot the difference" at 300 meters between throwing charges on a good measure and weighing each charge on a 10-10 beam scale using standard RCBS or Lee dies with a economy priced press , spending something upwards TO $2,000.00 on an intelledropper and a lab scale, $400 on competition dies, and $400 or so a more expansive press will not increase your accuracy.
This is if you are using quality brass and bullets and measuring tools like a good vernier caliper
However I have been told I am wrong by those that have done that , (spent the money but don't shoot any more accurately)
My experiments at various distances out to 800 meters proved otherwise.....
Cat
Last edited:
Hand Skills
CGN Regular
- Location
- In the 'heartland', southern SK
Depending on your goals, it doesn't have to be complicated.
Here is a great article on keeping it simple;
https://www.longrangehunting.com/articles/maintaining-consistency-in-your-brass.1211/
Here is a great article on keeping it simple;
https://www.longrangehunting.com/articles/maintaining-consistency-in-your-brass.1211/
NZClaybuster
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- Calgary, Alberta
Primal rights has a youtube video titled Order of Operations that is a good base...
Basic reloading fundamentals is precision, compared to factory ammuniltion. I reload for hunting purposes only and my goal is to achieve 1/2" or less, three shot groups. Many times my rifles have achieved happy medium of 1/2" groups with ultra velocity. The goals that I pursue is to keep my reloading components consistant, in size and weight, to .002" and to the last kernel of gun powder.
For accuracy and hunting, I always use Nosler bullets, the accubonds and ballistic tips. I always use "one" bullet, one brand of case, primer and work around it with two or three different gunpowders.
Personally, I love reloading, been doing it hence 1982. When a hobby is loved, it doesn't feel like work, there is always a smile on my face doing so, still after 44 years. When shooting at the range, there is "reward." When hunting and killing an animal, there is "great reward" for confidence and greatfulness for these two magnificent pursuits.
This is EXACTLY what I do. I'm a new to reloading but have adopted this philosophy as well. .5 MOA and maintain continuity - same same same. And I'm with Colonel Townsend - "Only accurate rifles are interesting"
My process is first decapping, dry tumble brass, anneal, clean primer pockets and case necks, dry neck lube on inside of neck then put threw expander mandrel, full length resize brass, prime, loads charges with AutoTrickler and seat. I clean and wipe down brass through out processes.
I find it easier to start at the beginning these days. It wasn’t always that way.
Pick a bullet, by intended use. Whatever you value, high BC, preferred terminal performance, whatever. That may pick your barrel.
Pick a velocity range, that will narrow down your cartridge choices, and your powder choices.
Determine whether you can reach the lands with that bullet and that cartridge and still fit in the magazine in the rifle that you may not even own yet. If it isn’t going to do that reconsider your choice of cartridge, rifle/mag box, or perhaps reamer. This is a great time to change your plan because you haven’t spent any money yet.
Now that you have a plan, one that involved dealing yourself 3 aces right off the bat it gets a lot easier.
Pick some good brass, we all know what the good stuff is. Since your bullet, velocity tange cartridge is already picked the powders pretty much pick themselves.
Load development can be very simple at times. Start at the bottom and go up a grain at a time one cartridge at each level. Shoot them all at the same target watching your chronograph and whatever pressure signs you know and love. Alternately you could pretend you’re doing a ladder test, or rough zeroing, or pretending to do a barrel break in. This is only limited by your imagination. The real goal is finding pressure and velocity. If its too hot, back off til it isn’t. If you’re not getting your velocities, quit and change powders.
When you’ve established a solid safe working maximum for your rifle, load 10, go out to 500-600 yards and find out whether you have a load or not. You likely do, and you already know the velocity and have a rough zeroed rifle with a bullet that does what you want when it gets there. If the load shows promise you can quit or play with seating depths, or work down your loads. Way cheaper than working up, where you shoot a lot of groups of loads that you wouldn’t want anyway. You’re never going to fine tune a crap load into something awesome, and if you hate the velocity who cares if it shoots? If it doesn’t look promising consider changing bullets. You already have a pretty good lock on maximum powder charges, so you don’t have to start in the basement on your pressure/velocity loads.
Alternately there’s picking your cartridge and rifle without thought, and throwing everything in the gun-shop at it. I used to do that.
Pick a bullet, by intended use. Whatever you value, high BC, preferred terminal performance, whatever. That may pick your barrel.
Pick a velocity range, that will narrow down your cartridge choices, and your powder choices.
Determine whether you can reach the lands with that bullet and that cartridge and still fit in the magazine in the rifle that you may not even own yet. If it isn’t going to do that reconsider your choice of cartridge, rifle/mag box, or perhaps reamer. This is a great time to change your plan because you haven’t spent any money yet.
Now that you have a plan, one that involved dealing yourself 3 aces right off the bat it gets a lot easier.
Pick some good brass, we all know what the good stuff is. Since your bullet, velocity tange cartridge is already picked the powders pretty much pick themselves.
Load development can be very simple at times. Start at the bottom and go up a grain at a time one cartridge at each level. Shoot them all at the same target watching your chronograph and whatever pressure signs you know and love. Alternately you could pretend you’re doing a ladder test, or rough zeroing, or pretending to do a barrel break in. This is only limited by your imagination. The real goal is finding pressure and velocity. If its too hot, back off til it isn’t. If you’re not getting your velocities, quit and change powders.
When you’ve established a solid safe working maximum for your rifle, load 10, go out to 500-600 yards and find out whether you have a load or not. You likely do, and you already know the velocity and have a rough zeroed rifle with a bullet that does what you want when it gets there. If the load shows promise you can quit or play with seating depths, or work down your loads. Way cheaper than working up, where you shoot a lot of groups of loads that you wouldn’t want anyway. You’re never going to fine tune a crap load into something awesome, and if you hate the velocity who cares if it shoots? If it doesn’t look promising consider changing bullets. You already have a pretty good lock on maximum powder charges, so you don’t have to start in the basement on your pressure/velocity loads.
Alternately there’s picking your cartridge and rifle without thought, and throwing everything in the gun-shop at it. I used to do that.
Thanks dogleg , I’ll keep that in mind for picking my next rifle but for the ones I already have I shall try your load development method, makes sense (and dollars) as ya I have definitely chased a lot of groups instead of velocity thus far as I’m still learning and only stuck my head down a couple of the many reloading rabbit holes to get lost in heheh
I finally have access to a garmin so now I can actually see what’s happening instead of just looking at the pretty shapes haha
Edit: some days it looks like I’m patterning a shotgun on those targets…but no more ha!
I finally have access to a garmin so now I can actually see what’s happening instead of just looking at the pretty shapes haha
Edit: some days it looks like I’m patterning a shotgun on those targets…but no more ha!
For what it's worth, here are my steps (seem to get pretty consistent velocities):
1 - De-prime
2 - Wet tumble (Dawn + Lemi Shine) and dry out in one of those dehydrator gizmos
3 - Anneal (AMP annealer)
4 - Resize with full-length die (I like dies which have built-in expanding mandrels). I generally use Imperial sizing wax and use a q-tip to give the inside neck a quick swab.
5 - Trim using Henderson trimmer (which gives them a uniform chamfer even if it doesn't take much off the top)
6 - Re-clean in corn-cob media (gets the lube off and Forster claims the corn-media helps with seating) and blow out with compressed air
7 - Prime
8 - Load powder (use Autotrickler - another cool gizmo)
9 - Seat bullets using Wilson in-line seater die and arbor press (based on lands measurement for bullet taken with Hornady modified case made for particular rifle - you can get a kit from Creedmoor Sports that lets you make them out of fired brass, which is handy).
If I have the time, I might also clean out/uniform the primer pockets after I de-prime (K+M makes good tools for this).
The real trick, of course, is consistency in whatever you do and measure, measure, measure!
Voila!
1 - De-prime
2 - Wet tumble (Dawn + Lemi Shine) and dry out in one of those dehydrator gizmos
3 - Anneal (AMP annealer)
4 - Resize with full-length die (I like dies which have built-in expanding mandrels). I generally use Imperial sizing wax and use a q-tip to give the inside neck a quick swab.
5 - Trim using Henderson trimmer (which gives them a uniform chamfer even if it doesn't take much off the top)
6 - Re-clean in corn-cob media (gets the lube off and Forster claims the corn-media helps with seating) and blow out with compressed air
7 - Prime
8 - Load powder (use Autotrickler - another cool gizmo)
9 - Seat bullets using Wilson in-line seater die and arbor press (based on lands measurement for bullet taken with Hornady modified case made for particular rifle - you can get a kit from Creedmoor Sports that lets you make them out of fired brass, which is handy).
If I have the time, I might also clean out/uniform the primer pockets after I de-prime (K+M makes good tools for this).
The real trick, of course, is consistency in whatever you do and measure, measure, measure!
Voila!
You mandrel before sizing? Also, you missed the remainder of the questions.
My general steps are ( after initial new brass set up)
1: clean the fired brass- I rarely tumble
2: resize
3: check trim
4: lube and resize
5: prime and brush necks inside
6: throw and/ or weigh the powder charge on a Harrel measure and/ or beam scale
7: seat the bullets long
8: bullets are seated to proper length on the ogive the morning of the match.
Cat
1: clean the fired brass- I rarely tumble
2: resize
3: check trim
4: lube and resize
5: prime and brush necks inside
6: throw and/ or weigh the powder charge on a Harrel measure and/ or beam scale
7: seat the bullets long
8: bullets are seated to proper length on the ogive the morning of the match.
Cat
Couldn't care less about es, sd, data collection, tumbling, annealing, thumb shelves, custom triggers, levels, weights, $1000 bipods(holy fk), or uboob.
I've included some how to shoot the difference advice.
1. FL size .003 shoulder bump. Loose shoots good.
2. Usually inside chamfer new brass. The premium stuff might not need it. Trim/chamfer when they reach max spec
3. I use dies with the expander ball, it gives the neck a more consistent finish and bullet release.
4. You must leave the case in the FL die for five seconds minimum for consistency. No lube on the shoulder or neck, inside or out. Wiping the soot off the neck/rolling the case on the lube pad and wiping the lube off/cleaning the primer pocket takes plenty of time. I don't brush necks. A little carbon prevents bullets sticking to the case during storage. Doesn't appear to be getting in the way. Clean the die and expander ball every 50-100.
5. Seat primers by feel.
6. Powder through a RCBS chargemaster. There are settings that can be adjusted as to how much time it spends at each rpm. Fast, medium, slow and trickle. Medium turns the tube into a mixer and leaves piles in the tube to trickle causing overthrows. Minimizing medium time makes a huge difference. And takes forever to trickle so I tap the tube a few times leaving a tenth or two to trickle.
(Rcbs made a new trickler to fix the problem with a separate tube for trickling.)
7. My baseline for seating is hard jam, seating the bullet .001 on close. 0.007 can be better but more difficult to close the bolt without disturbing the gun. Jam causes more pressure=less powder. I've had .040 off shoot just as well. Seating nodes are every .006
8. Powder charge is driven by positive compensation. Fancy word about which way the barrel is whipping at exit as the velocity changes. Looking for a couple or three tenths that will shoot the same vertical. Here's rounds 15-27 through a new barrel testing powder charge from 29-29.6. At the top there's two 29.4 just overlapping two 29.6.
Primer was plenty flat in February. Ended up at 28.0 in hot weather. 5.7% less. Powder nodes are typically 3% apart.
(I didn't seek out these percentages for depth and charge weight. I just looked up those percentages on the AccurateShooter.com forum and they fit the numbers my targets fed me.)
This was before switching to a two handed bench hold, the uncontrolled torque caused the plastic bead filled bags to pack with every shot and drift left. The low two were caused by not pound/settle the gun into the bags before starting.
IBI prefit. Sierra 107's. Seating .007 on close. Lapua brass. (Nosler shoots good too but not long life/high pressure durable like the. Alpha, ADG, Peterson and Lapua.)
Two pound factory trigger.

For 100 yards I aim the at .25 dots on a Redfield target with 30-36x. The .1 moa dot reticle is better than a crosshair, really tight fit.
If you can hold tight enough for your dry fire to stay on that dot the live fire doesn't disappoint.
The root of accuracy is maintaining POA until muzzle exit. Without a flat bottom stock for perfect POA maintenance from trigger break to bullet exit the shooter must hold TIGHT WITH TWO HANDS(right under the recoil lug is fine), keep eye open to monitor reticle movement until bullet exit, not react to the recoil AND acutely sense any difference in felt recoil that will highlight a difference in muscle tension. This makes it possible to put the second bullet through the first hole at 100 when you get your ducks in a row, haven't seen the need to retune farther out.
I keep having to repaint 3 inch circles at 1000, same as the 3 inch xrings used in 1000 yard Benchrest competition since 1967.
Must be doing something right albeit old fashioned.
REAR BAG PLACEMENT. Fore/aft changes how much the muzzle will rise before exit.
My second shot was low, the rear bag was further back on the laminate pattern, moved by recoil. Tried to put it back in place for the third. I moved back further to double check without moving the bag for 4,5. Slightly right, didn't keep the bag square. In this case the impact changed about half the distance I moved the bag. Some use Walmart rubber place mats cut up and spray glued to the bottom of the bag to prevent slipping. I just stapled 80 grit sandpaper to my wood bench.
