Finally jumping into reloading, some questions

S

Starscream

CGN frequent flyer
Rating - 100%
13   0   0
Location
Southern Alberta
After weeks of scouring through the manuals (What a headrush @.@), I've finally decided to get my feet wet and dip into the world of reloading. I've got all the components to reload for my M14, now it's just a matter of deciding a few last things.

1) THE PRESS
I've settled on a Lee press of some kind because I'm fairly poor right now and the Lee presses seem to go furthest per dollar. I'm either going to go with a Lee turret or a load master. I've already purchased the dies.

Turret: With the auto prime, pro auto disk, and a rifle charging die, it figures to around $200.

Loadmaster: Everything for $230

Now I do plan on loading pistol ammo in the future, at this time I only plan to do 100 to 150 rounds a sitting, so I'm wondering if it's a good idea to just go with the progressive and bother with the finicky stuff that comes with it, or if I should just go with the turret... it's a tough call.



2) CLEANING
I'm debating whether to use ultrasonic cleaning or using an actual tumbler, but I'm leaning towards the ultrasonic. This is mostly because of the dust the tumbler produces and the noise. The dust rules out the basement because it lacks ventalation, and even with a dryer sheet I'm told that there is still a fair amount of dust produced when the media is seperated from the brass.

The noise problem also rules out use in the garage, mostly due to my dad working out of it a lot (almost daily). His hearing's not that great but he gets distracted pretty easily and he hates loud constant noises like that of a running tumbler.

If there's any advice on how to overcome those two problems, then I'd probably go tumbler because tumbler is dump brass in overnight and pull out next day, which is conveniant. I can live with cleaning small batches of cases with ultrasonic because the chemicals I can go buy at a grocery store and then just watch TV while each small batch of cases runs through the ringer.
 
Starscream: I reload everything (on the cheap) I own except for .22lr
Lee equipment is great and easily available.

1. I use an old Lyman single stage press, bought it used for $40. I went with single stage and don't ever have to worry about double charging etc.

2. Cleaning, rifle cases get a swipe with fine steel-wool and a gentle dab of bullet lube inside the mouth which stops the expander ball squeaking, the outsides of rifle cases get a smear of vaseline.
If you're reloading pistol just use carbide dies and don't worry about cleaning.

(Obviously you're going to use the Lee case-length gauge/cutter for trim length.)
 
Get which press you like. I'm starting out loading. I'm doing it on the cheap just for rifles.
I have the Lee single stage Challenger press. I wash the cases in dish soap, let dry, decap and full length size and wash again in dish soap. I prime a few, then I weigh out a charge on my scale and seat bullets one at a time.

I find taking my time like this I'm getting more value for my money so my hobby is even cheaper. :D

You will likely spend a lot more on components than you did on your equipment pretty quickly.
 
I loaded about 15,000 rounds on a Lee Challenger press before breaking down and buying a Redding Big Boss. There is no problem making good quality ammo with a Lee Challenger press. Once your dies are set up the first time you never really need to touch them again unless you change bullets or want to play with seating deepths.

I throw all my powder with a Hornady powder thrower but I also weigh and pinch (trickle) up to the desired weight on every charge. I am loading ammo to shoot at long range.

I clean after resizing with a Lyman Turbo and extra fine corn cob media. I do this in the garage so noise and dust are not a concern. To cut down on dust during the media seperation operation, I use a big slotted kitchen spoon to scoop out the cases and hold them mouth down against the inside of the running tumbler to vibrate the media out.
 
The Lee will work fine if your not loading "precision" ammo for 1K shoots. I think you,ll find the Turret press IS progressive. Mine was , I changed that.
Good choice on the auto prime, handiest thing ever invented. Becarefull on the disc measures, the standard model from lee DOESN'T LIKE FINE POWDER, it gets bound up between the where the disc slides. Buying the more expensive PRO model fixes that.

About the tumbler, I thrown a towel to two over mine to keep the noise down while i'm in the room, it isn't heard too well up stairs. The other choice is THROW DAD OUT, laff.
Also my tumbler produces NO dust, all the dirt and everything off of the brass sticks to the media i'm throwing out.

Good luck with the reloading and play safe.

Mike.
 
so, the advice is: to get a tumbler, not an ultrasonic bath?
which one will clean brass better? (not faster) I have an issue with greenish stuff inside of brass.....so, will tumbler remove it?
 
Starscream,

I got into reloading last year. My thoughts, FWIW...

1. Re/ Press... I went progressive. Dillon 550B and a bunch of accessories. The cost adds up, but it's all up front. Shooting is expensive no matter how you look at it. No regrets about the press. Keep in mind that resale on a used press is pretty good.

2. Re/ Cleaning... I got a Dillon tumbler. There's no dust. Noise, yup. I run it at night, when I sleep, on a 2-3 hour timer. Works extremely well.
 
i don't find my lyman turbo tumbler very dusty at all....

i use a lee single stage press and it works just great:) a turret might be a bit faster but i do all the brass in stages of about 50 at a time between die switches so it doenst slow it down all that much....
 
For a rifle, I would start with a single stage press. Take your time and learn what it is all about. Later on you can switch to a progressive loader and go to town on it. I have used Dillon, RCBS and Lee progressive loaders. As far as I am concerned, the Lee works great for the price. The Loadmaster is good becuse it is easy to switch calibers and it can load rifle and pistol. The real trick is to get a good price on the components.[lead, powder etc.]
 
Get a single stage, I did, and I crank out rifle ammo pretty quick.

Also, you know cleaning really isn't necessary right? Even benchresters argue over whether clean cases shoot any different than dirty cases, and with a rifle you are going to need new cases, before they get any appreciable amount of soot in them.

EX.

In the below picture in a benchrest article which discusses case cleaning, the .308 cases were shot 6 times, and the soot still isn't appreciably built up thick enough to measure, and is actually transparent near the top of the case.

Ultra2x300t.jpg


If you are tight for cash, save your money.
 
If you don't want a noisy tumbler, get a rotary drum one. They are whisper quiet, all i hear when I am out of my reloading room is the worn out motor (the thing is over twenty years old and sits on the floor in my dusty basement, its seen a small flood once or twice as well) The rotary ones probably last longer then the vibratory ones, All they are is a small electric motor turning a drum with a belt after all. If dust is an issue, you can use a wet media, but you will have to let it dry, that's the only downside to wet over dry.
 
Last edited:
First crisis averted (very long post)

Well, I went out and bought the Lee Turret press. took 20 minutes of mucking with it to figure out it's ins and outs and to put in the dies, then I'm ready and raring to go.

Or so I thought. Ahhh, the bliss of inexperience is a wonderful thing until reality comes a knocking.

I had bought some once fired brass that had a mix of federal and winchester brass. Used the federal brass first with the auto index disabled to do this really weird ramba style of loading... In essence:

Wipe with tissue, inspect for any signs of brass being bad, lube with synthetic motor oil (5-30W), neck size then full length size (the necks were pretty badly deformed). Neck sizing first made the full length sizing go a little easier I found and with the turret press, the change over was just a turn away. Plus a good portion of the federal brass refused to be full length sized (they'd gum up about 1/4 an inch from the bottom of the rim and take a few smacks to get out).

Trimmed and debuured and now I have 45 pieces of almost perfect federal brass ready for prime and charge. Now for the winchester stuff...

I had save the winchester for another session because it had been in better shape then the federal. So I get into a new rhythem: Wipe clean, inspect case, then I necked sized and deprimed all the brass at once. Then I changed the turret to full resize, then dipped neck in a capful of motor oil, lube and full size.

Well this was going all and dandy... till I got to about the third from last casing... that GOT STUCK IN THE DIE!! :eek: "Well f**k!" I said to myself, looking at the utterly destroyed rim of what used to be a fairly clean piece of winchester 308 brass. My mind starts going into overdrive, what did I do wrong? Had the die simply been defective given how much trouble the federal brass gave me? What do I do now?! The internet always seemed to have the all the answers, so onto it I hopped. Google was always my friend and I came across the instructions:

"Take a 3/16" punch, loosen the top collar and punch out the center pin"

"What? I don't have a 3/16" punch!" and with that I felt it was time to 'improvise'... with a square head screwdriver bit.

...well all that accomplished was to dent the pin head, so in frustration I took off the top of the collar and hammered the pin directly... bad idea. Very bad idea. Horrifically bad idea that I now look back upon and wish I could go back in time with a pair of hiking boots to give myself a much need boot in the ass for somehow thinking that was NOT a bad idea. But the damage was done... the top of the pin was flattened, and I had to take a file to it to get the collar to fit on it again. Well here I was now, fuming and glaring and on the state of internal hysteria, contemplating the prospect of buying a new die set from wholesale... and my thought process looked something like, "God damn Lee dies! Should've listened to the old guy and bought the RCBS dies instead." Then a miracolous (at the time) thought came to me. Maybe Russells would have something. Worth a shot.

Hop into the car, drive the half hour down to Russells and find out, yes they DO have a stuck case remover! For only $20, which was half of the price of a new set of dies. Yay! I'm saved! Shell out the bling and it's back on the half hour commute BACK to my house when I actually bother to take a look of what was inside of the bag.

Two long metal sticks, two hex nuts and a washer. What the hell? Maybe something was in the instructions so when I pulled into the garage in my house, I tore open the bag and looked inside.... nope. That was all that was in this baggy. Instructions of course were vague, unintuitive and looked like it had been written by the US Army Corps of Engineers Administration Section on anti-evil-brass-tactics. I spent maybe an hour staring at them trying to monkey my way through what those funny words and naming conventions like, "Part #10B" that was NOT listed anywhere on that sheet of paper.

Finally I gave up and resigned myself to go buy a new set of dies on Monday. With a heavy heart I removed all the lee deluxe dies from the turret press and put them back into the pretty yellow plastic box that I had been so excited about just days about. Maybe then that's when it hit me. Looking down at the forster bag, I noticed the smaller rod looked about 3/16th of an inch thick...

Ah why not? I can't wreck these dies anymore more then I already have. So once again I loosen the collar, put the die onto the press and put the punch onto the top of the pin again.

"WHACK! WHACK! WHACKCHING!"

"... No way."

I had heard it distinctly. The sound a pin and brass hitting the base of the die. I didn't dare look for the first second, and when I did look, lo and behold there was the trashed case sitting on top of the punch with the pin still in it.

"....SONAVA#####!"

... I'm sure I'm going to be receiving letters of complaint from the neighbors in the following days for that...

Touching the casing, it was instantly revealed why it had stuck. The damn thing was dry as a bone... I had forgotten to lube the sucker before trying to resize it. All this aggravation, all this pain and suffering and misery and being put out a good $20 and however much it cost me in gas to go to russells and back... when all I had to do was follow Lee's Precision's instructions and go buy a $6 punch from crappy tire (and maybe some lunch from TNT while I was at it too, I was pretty darn hungry at that point).

Looking back at it all, I can only shake my head and smack myself for getting so panicked that lead to this. The die now functions perfectly like before, with the exception of the fact that the top of the pin look like the carbide toothed poodle had treated as a chew toy.

The forster stuck case tool, along with what is left of that piece of brass now hold a place of honor on the far corner of my bench just on the wall... written on bright blue pen on what was the instructions for the case remover; "PAN - Panic achieves nothing!" A small momento and reminder that in times of crisis, kick yourself outta the drama funk and just do what the manufacturer tells you.

And on a side note... I really do have to compliment Lee on how they designed the full length die. A punch, a hammer, two wrenches and some needle nose pliers (I had everything except the punch) is all you need to unstick any normal stuck case. Simple and rather clever.

Now excuse while I go change into a fresh shirt... and probably take a shower to get all the sweat off me. :D
 
Starscream
RTFOM, stop screwing with motor oil, put it back in your car. Buy a lymans book, put it in the bathroom and read it for a week before you start anymore loading. Your gonna kill your self. The instructions with the dies explain the die issues. Lymans in a few chapters explains basics.
RTFOM.
 
Ice-Pick said:
Starscream
RTFOM, stop screwing with motor oil, put it back in your car. Buy a lymans book, put it in the bathroom and read it for a week before you start anymore loading. Your gonna kill your self. The instructions with the dies explain the die issues. Lymans in a few chapters explains basics.
RTFOM.
Click to expand...

Err, is there any reason why motor oil is hazardous? I'm aware of what it does to primers and powder but I was under the impression that so long as the powder and primers were kept away from the oil, and the cases thoroughly cleaned so cross contamination can't occur
 
Last edited:
I use Dillon Case Lube. Resizing works fine without it, but this makes it SO much smoother. Like butter. Mmmm. Butter. It's a small spray bottle. Seems to last forever (so whatever Dillon's boutique price is... doesn't matter too much for this). Ingredients: lanolin and isopropyl alcohol. Two small spritzes over the cases in a cardboard box. Shake them around. Spray them again. Load 'em up.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom