Best bullet puller ?

I have the Forster collet style bullet puller for rifle & it works great!

That being said, I use a kinetic puller for pistol (9mm) as there's just not enough bearing surface for the collet style pullers to grab.
 
Qball-16 said:
I have the Forster collet style bullet puller for rifle & it works great!

That being said, I use a kinetic puller for pistol (9mm) as there's just not enough bearing surface for the collet style pullers to grab.
Click to expand...

I haven't had that problem with the Hornady collet puller very often but I used to have to fiddle a bit to get the puller set up properly. It must be set so that the brass does not enter the interior of the collet yet applies a good grip on the bullet. I have also found that for pistol bullets which have little to no bearing surface available, by carefully sanding the bottom of the collet off a tiny little bit at a time, which decreases the amount of the taper on it, and repeatedly testing the grip, I can get the cam lock to work much better. How did I figure this out. Well, I chipped my collet on some 44 Mag that I was pulling, as the brass was getting up inside the collet just at the crimp. That is when I sanded it down, about 1/32 of an inch, trying to save the collet since they are not exactly easy to find and if you do they are not cheap and I still had about 100 rounds to do. Once I got it sanded down to the point the chip was not an issue, I found it worked far better than when it was new. I did the same to the one I use on my .357 and it wasn't even chipped. Far better action and grip. Wouldn't do it for the collets used on rifle rounds as I don't think it is necessary.

A person barely ever uses the collet puller, but when you do, you want it to work properly.

Another trick is to give a round a whack in the kinetic puller to partially pull the bullet, then use the collet puller to do the final pull. I like being able to recover the components, especially the powder cleanly.
 
rick357 said:
I haven't had that problem with the Hornady collet puller very often but I used to have to fiddle a bit to get the puller set up properly. It must be set so that the brass does not enter the interior of the collet yet applies a good grip on the bullet. I have also found that for pistol bullets which have little to no bearing surface available, by carefully sanding the bottom of the collet off a tiny little bit at a time, which decreases the amount of the taper on it, and repeatedly testing the grip, I can get the cam lock to work much better. How did I figure this out. Well, I chipped my collet on some 44 Mag that I was pulling, as the brass was getting up inside the collet just at the crimp. That is when I sanded it down, about 1/32 of an inch, trying to save the collet since they are not exactly easy to find and if you do they are not cheap and I still had about 100 rounds to do. Once I got it sanded down to the point the chip was not an issue, I found it worked far better than when it was new. I did the same to the one I use on my .357 and it wasn't even chipped. Far better action and grip. Wouldn't do it for the collets used on rifle rounds as I don't think it is necessary.

A person barely ever uses the collet puller, but when you do, you want it to work properly.

Another trick is to give a round a whack in the kinetic puller to partially pull the bullet, then use the collet puller to do the final pull. I like being able to recover the components, especially the powder cleanly.
Click to expand...

That's actually very helpful, thanks!

I've been reloading for bolt action rifle for a couple years, but am still fairly new to pistol. One of the first batches I cranked out on my new Lee Turret press were SOOOO far over crimped it actually deformed the bullets :(

Pulling them apart with the inertia/hammer puller was VERY tedious...
 
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