When I first started reloading I bought Lee Quick Trim dies and the deluxe cutter for .44mag, 9mm and .308W. Tried it on .44mag and over cut by .025", tried on .308W and over cut by .020" Put them away and never touched them again. Measured, sorted and trimmed as necessary over 1700 pieces of .44mag brass by hand, labouriously prepped 120 pieces of .308Walso by hand but the 9mm stuff is still in the packages because it's 9mm and who cares? Prepped 60 pieces of Lake City 5.56 with a Lee case length guage trimmer and chamfered by hand. An extremely tedious and non-fun process. There had to be a better way. And there is!
On my way to an engagement in Edmonton today, I stopped at the south Cabela's and picked up a Quick Trim die for .223. In less than an hour, I trimmed over 200 pieces of .223 and 5.56 brass including redoing the ones I did by hand and they came out perfect at 1.75" with no visible chatter marks. It works awesomely well and is way way faster too.
Now there's just another 900+ pieces to FL resize and decap, primer pocket swage and trim to length. But the process has gone from a "this sucks" to "this be easy" using this sequence on a Lee turret press:
1 - sort cases by head stamp
2 - yoghurt tub lube application (using about a pea sized blob for 60-70 cases now)
3 - FL resize and decap
4 - swage primer pockets
5 - trim to length
6 - wash in ultrasonic washer
7 - load clean prepped cases
Now I want to go use up all of the rounds that I loaded last time just so I can trim them.
On my way to an engagement in Edmonton today, I stopped at the south Cabela's and picked up a Quick Trim die for .223. In less than an hour, I trimmed over 200 pieces of .223 and 5.56 brass including redoing the ones I did by hand and they came out perfect at 1.75" with no visible chatter marks. It works awesomely well and is way way faster too.
Now there's just another 900+ pieces to FL resize and decap, primer pocket swage and trim to length. But the process has gone from a "this sucks" to "this be easy" using this sequence on a Lee turret press:
1 - sort cases by head stamp
2 - yoghurt tub lube application (using about a pea sized blob for 60-70 cases now)
3 - FL resize and decap
4 - swage primer pockets
5 - trim to length
6 - wash in ultrasonic washer
7 - load clean prepped cases
Now I want to go use up all of the rounds that I loaded last time just so I can trim them.
