New Reloader Needing Tips/Reassurance

hunter-4-life

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Hey Guys, I finally caved and purchased a RCBS rock chucker reloading set. after a ton of research on reloading and having my neighbour reload for me previously, Tonight I started loading my own for the first time for my 243 and I just need a little reassurance knowing I did what I was supposed to. Here are my steps:
1) Lube one fired brass
2) de-prime/resize the brass
3) reprime the brass
4) load 41 grains of H414
5) seat 95gr Hornady SST to same length as previous hand loads with same bullet

This is the same recipe as what my neighbour loaded for us and worked great in my gun. I actually loaded 1gr powder less then he did. Now I need to know a couple things, did I do everything right? Did I make any mistakes in any steps that could cause these rounds to be dangerous? I just want to make sure I didn't skip anything before I shoot them.
 
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the only thing i see missing is after deprime / size, is to check case length and trim if necessary

if a case is to long, when chambered the neck can be forced down against the bullet essentially pinching it, this will cause higher then normal pressure.. chances of this happening in a factory chamber - pretty damn slim as the are usually fairly long and loose (ha) id be more concerned on a custom cut tight chamber


also tumble (clean) brass before any thing, as dirt / grime can scuff your dies
 
Good to know. I will invest in a tumbler and case trimmer. The only reason I loaded them even is cause they are once fired, all from the same rifle and they will be shot again from the same rifle. I will definitely invest in a tumbler and trimmer ASAP. Do you think the rounds would be ok to fire or are they a learning curve?
 
even loading range pick up brass is ok, if you know how to inspect it, so once fired from your rifle your definetly good to go.

for now, even a wipe down with a clean rage will remove any thing that can scratch your dies, but they wont be nice and shiny like tumbled brass.

as i said, factory chambers tend to be fairly generous, so i wouldn't worry about firing them. if the case mouth starts to interfere with the freebore of the chamber, you will feel it on bolt close, if your just plinking away , you probably wont be running the bolt hard enough to not notice the added resistance
 
Sorry guys I thought I stated it was for a 243 but obviously I didn't. So basically invest in a tumbler and trimmer. Or even tumble my brass in a buddy's would work. These rounds are just to have around in case I need them for a coyote hunt or just to plink with. Accuracy isn't exactly my number 1 concern at the moment, it's getting the steps down to reload and get a feel for it, before I really start tweaking things and fine tuning.
 
Missing steps:

Primer pocket uniforming- Cuts pocket to a consistent depth, also works for cleaning.
Flash hole debur/chamfer- Most underated and overlooked step of case prep IMHO.
Chamfer case mouth in/out- Necessary after each trimming for smooth bullet seating and round feeding.

Do yourself a favour and get a couple 1/4" drill chuck adapters and a cordless screwdiver, makes prep a lot easier. All the above tools will be threaded for such an adapter, except the flash hole deburring tool.
 
Primer pocket uniforming and flash hole deburring are not necessary steps but can be performed for a little more consistency.

The critical step Is measuring the case length after resizing to confirm that it will properly chamber.
This can be done using one of 2 methods.
The first is a case gauge which the brass is dropped into.
It has steps cut out on both sides.
The step on the case head side will tell you if you pushed the shoulder back far enough or too far.
The step on the case mouth side will tell you if you need to trim and what the minimum length should be.
These are made by L.E Wilson and can be bought from Sinclair International.

The second type is like the Hornady headspace gauge and gets attached to a vernier caliper.
Do not use the measurements directly off this as absolute.
I know for a fact that one of my chambers measures 1.631 but the gauge gives me 1.637.
This is because the adapters are made of soft aluminum.
There are many posts online on this subject.
You can buy a much better version made of stainless from Sinclair once again but it is not cheap, buy once cry once.
The way to use this tool is as a comparator.
If your rifle is a bolt action take a piece of once fired brass or even better, if you have a neck sizer die twice fired brass and measure it with the comparator.
If for example your brass measured 1.635" from the base to the datum line then remove 0.001"-0.002" and use that dimension to setup your dies.
This will increase accuracy compared to guesstimating how far to push the shoulder back.

Here is a great article on the subject.
http://www.realguns.com/archives/093.htm
 
Primer pocket uniforming and flash hole deburring are advanced techniques unnecessary to make good quality ammunition whereas case trimming , case mouth chamfering, and deburring are essential to both the quality of the ammunition and to the safety of using it. Get used to the idea of making good uniform ammunition before you go down the road of additional expense for minimal gain. I perform many of the advanced steps when I load, but I've been doing this for a very long time, and mostly the additional steps are to make me feel better rather than to make better ammo. Sometimes they can be tedious and pointless. Factory ammo can be very uniform, but with rare exception, the primer pockets are not uniformed, the flash holes are not deburred, the necks are not turned, brass is not selected by weight, case necks and shoulders are only sometimes annealed, case concentricity is not measured, and bullet meplats are not uniformed. Neither is primer depth held to .002" or case head squaring important.

There are some steps that you can take at little additional expense that might make your ammo a bit better though. You might for example swap out the shell holder retaining spring on your press's ram and replace it with a rubber "O" ring. This will allow the shell holder to float and find its own center, whereas the retaining spring can cant the shell holder and hold it off center. It takes a bit of getting used to, once you're used to it you'll never go back to the retaining spring. An "O" ring under the lock-ring of your sizing and seating dies will allow them to find their own center as well. The result is more concentric ammo and minimal cost or fuss.

If you use a permanent marker to color the neck and shoulder of a case, you can adjust the depth of your resizing die precisely for the correct amount of shoulder set back. When the case is removed from the die, the contact is clearly seen, and this will prevent you from over working your brass or inadvertently creating a headspace issue, essentially making neck sizing only irrelevant.

You can experiment with the seating depth of your bullets, but to do so in any meaningful way, you should know where the lead is. You can do this with nothing more than a flat based bullet seated backwards in an unprimed resized case to make a dummy round. Seat the bullet long, chamber it (it might take some effort to close the bolt) and when ejected, it will provide you with a precise measurement from the closed bolt face to the lead. Keep this dummy round for future reference. Now select any style of bullet that you wish to fire in that rifle, press it nose down into the muzzle of the rifle, and with firm pressure on it, turn it so the rifling scribes a line. This line marks the forward edge of the bearing surface of the bullet, and when the bullet is seated in a case, you can compare the position of the line on the bullet with the length of the dummy round to determine how far from the lands your bullet is seated. From here you can experiment with various degrees of jump or jam to the lands. Keep detailed records of your base line handloads and of any changes you make. Record how those changes affect accuracy and velocity (extreme spread). Over time, you can make up another flat base bullet dummy round to determine the degree of throat erosion your chamber has, and you can "chase the lead" accordingly by seating your bullets longer in order to maintain accuracy.

When priming your brass, a piece of glass or a mirror can be handy to stand the brass case on which will immediately show a primer that is seated high. If the case rocks on the glass, seat the primer a hair deeper. Despite the convenience and popularity of hand held priming tools, I've found that bench mounted priming tools provide more uniform results.

I personally think that the importance of carbon deposits on the inside brass cases is over stated. I use Imperial Sizing Wax as a case lube when resizing, and wipe it off with a paper towel. This leaves the outside of the case clean, provided it was free of corrosion, and inside the case neck can be cleaned with a bronze bore brush or a nylon brush wrapped in extra-fine steel wool. Dipping the case neck into Imperial Dry Neck Lube is the ticket for inside the case neck, and reduces friction between the expanding ball and the case neck, and doesn't leave a tacky residue that powder particles will stick to. Still, a case tumbler can be beneficial, and I think the majority of handloaders have one. If you go to a sandblasting supplier, you can get 50 pounds of ground walnut to use in your case tumbler for about the same cost as 10 pounds will cost at the gun shop. More and more folks are also discovering the advantages of ultrasonic case cleaners.

The bottom line is, don't invest so much time at the loading bench that the process becomes a tedious chore, and spend so much money on high end tools that you become frustrated with the whole thing and walk away from it. Once you've established a loading technique that you're comfortable with, then when you can identify where your bottlenecks are, you can upgrade your tools to improve your production. You might find that you benefit from a powered case trimmer or perhaps from a turret style loading press, but that's for down the road. The primary purpose of handloading is to enable you to have more, and better ammo for your trips to the range or afield. When the weather doesn't make shooting a particularly attractive proposition, a day spent at the loading bench can be very rewarding . . . if it doesn't get tedious.
 
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Thanks for the info guys. Like I said Im trying not to invest a bunch of money on it right now, just wanna get the basics down and get a good system going before I upgrade everything. Ill stick to loading the 243 before I get to horny to load anything else and until I get a good system as I have a ton of brass for it and I can afford to screw up a couple times with it.
 
Buy a $10 Lee hand trimmer for .243 and you don't need anything else. A case trimming machine, tumbler, etc., can come later if you want but you don't need it to reload good ammo.
 
You've got what it takes for basic reloading with the addition of the couple of added steps for checking and possibly trimming the cases. The rest of the stuff I'm seeing is the things that will lead you towards making ammo that is better than factory.

On additional factor that I don't see mentioned yet is the idea of neck sizing instead of full length sizing. Neck sizing pinches down the neck diameter only while leaving the rest of the casing in the fire formed state. This trick greatly reduces length growth and the need for case trimming. It relies on the idea that the brass was fire formed in your one rifle's chamber so it can fit back into that same chamber just fine. Using neck sizing instead of full length sizing also greatly increases the number of times you can load and shoot the brass before you run into splitting.

There is even a way to reduce or avoid the splitting. And that is to anneal the necks every few times you shoot the brass.

Someone mentioned the ultrasonic cleaner instead of tumbling. I tried this based on the write-ups I found on the 'net and I won't be going back to a tumbler. A tumbler mostly cleans and polishes the outside. But the ultrasonic cleans out the inside just as well as the outside and removes most of the grunge from the primer pockets to boot.

So my list for loading rifle would be......

  1. Deprime using a universal de-capping die. These dies only de-cap and do not size anything.
  2. Wash the brass in my ultrasonic, or tumble if you use that method.
  3. For new or two to three times shot brass anneal (you tube videos are plentiful)
  4. For new brass full length size. For used brass from MY rifle neck size only.
  5. Check the case length and if required trim then de-burr.
  6. Check and clean or shape any issues with the primer pocket.
  7. Prime the cases.
  8. Measure and drop the powder into the cases. Using a flashlight confirm the powder level in each casing is correct. No squibs and no double charges allowed! ! ! ! For rifle USUALLY the powder pretty much fills the casing. But I shoot some smokeless from black powder casings where I'm using light loads so for such instances a double charge is possible. It's good to check even with full case loads for any you missed though.
  9. Seat the bullet to length.
  10. Crimp if needed. Typically this isn't required for single shot rifles or if the neck tension is high enough. But with a magazine and a light neck tension you will want to crimp to avoid bullet creep.

Note that out of the 10 steps that the first 6 are all simply casing preparation. The actual loading is the last 4 steps.

Some of the regular rifle loaders might chime in here if I've missed anything. I haven't been doing this for all that long myself.

You're properly cautious for the moment and that's good. It means you're worried about taking shortcuts or missing steps. And you don't want to miss anything.

It's equally important to set controls in your reloading. For example using the wrong powder is just as bad as using too much or too little. Those of us that use more than one type of powder take steps to make sure we don't mess up. For example I always mark the powder type on a bit of masking tape and stick it to the powder measure. I also leave the bottle out on the desk so I know what is in the measure. And I only have ONE powder at a time on the desk.

Locally a fellow was very badly hurt and I believe he lost his eye when his reloads burst his rifle and pushed the bolt back into his face. Turned out he had been loading pistol and rifle at the same time and somehow loaded up the big rifle casings with a full load of powerful pistol powder. So it's very important to not only load correctly but to make sure you are using the proper powder and to take steps to not mix the powders up.

But with a little care to ensure you are using the correct powder the rest of the stuff is not at all dangerous. You might mess up and ruin a few casings here and there but nothing will hurt you as long as you use the correct amount of each specific powder.

And with the hints given in this thread you would be well on your way to making your own ammo that turns out to be cheaper and more accurate than the factory stuff.
 
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I would have to agree that Boomer had a well thought out and detailed post. The only thing i would ad is that 90 % of good reloading is case preparation, good habits, and attention span. Like the entrance fee to a poker tournament the time and money invested in reloading is gone...focus only on your task with no distractions and multitasking.

Reloading is simply a part of hunting or target shooting...whichever your purpose. No different than taking a rifle for a walk on a Fir ridge. Making premium custom to firearm ammo at 30-40% of factory and shooting at a third the cost allows one to get good. That means small groups or ethical kills. The worm has turned for you.
 
Buy a $10 Lee hand trimmer for .243 and you don't need anything else. A case trimming machine, tumbler, etc., can come later if you want but you don't need it to reload good ammo.

Now that is a good post.
I hope you don't get confused, because of maybe too much information given.
Regarding your load, a duplicate of what has been working great in your rifle, is spot on, the best loading data there is. And H414 is one of the very best powders for a 243 with medium weight bullets.
Ditto for the depth you are seating the bullet, it is working fine, keep it up.
 
So if I were to order a primer pocket cleaner, case gauge (to make sure your case isnt to long or short), and a set of calipers I should be set? Or should i ignore the case gauge and just go with a tumbler? I will order a trimmer once I get a little more set up.

For those who say "you dont have a caliper and your reloading?" On the hornady sst bullets theres a little ring around the bullets, and thats how far we have been seating them as that is a good length for this rifle so we stuck to it.
 
You should get a trimmer now (inexpensive Lee components - case holder/drill chuck, cutter, calibre spacer bought separate), primer pocket cleaner and headspace gauge (I use Hornady). You will need all of these within the next firing and should forego the tumbler if you want to keep it real simple.

I have never tumbled - I clean case necks only using Neverdull wading. Many like their brass sparkling, I personally think it's a waste of time and money with no improvement in accuracy whatsoever.
 
hunter-4-life, you have stated you do not want to make big investments in loading at this time, then don't.
A tumbler is rather expensive and is not needed, for safe, efficient loading. If your cases look dirty, wipe them off with a cloth dampened with a solvent. Kerosene is a good cleaner. A tumbler is for making them shine like new brass, but has little, or no effect, on anything else. Tumbling wasn't used in reloading until about the 1970s, or so. Meaning the shooting community got along fine without tumbling for about sixty years.
The investment in a tumbler could be spent to a much better use in hand loading, if you bought a chronograph, instead.
I you get a ten dollar Lee trimmer, as has been suggested, you can forget about getting a case length gage, or calipers to measure the case. Use of the trimmer will keep your cases to the proper length. Don't worry about them being too short, as being somewhat short doesn't hurt a thing.
Seating your bullets to the little groove in the bullet, assures they will work fine in all normal rifles. You don't have to crimp for a bolt action rifle.
Just remember, you were doing great, before you started this post. It sounds like you had a good mentor, that previously loaded for you.
 
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