Newb looking to get started; Lee 50th anniversary kit? Availability of Powder?

rocklobster

rocklobster

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Hey Gents,

I am looking to dip a toe in reloading this summer. I want to reload mainly for 30/06 in my rifle so that I can shoot it more for hunting practice, and develop high quality hunting ammo.

I have been researching here and there on the web into what is required for reloading and watched youtube videos on reloading with the Lee Breech lock challenger press, and the RCBS rock chucker, and Forster co ax press.

I like the price point of the Lee press kit and I dont anticipate reloading in high quantities (100 to 500 rounds a year). Do you guys think that the lee will serve my purposes well?

Also I have read some threads here that are talking about low availability of propellants, is this issue a deal breaker to the beginner?
 
The Lee 50th Anniversary kit will do nicely, if money is an issue. The RCBS Beginner's kit is a bit more expensive, but their warrantee is way better.
Used is not an ugly word with RCBS kit either. Their warrantee is on the kit, not who bought it new. Any issues will be fixed, usually for free, with a phone call or e-mail. Beginner's kits don't come with dies or shell holders. You can buy those used at gun shows and save a bit of money.
Powder availability has nothing to do with being an FNG. Where you are does. Shipping costs for components will negate any cost savings found on-line.
Think 165 grain hunting bullets and IMR4064. .30-06 loves 'em and a 165 will kill any game you care to hunt.
 
I actually picked up my lee anniversary kit and a tumbler from Amazon since it was the best price going and included free shipping. As for components I pick most of mine up at wholesale sorts up island in nanaimo since they have provided good customer service, good prices and they usual have the stock I need.

My suggestion as a new reloader is find a powder that is relatively available to you, and sick to loading with that one. Also when you find powder, buy it. Until stock is more available you gotta keep your own stock. I'm only loading .223 but same will apply to 30-06.
 
I dunno about warranties being better - I've broken a part on my Lee, and a part on my Dillon, and in both cases, the company mailed me replacement parts, no questions asked.

The 50th Breech press is a great unit. Watch some youtube videos, ask questions here. Keep an open mind about powders - 30-06 can use many powders, so carry a list, and when you see a powder that works, grab it (be sure to completely empty the powder dispenser when you change powders. http://www.hodgdonreloading.com will give you a list of powders and loads - more will be printed with your Lee Dies. Higginson Powders, in Hawkesbury ON, is a great resource for Lee parts and reloading components, if you can't find anyone local.

Welcome to the addiction (bwahahahaha) :)
 
Hey thanks for the replies guys! I am still a bit concerned that I get this equipment then have a hard time sourcing powders... I live in 613 Ontario and I am close enough to Cabelas in Barrie to stop in a few times a year. Is a place like Cabelas or Bass Pro (or other places around the GTA) good for propellants in stock?

I have been saving cases and right now I have about 80 once fired Remington, Winchester, and Federal brass.

For cleaning cases a tumbler and stainless pins looks like a good way to go, but at the beginning can I get by washing the brass and brushing the neck basically manually cleaning? I was watching a youtube vid of a guy polishing a case with his drill and steel wool.
 
I would personally just get a tumbler. Single stage loading is fairly tedious as it is without adding more manual labour of hand cleaning cases. Just my opinion though. Your's may vary. :)

Lee kit is a great way to start.
 
I clean my brass with a drill,a rag and Lagostina Professional Liquid Cleaner for s/s and copper.

Works fast and the brass are nicer than new.One bottle will last a lifetime...
 
Tumblers are pretty standard kit. Walnut media, or corncob, or whatever. You might eventually upgrade to a wet tumbler with stainless pins, etc, but let's not go crazy too quickly.

Powders are an opportunistic purchase. If you have a list of, say, 5-10 powders that you know you can use, and carry that list in your phone, you might find a bottle at Lebarons, or Cabelas, Epps, SFRC, Higginson, etc, etc. Also, get a small dollar-store notebook to keep your reloading recipes in. Each time you make a batch of ammo, write down everything important about it. Each page of my little book reads like this:

Batch Number 123
Date: 15 Jan 2015
Powder: 2.4gr of XYZ
Primer: CCI Small Pistol
Projectile: 147gr 9mm Moly (Black Bullet)
Case OAL: 2.125"
Performance Notes:

Label your ammo box with the batch number on a label or masking tape, so you know what's loaded with what.

If you make up a load with one type of powder, you'll probably tune it for the performance you want, within a couple "batches", then that'll be your standard recipe you press each time you need ammo in that calibre (I'm always doing runs of "batch 46" for my .223, since it hasn't changed in a couple years). A pound of powder will last a long time (7000 grains in a pound). But if you find another type of powder, either because you're running low of XYZ, or you want to play with another load, you can work up another load - your book will have all your history.

Sorry for the rambling post. Reloading is tons of fun...
 
sulisa said:
Tumblers are pretty standard kit. Walnut media, or corncob, or whatever. You might eventually upgrade to a wet tumbler with stainless pins, etc, but let's not go crazy too quickly.

Powders are an opportunistic purchase. If you have a list of, say, 5-10 powders that you know you can use, and carry that list in your phone, you might find a bottle at Lebarons, or Cabelas, Epps, SFRC, Higginson, etc, etc. Also, get a small dollar-store notebook to keep your reloading recipes in. Each time you make a batch of ammo, write down everything important about it. Each page of my little book reads like this:

Batch Number 123
Date: 15 Jan 2015
Powder: 2.4gr of XYZ
Primer: CCI Small Pistol
Projectile: 147gr 9mm Moly (Black Bullet)
Case OAL: 2.125"
Performance Notes:

Label your ammo box with the batch number on a label or masking tape, so you know what's loaded with what.

If you make up a load with one type of powder, you'll probably tune it for the performance you want, within a couple "batches", then that'll be your standard recipe you press each time you need ammo in that calibre (I'm always doing runs of "batch 46" for my .223, since it hasn't changed in a couple years). A pound of powder will last a long time (7000 grains in a pound). But if you find another type of powder, either because you're running low of XYZ, or you want to play with another load, you can work up another load - your book will have all your history.

Sorry for the rambling post. Reloading is tons of fun...
Click to expand...

I'm a newb, too, and I thank you for such good advice.
 
Save yourself a bit of money, avoid the tumblers and cleaners and just use the Lee trimmer chucked into a drill, a bit of brass polish on a rag turns the outside of the case to a mirror shine in seconds, a .30cal bronze brush into the neck held with a small vise grip gets most of the gunk out of the case neck... The 50th kit is a good starting point, you'll need a trimmer pilot for 30-06 a decent quality caliper to measure overall length and case length and do yourself a favour and but a tin of imperial sizing wax and toss that Lee lube into the nearest trash can.

The 30-06 can use a wide variety of powders, H4350 IMR4350 H4895 and a couple others spring to mind, couple that with either a Winchester or CCI large rifle or large rifle magnum primer and a 150-165-180 grain interlock or partition and you have a recipe for success... You should get about 140-150 rounds from a 1lb can of powder worth $40-$50 and non-premium interlock bullets are around $40-$45 per hundred... So basically your looking at $20 per box or $1 per bang... Using a premium bullet still only brings that up around $1.50 per bang... Cheap when you look at what some of the fancy stuff that the stores are selling for
 
Thanks for all the great advice guys, I really appreciate your help and the newb glove handling!

It looks like I will be stopping by Cabelas in a few weeks for that Lee kit and components... I will hang around here more to share my experiences and ask for more help.
 
I am new to reloading and I went with the LEE turret kit from Budget Shooter here on the forum. The turret press makes reloading my .357 nice and smooth. Prepping 130 7mm MAG cartridges took a long time, however. I would not want hand-polishing to that list. Get a Frankford Media tumbler kit ($112 at Budget) - at so few reloads as you have listed, it will last you a lifetime and gets them nice and clean. I tumbled my brass before and after depriming and the cases look like new.

Good luck. Take your time and enjoy.
 
I never thought about the idea of hand cleaning but the guys are right. For the volume you're saying it is an option.

I started out with a tumbler and quickly got fed up of the corn cob media stuck into the primer pockets and general mess it created.

Looking around at how to clean rifle brass I tripped over lots of recommendations for using an ultrasonic cleaner with a an easy to make solution of 1 part regular white vinegar to 4 parts water with a dash of liquid laundry detergent. In de-primed rifle brass the cleaning this does on used brass is nothing short of miraculous. Dirty black brass comes out looking just shy of brand new inside and out. And that's the issue I had with the tumbler and corn cob media. The OUTSIDE looked fine. The insides were still black and sooty regardless of how long I left the brass in the vibrator. The US cleaning took care of all that and cleaned out the primer pockets all sparkly as well in a whole whopping long 15 minute cleaning cycle.

These days you can buy a small 1 liter US cleaner for peanuts. I urge you to give it a try as an alternative to the vibrator. And there's no stuck pins like I keep seeing in posts about using a tumbler and stainless pin media. I also don't need to worry about rinsing the pin media clean without losing a bunch of it either. When the vinegar and water solution becomes too muddy I just pour it down the drain, rinse out the tub and start again with a new batch. It worked so well that I immediately gave my tumbler to a guy I knew that was looking for one. And I've never regretted it for even one second.

Powder is out there. But you need to strike when you find it. None of this "I've got two lb's on the shelf already". Even if you have your two lb's which will easily last a year or more you should buy an extra if you come across it once you zero in on the right powder for you.

Until then keep a list in your wallet of known popular powders for .30-06 and try some different ones. It's likely that you'll find one or two that your rifle really likes more than the others.

This assumes of course that your bench shooting skills are sharp enough to see the differences. I've done just enough bench rest shooting to realize that it is a skill every bit as tough to master as any other style of shooting. Good results require fiendishly honed skills of touching the rifle as little as possible and with as consistent a touch as we can manage on the spots we have to touch. Without these skills you may not see the differences when you get down to the really fine stuff.

At which point if you're happy with what you ARE getting then you have more options for powders..... :d Or if you are that good you may find yourself slipping down that slippery slope of the truly OCD benchrest shooter that only buys specific batches of brass from certain makers and sets the brass into the press with the same orientation of the head stamp and loads it in the rifle with that same orientation for each and every round and maintains a log of how many times it's been loaded and keeps each load batch together in a separate group. The same guy that considers a powder trickler as "clumsy" and sneaks up on the final charge weight with individual grains of powder and a set of tweezers using a lab grade scale that measures to .01 grain resolution in a cabinet with waldo gloves to avoid room breezes upsetting the process.... If you find yourself considering a white coat and which brand of pocket protector would look nice you may want to call up friends to come by for an intervention.... :d
 
Right on BCRider! I don't anticipate any pocket protectors in my shop, so you can hold off the intervention plans.

Thanks for the advice on using an ultrasonic cleaner, what model do you use or recommend?

About benchrest accuracy, that is not really my thing right now. If I can find a good recipe that groups in at minute of deer at 300 yards then I will be happy! Really the whole reloading thing is to get me more practice from field positions. Ethically I don't want to be that guy anymore that dusts the rifle off in October and carries it around until the end of November without firing more than a couple shots.

Oh and as an update I scored a bunch of brass at a pit yesterday cleaning up after others. I now have more than 100 empty brass in 30/06. Which brings one more question, how dinged or crushed in the throat of the case is too much. I saw a few nice pieces of brass that had been flattened just in the throat by being driven over, would a re-sizing die take care of this?
 
I use a Lyman ultrasonic unit with Hornady one shot cleaning soloution, I've tried the home brew stuff but always go back to the Hornady stuff...

As for brass... I don't reuse any that has been flattened, out of round a bit is ok, a ding on the shoulder from ejecting is fine...
 
that press would be fine for you and good choice on a 1st press IMO....Also powder is starting to slowly trickle in...I repeat slowly...haha...especially for pistol. rifle powder seems to be avaliable
 
Get a LEE Classic turret kit. If were to start over today that would be the ideal for me. Set the dies once and buy extra turret's for different caliber's. Index by hand. 99.9% of primer's are caught in the ram for easy disposal.

Forget the ultra sonic. Save up a bit more and go for Stainless Steel media. Nothing can clean as well as it!

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BCRider said:
... Or if you are that good you may find yourself slipping down that slippery slope of the truly OCD benchrest shooter that only buys specific batches of brass from certain makers and sets the brass into the press with the same orientation of the head stamp and loads it in the rifle with that same orientation for each and every round and maintains a log of how many times it's been loaded and keeps each load batch together in a separate group. The same guy that considers a powder trickler as "clumsy" and sneaks up on the final charge weight with individual grains of powder and a set of tweezers using a lab grade scale that measures to .01 grain resolution in a cabinet with waldo gloves to avoid room breezes upsetting the process.... If you find yourself considering a white coat and which brand of pocket protector would look nice you may want to call up friends to come by for an intervention.... :d
Click to expand...

This is awesome. Since I have an addictive personality I will add re-loading to my list of things to avoid ;)
 
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