What’s a Guy To Do …..
- Thread starter Al Bear
- Start date
Brassman66
CGN frequent flyer
Inertia Bullet Pullers are a last resort.
Get the RCBS Collets and Handle/Die part and be done with using inferior Tools if you wish to reuse pulled Bullets.
Cheers
Get the RCBS Collets and Handle/Die part and be done with using inferior Tools if you wish to reuse pulled Bullets.
Cheers
- Location
- Blaster land, Okanagan BC
Haha, sounds like it earned its keep. I have both the inertia and collet style of pullers, nice to have both options depending on what you’re doing.
I’ve had some surplus x54r that was tough enough to pull with the collet puller, don’t want to know how long it would’ve taken with an inertia puller lol.
Two to three good hits against a good solid surface - I use a brick. Pulled a bunch to reload 303brit back in like 2013-2014 when 303 bullets were impossible to find and I was just starting out. I've done about a hundred without breaking my puller. Was too poor for a collet style puller in those days, and rarely pull bullets these days so have never bothered upgrading.
Using a drill chuck is an interesting solution though! Thanks for sharing OP.
Al Bear: Nothing like some good ol' redneck engineering, to get the job done! Ingenious. Chuck jaws work just like a collet-style bullet puller.
One question: How are you securing the cartridge to the press bed? Hold the case via a case holder, clamped into a vise? Or, clamped straight onto the case, itself?
Never had good results with impact-style bullet removers. Much prefer an RCBS collet-type puller . Have had one for many years, and like it. But, I do like your idea. Good to know, in a pinch.
Thanks for sharing
Al
One question: How are you securing the cartridge to the press bed? Hold the case via a case holder, clamped into a vise? Or, clamped straight onto the case, itself?
Never had good results with impact-style bullet removers. Much prefer an RCBS collet-type puller . Have had one for many years, and like it. But, I do like your idea. Good to know, in a pinch.
Thanks for sharing
Al
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- Location
- Blaster land, Okanagan BC
lol, no way. It’s steel cased MG ammo, has a decent crimp plus a sealer in the neck. Had to seat the bullet deeper with a seating for to break the sealant/crimp, was still hard to pull bullets on my big single stage press.
No way I’d bother using the inertia puller on that ammo, commercial made ammo or someone’s handload’s I was pulling apart are a different story.
The stuff I was pulling down was steel case with sealer in the neck too. The trick is it has to be a good hard surface with no give. I tried using a piece of lumber at first, too much give to that, didn't work at all. You really gotta swing it too - If you don't feel like you're gonna break it, you're not swinging hard enough lol
For some reason I held onto the "brass". According to the box its Sellier and Bellot czech surplus, Headstamps are hard to read, might be 69 over 19, or 61 over 69 (depending on which side you consider to be "up").
- Location
- Blaster land, Okanagan BC
Trust me, that x54r isn’t going to be easily pulled with a hammer puller. I’m no stranger to how they work.
Didn't say it was easy. Said it was doable.
- Location
- Blaster land, Okanagan BC
Work smart not hard, collet puller’s are there for a reason.
I used the press as one would with any die …. but without a die. The bullet extends past the top of the press and it’s there that I attached the drill. Once the chuck is tightened around the bullet I lower the ram arm and the bullet stays “chucked” while the shell remains in its holder. I use wire cutters in this fashion when I want to pull cast bullets because it’s the easiest way to pull those. Of course this ruins cast bullets but they get thrown back into the pot.
Call RCBS. When I broke my inertia puller they replaced it free of charge. The second one is still working 20 years later.
I'd recommend a proper collet-style puller. Inertia pullers work okay, and they're cheap, but I'd never go back to one.
Collet-style - simple and very quick to use, safer, no mess, no bullet damage.
That's my 2 cents anyway.
I am truly mystified by some of these comments. I have used inertia pullers for 40+ years and during that time I have literally pulled probably a couple of thousand bullets and broke exactly one puller which RCBS replaced free of charge.
I've done sealed rifle bullets (after breaking the seal), jacketed, plated, lead (including wadcutters) in weights from 50 gr. to 250 gr. In fact the only bullets I couldn't successfully pull were 98 gr. .32 wadcutters which a collet puller won't do either.
The secret is what you strike it on. Any surface with 'give' will not work well as it reduces the inertia of the strike. I have always just used the concrete basement floor although I'm sure a lead block or steel plate would work as well. Hit it square and one or two strikes is usually sufficient.
The puller catches the bullet and powder so no mess and unlike some collet pulled bullets the inertia puller doesn't damage them so they can be reused. In addition, inertia pullers typically come with 3 collets that will do virtually any common bullet diameter and the cost is normally no more than $30-40 whereas collet pullers can run into the hundreds of $ if you need a lot of collets for various calibres.
Of course it's slow but so are collet pullers. Normally you're not pulling hundreds of bullets at a time so that's not really a consideration for most people.
I actually have a Hornady collet puller with a couple of collets that I bought years ago and it's still sitting unused in the box in my shop because I've never felt the need to try it.
I've done sealed rifle bullets (after breaking the seal), jacketed, plated, lead (including wadcutters) in weights from 50 gr. to 250 gr. In fact the only bullets I couldn't successfully pull were 98 gr. .32 wadcutters which a collet puller won't do either.
The secret is what you strike it on. Any surface with 'give' will not work well as it reduces the inertia of the strike. I have always just used the concrete basement floor although I'm sure a lead block or steel plate would work as well. Hit it square and one or two strikes is usually sufficient.
The puller catches the bullet and powder so no mess and unlike some collet pulled bullets the inertia puller doesn't damage them so they can be reused. In addition, inertia pullers typically come with 3 collets that will do virtually any common bullet diameter and the cost is normally no more than $30-40 whereas collet pullers can run into the hundreds of $ if you need a lot of collets for various calibres.
Of course it's slow but so are collet pullers. Normally you're not pulling hundreds of bullets at a time so that's not really a consideration for most people.
I actually have a Hornady collet puller with a couple of collets that I bought years ago and it's still sitting unused in the box in my shop because I've never felt the need to try it.
Epilogue (I think)
When the collet nut on my RCBS inertial bullet puller broke, I tried to repair it … but that failed. I figured it was time to try something different; a “Grip-N-Pull” puller. Total cost shipped from Utah was $93 Cad … and it arrived today. It seems to work well with most bullet geometries but Hornady SSTs in 338 have a sharp ogive that starts at the cannelure … so that’s a challenge. My next step will be see whether RCBS will send me a replacement part because - as many of you suggested (and I agree) - the inertial bullet puller remains a valuable tool.
And if, on occasion, neither of these tools works, in a pinch, I could always try the drill chuck trick .
When the collet nut on my RCBS inertial bullet puller broke, I tried to repair it … but that failed. I figured it was time to try something different; a “Grip-N-Pull” puller. Total cost shipped from Utah was $93 Cad … and it arrived today. It seems to work well with most bullet geometries but Hornady SSTs in 338 have a sharp ogive that starts at the cannelure … so that’s a challenge. My next step will be see whether RCBS will send me a replacement part because - as many of you suggested (and I agree) - the inertial bullet puller remains a valuable tool.
And if, on occasion, neither of these tools works, in a pinch, I could always try the drill chuck trick .
If by "collet nut" you mean the cap that screws on to the back of the puller to secure the collet RCBS should definitely replace it. A few months ago I broke that part (and tried unsuccessfully to glue it together with Krazy Glue - didn't work). Contacted RCBS, sent a picture & they replaced it no charge.
