Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Reloading is complicated

I have and use arbor presses from K&M, Neil Jones, one I made from an old bottle capper and the leather faced wood mallet I spoke about earlier. They all seat bullets with the same concentricity because it's the die that matters...not how the seating stem gets pushed down.

A young guy I know getting into precision hand loading had a need for a arbor press. He didn't have a lot of extra jingle in his jeans at that point and asked about buying one of mine. Instead of doing that, I grabbed one of these drill holders from ebay for under $20, made an aluminum plug to fit in the holder, shortened the column so it fit in his range box and viola'....he had an arbor press. He still uses it to this day.



People with the desire to do something will always find a way to accomplish it within their budget. Add some basic common sense, an understanding of the mechanics of what's trying to be accomplished and good things always happen.

Good shootin' -Al

There are 3 components to that statement Al that unfortunately don’t necessarily compute these days nor in my experience the last 25 + years for 2 of them.

Desire= very limited

Basic common sense maybe 5% of the time, an understanding of the mechanics of what’s trying to be accomplished is <1%.

If it wasn’t for the internet and YouTube 99% people couldn’t mechanically or have enough common sense to figure out how get themselves out of a wet paper bag.

Some people want to make it so.

As long as you are asking questions then your are still willing to learn things that are unknown or unclear to you. When you stop asking questions, then the water gets muddy! He who knowns everything, has the most to learn!

It's not terribly complicated but it sure as hell is tedious and boring.

Why I don't reload. I've killed a bunch of elk using Rem/Win 30/06 factory 180 grain ammunition. I even use to get a rebate on 2 boxes every year-----those were the days.

I suspect reloading is ever more complicated as the shooting sport moves toward more range time and group shooting and less field shooting.

In today's mail Brownell's is advertising a new to me reloading die/sizing die family that starts at more then $300 for the sizing die bare to which add bushings and of course an equally new and highly touted seating die. On the proverbial it's like a bus model I got to my stopping place some hundreds maybe thousands of dollars ago.

If I had some place to shoot today I could shoot ground squirrels and other varmints with a variety of owned rifles cartridges starting at .17 to include .204 in a MSR then .220 Swift Hart barreled in a trued Remington and .223 and a 5.56 different chamberings in different rifles then a 6mm Remington is not out of place with lighter bullets. Life was certainly simpler when I had only a rimfire and a .270 with loads from varmints to elk and thought that was complicated. Give me the eyes and land access of my youth and I could shoot for the rest of my life with foggy Weavers and load with 310 tong tools or Lee Loaders though I'd choose the Lee Precision at the introductory price if I could.

Used to be easy to find the places to burn ammo; today it's the range or nothing. Now handloading is easy enough though no doubt not so well done as it would be with spending $2K for a precision press and dies and measure and gages to load one cartridge. It's access to land that's complicated.

The gack books are great but the biggest help for me was your DVD on reloading. Lot of good info for a reasonable price.

My apologies. When you said comparator my mind heard OAL gauge. I have the Hornady comparator set as well. Very useful tool.

And thank you for the generous offer. I certainly appreciate that. I'll be sending a PM shortly.

Thanks for your comment! Glad it helped--which is an example of how showing instead of telling is often more helpful.

That DVD was made years ago, but still keeps going both on the Wolfe website and ours.

John

Add another thanks for the heads up. Picked up the 2022 Basic Loading Manual as well. Received a confirmation email today that they’ve shipped.

[quote[/b]=eaglemountainman]

Originally Posted by Al_Nyhus

Hornady's case comparator setup and a quality dial caliper should be the first tooling the new reloaded should invest in.

Good shootin' -Al

[b]Excellent advise, but have you tried getting the modified cases lately. I've been measuring to the lands using old school methods because I can't find the cases in the chambers that I need. Been tryin' bout 8 months now.[/quote]


No, and haven’t for many years. I use stony point but same same since all Hornady did was buy em. Make your own as it’s simple.

https://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2015/04/make-your-own-modified-case-for-hornady-o-a-l-gauge/

5/16x36 tap 10.00. L or 19/64 drill bit and in 5 minutes time you gots a modified case.

I got into it because I wanted to use a bullet that was a handload only proposition. Then I got interested in some competitions, then casting bullets, then oddball guns and cartridges. I resisted a lot of the bughole rabbit holes for a long time, kind of started going down those holes a bit now. Gave me the opportunity to meet some good folk, have a lot of fun, do & shoot some stuff I never would have considered if I didn't handload. Does make it tricky to go into various gun shops and gun shows though, some I walk out of clean, others have cost me bigtime.
There is always the debate, OK, I have them or have means to make bullets, need dies, have right powders?,find some brass. Some guns have been in a cartridge I didn't really want, but, could work with, as they were a deal I couldn't say no to. Others got bought because I had an application for it as an excuse. Others were just cause I wanted to tinker with it. It isn't all that difficult, there is an absolute bonanza of product and info out there now that wasn't really as accessible when I started, as it is now, also more hype and BS around.
Overall, it is worth it in the long run.

.

A young guy I know getting into precision hand loading had a need for a arbor press. He didn't have a lot of extra jingle in his jeans at that point and asked about buying one of mine. Instead of doing that, I grabbed one of these drill holders from ebay for under $20, made an aluminum plug to fit in the holder, shortened the column so it fit in his range box and viola'....he had an arbor press. He still uses it to this day.



People with the desire to do something will always find a way to accomplish it within their budget. Add some basic common sense, an understanding of the mechanics of what's trying to be accomplished and good things always happen.

Good shootin' -Al[/quote]

There is a lot of common sense here. You have to ask yourself, “What is my goal?”

I tell new reloaders that speed isn’t a good thing. Don’t spend your money foolishly. They will find an arbor press and an inline seater will save them a few bucks and seat bullets straight. Inline seaters are made for all the common calibres.

There are so many reasons to reload, and certainly, quite a few different actions. So, what is your goal?

I've got all the basic tools but I need a few more gages. Just got a new updated loading book and dial caliper.

Copy/paste is nice but reality is usually different.

A "5 minute" job sounds nice but that's not the reality of making these. Besides the back end drilling and tapping, the neck I.D. needs to be either honed or reamed so the bullet is a slip fit in the neck. If you're doing it in a lathe, you can't just clamp the chuck jaws on the case....you need a way to hold the case in the chuck as the drilling and tapping takes quite a bit more pressure than people think. Unless they've actually done them, of course.

For anyone contemplating doing these at home in a drill press or whatever, use an 'M' bit rather than the 'L'. The 'M' is .005 larger and while the resulting threads will be a bit more shallow, it won't be functionally significant and the tapping effort will be quite a bit less.

For the home hobbiest, you can 'hone' the neck I.D. with a piece of 320 grit rolled tight and inserted in the neck while the case is spinning. Keep checking it often and stop when a new bullet is just a nice slip fit. If the bullet fits sloppy in the case neck, the reading you get will be inaccurate as the bullet will tip in the neck and not contact the rifling evenly.

Before I had a lathe, that's how I did mine....and I'm not very smart. But any hobbiest with basic skills and bit of thought can accomplish this at home.

And now for something completely different - reloading without any dies or presses.

For the cost of a bullet mould and some simple tools very serviceable practice/fun ammo can be created. A means of de-re capping, metering powder, and a bullet sized correctly for a snug thumb press fit in the fired case (leave it sticking too far out and the act of inserting the cartridge in the chamber and closing the breech will automatically seat the bullet against the lands uniformly shot-to-shot). Precision loading? No, but surprisingly good results can be had. A range session can be conducted with but one cartridge case used over and over and over again, a punch to remove spent primers and a cheap hand primer seater, powder measure + powder, and a box of cast bullets, and a big smile on your face is all you need.

Carry it a step further and you can breech seat cast bullets directly into the throat of the rifle and avoid having to create some form of fixed cartridge altogether. Again with simple paraphernalia to re-charge the single case. Accuracy can be downright astonishing as the bullet is started straight into the rifling and is fully engaged in the rifling before being spanked by a violent powder explosion which can upset the apple cart, so to speak. Works best with single shot rifles, but people do it with bolt guns too, as have I. Again, the gear can can be as simple or as complicated as you care to make it.

Here's some of my gear, in this instance the stuff for shooting .32-40:





Top pic- breech seating tools, a simple pusher tool and a compound leverage pusher.
Middle pic- de-re capping tool, in this case a copy of H.M.Pope's design
Bottom pic- bullet lubing pump (although I mainly just pan lube my bullets any more)

Cheap accurate shooting conducted like this with Ye Old Betsy hunting rifle throughout the spring/summer months is a dandy way to hone the physiological control of the trigger making you a better marksman for when it counts in the field (not to mention being stupid cheap to do, even in this day and age). As hunting season rolls up, put this stuff away, load (or buy) a couple boxes of full-snort hunting ammo, re-zero the gun, and go forth and kill stuff.

Seems you go about it the hard way. And all I copied and paste was a link to which I never said was the easiest way to do it. No you don’t have to ream the neck ID.
If for multiple same caliber I take a fired case from the smallest chamber, run it through a body die if it chambers hard in the rifle it was fired in, if it goes into all easily all I do is go to step 2 since it naturally has a slip fit from being fired.
Then all one has to do is drill and tap which by the way Amazon sells the whole kit. I used a 19/64 bit which yes the threads are a little shallower but since you aren’t putting it under a strain it doesn’t matter.
So yes since I do have common sense and mechanical ability it only takes 5 minutes unless you want to make it harder doing it the way that article and you state.

I picked up 2 Wilson case trimmers and a 30-06 cartridge family trim Guage from an estate. It can work in a vise but I was wondering if the Wilson stand and tooling Guage holder were worth acquiring for the trimmer?

The Wilson stand works ok. It's also a simple matter to make one.