Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Bullet pullers????

Watched the demo film on the grip n pull. I may become a customer. On another note I learned a few things today. Turned out only about half of the 120 or so cartridges I needed to disassemble were crimped so I decided to just give it a go with the RCBS impact puller and get done today. Yesterday I was beating the puller on the floor of my loading room which is concrete covered with thin carpet. Even after bumping the bullets down a bit to break the crimp it still took 8 or more whacks to pull the bullet.

Today I brought a chunk of oak off the firewood stack inside to beat on. It's about 18" tall and 10" in dia. Amazing difference. 3 to 4 whacks and the bullet is out. The recoil of the hammerhead is noticeably greater off the wood vs concrete and apparently magnifies the inertia. When I got to the uncrimped cartridges it took only 2 whacks and the bullet was pulled. Another thing I learned was the life of the aluminum collet that grips the case groove is something less than 200 rounds. I had noticed the cartridge head was cutting into the collet and had picked several slivers of aluminum out of my powder dump already so knew the end was near. With 20 or so cartridges to go a case finally punched thru the collet. As near to finishing as I was I just ran those left up into the die hole of the Rockchucker, grabbed the bullet with pliars and dropped the ram.

As JB said the impact puller is good to have around for occasional quick use. But for more than a handful of cartridges something better is called for.

lastround,

Glad to hear it worked for you too!

shootem,

One easy trick to use with inertia pullers is substituting the regular shell-holder for the aluminum collet. It works great and solves the problems you mention. (I picked that up from somebody else, somewhere....)

The standard shell holders work great in my inertia puller. I haven't seen the aluminum collet in a couple of years.

Well Duh! Kinda obvious once you know isn't it. Thanks for the tip on non-bonded bullets too. I can see where they'd get a little squirrelly after being slammed down 8 or 10 times especially. The bullets I pulled were the 64 gr Nosler Bonded. Hoping they really are.

Another thing about the last bunch I pulled with pliers. That was actually pretty easy. Just reached down into the die hole with the angled square nose set and kinda let the bullet feed up till I felt the case mouth bump. Last resort though, still worried about squeezing them a little out of round. Saving those separately to test.

Love my hornady cam puller. I find doesn't mess neck tension much at all and cases don't need resizing. Makes it nice if you decide a batch is loaded a little hot....quickly pull bullets and simply reseat an assortment of lighter ones and get back to shooting/testing.

Think I may have to order one of those. Thanks for the link!

ETA - Just ordered one of these. I'll try it out and post some initial impressions.

RCBS Collet Puller. Throw that stupid inertia hammer in the trash.

Just thought I'd update this.

I ordered and received one of these shortly after my post and have been using it regularly ever since. It's a simple, easy to use product that works as advertised. I've never used a collet puller so can't comment if this is better, but I'll never use my inertia puller again!