Had a 600 rds or so of .223 and .223AI from rifles I've sold that I've been meaning to pull down for a couple years but wasn't looking forward to. Finally got on it yesterday and that dang collet puller was being a pain! Remembered you recommended a pair of diagonal cutters so gave it a go.

Dang things are WAY easier than that collet set up and barely leave a mark.

Spent a good part of the afternoon yesterday pulling them down and kept thinking "don't forget to thank that guy!"

Thanks for the great tip John.

Anybody wanna buy an RCBS bullet puller with collets cheap?

Mule Deer's advice is worth listening too, indeed. Glad you got them pulled!

How about $15 shipped?😁

$20

Higginez,

Glad you got 'em pulled!

The cutters result in the least damage on bullets with grooves or a cannelure, but even with "smooth" bullets they can shoot very well if the cutter-mark is on the bullet's shank.

MD, please describe how this is done.

I'm a pro at this point so I'll fill ya in.

Put cartridge in shell holder and run it up to where bullet is sticking above the press. Grab with dykes. Lower ram.

Thanks, sounds easy enough. I've got several.06 rounds to break down. I'm headed to my reloading bench now.

If you find they are hard to pull due to cold weld, run em through a seater die and just bump em a little and break the weld.

It worked. Thanks.

Dang, that's a good idea. Gonna give it a try.

Picture of said cutters? powdr

Google diagonal cutters or side cutters. I'm familiar with them being called dykes too, though searching for dykes did not return images of pliers.

Am not surprised!

powdr,

If I get the time, will take and post a photo of the two different pliers I use (have two different loading rooms), along with what little "damage" they do to various bullets.

Dykes

That would work--as would a lot of others.

One I use is a similar side-cutter inherited from my father. But it doesn't have the fancy red-plastic on the handles.

Funny, I just posted the ones I used which were a set my Dad gave me as well. LOL

Wish I’d seen this earlier, I used vice grips.
So much for reusing the bullets!🙃

Yeah, I tried vise-grips when first using the method many years ago. Same deal!

Custom fluted bullets?

Yeah, but pretty wild consistency.

plain old pair of cee tee pliers works too

Yep!

I have two reloading rooms, one in the garage for using most of the time, and one in the basement for when the garage is too hot or cold. Keep the side-cutter inherited from my father in the basement, and the CT in the garage.

Very interesting thread. Wish I had know about this decades ago. The old inertia type bullet pullers were kind of a pain. They did hint though at varying amounts of neck tension in your reloads assuming you were hammering at roughly the same force each time.

Probably, potentially, more dangerous also?

I have the leather tongue from an old shoe that I cut a slot in for the bullet to go through. I hold it on top of the press so that I don't have whichever type of pliers I use contacting the top of the press directly.

Thanks guys,an old dog learned a new trick!

I have one of the old impact pullers. I wasn't happy with this tool and figured out JB's method on my

own.

Jim

Nail pulling pliers work great too.

But far more folks will have dykes in their tool box than the former.

I have a Lee four whole turret press and use a heavy duty set of needle nose pliers with the wire cutter jaws. That way it will fit over one of the open threaded die holes without having to remove a die. Regular dykes would not have the clearance that the needle nose has.

Some folks might want to use a pair of these. Just one of several options. $40.



https://grip-n-pull.com

Haven't used one of those, but have found (and purchased) multiple-hole wire-stripper pliers that also work.

Having to disassemble cartridges is a pain, but the GNP made the task a little less onerous. I gave it a workout after I had problems with a Lyman 1500 digital scale.

When I do work ups, I check the powder weight on two scales. Last year, I was working with some 85 grain 6mm bullets for a 6x45mm.

I was in a rush and decided not to use a second scale. The Lyman had always been reliable. That was a mistake. Had I used the second one, I would have discovered that the Lyman was weighing light. I had become complacent. I was using 4198, N120 and H335 and a couple of others.

Of the charges I weighed after pulling the bullets, there was an overcharge of .4 to .7 of a grain. Possibly higher than that with some others. In a 223 case with those particular powders, that is unsettling. I had one shot that chronoed at over 2900 fps, powered by H335. I went home and pulled all the cartridges with the Grip N Pull. There were about 70.

As it was, I was angry with myself, and I hate going backwards on work ups, but it was necessary. It would have taken a long time had I used either an inertia or collet bullet puller, and probably added to my frustration. The bullets and the powder were saved for future use.

And I relearned the lesson of using two scales. It was the reloading equivalent of writing lines out 100 times on a blackboard.

"I will pay closer attention to my work in the future!"

Steve,

Yep, something's gonna catch all of us now and then!

Right now I have a brand-new, super-improved e-scale sent to me by a major handloading company for testing. Haven't taken it out of the box yet...but will, eventually.

SOLD. Got me a couple. Very impressed. Tired of banging the inertial on a big hunk of end-grain hickory.
I've used the pilers method a lot too but always leave at least a little mark. This device looks like "the bomb."

Thanks for the tip Steve,
Rex

John,

Not trying to change this thread, but as a follow up, I only trust digital scales when using them in pairs.

A Lyman rep who I was talking to at a show gave me the Pocket Touch pictured above. At least he meant well. Regardless of manufacturer, the odds of two scales being off the same amount is slim. I do use the Hornady G3 and the i201 almost exclusively. I haven't had the Ohaus out lately. Or the Lee. I will say that the Lee is dependable. I have two, and neither has let me down.

Rex, NP.

I have been using mine for a while and am very happy with it.

Real interesting, informative thread going on here. I'm not exactly enamored with inertia pullers anymore.

Thanks Steve for the tip on the grip n pulls. Just ordered one.

You’re very welcome. This is one of those things that I hope you don’t have to use much.

Its’s a great, but windy day at the range.

I ordered one of these..... It works amazing. Wish I had it sooner.

Good info here

The Grip n Pulls work very well. However, some bullets are seated pretty deep and the GNP will not be able to get enough grip on the bullet. For those rounds I use a combo of a few wacks with an inertia puller to get the bullet out of the mouth just enough to so the GNP can finish the pull.

One disadvantage of inertia pullers is they can result in the core in cup-and-core bullets loosening slightly, which can really affect accuracy. Proved this to my own satisfaction years ago when using a Juenke machine, which tested to concentricity in lead-core bullets with ultrasound.

Found the machine worked very well, by testing bullets on it and then shooting them. One thing discovered, however, is that hard "bounces" do affect the accuracy of jacketed cup-and-core bullets, whether the bullets are dropped or slightly crushed inside their boxes--or pulled with an intertia tool.

Which is one reason I started using side-cutters or dykes to pull C&C bullets. Found they did NOT affect accuracy, despite the slight marks they left on the outside of bullets.

Of course, monolithic and bonded bullets aren't affected by inertia pullers. But inertia pullers are still slow, and a PITA.