I knew this day would come...

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Obturation

Obturation

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Dec 24, 2018
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Northern illinois
Hey all,

Hope everyone's feeling good.
I knew this was coming and I did it to myself. I'm out of 357 magnum cartridges. Yeah, none. Now this is no small thing, a year ago I had close to 5,000 loaded and ready to go. I shot my last 100 a few weeks ago.

2020 was a strange year for all of us, I was working for a small business at which I was the only employee . times were tight and the boss only had me working a day or two a week and many of those were half days. That left me nothing but time, a luxury I've never had in my adult life. What was a guy to do? I reloaded. Almost every day for an hour or 2.

I had built up my stockpile of loaded cartridges to a level I never had before but was doing almost no shooting. 2021 was a better year and I was generally working the first half of the year and in late June I changed jobs to a company that has endless work and longer hours. I was able to hit the range again and burned up ammo like it was going out of style. I get a certain satisfaction from setting up at the local indoor range and firing 1,000+ rounds while other shooters shuffle in and out after shooting their box of 50 or 100 trying to conserve ammo.

I did a little loading here and there but mostly to keep my 45-70 fed (I don't have brass or powder to make thousands). I didn't keep up with my 357 consumption and I knew I was getting low but when I pulled the last of my 357 ammo out my heart sunk a little. I knew I had a monumental task ahead.

I've got bullets , molds, lead ect , no problem. I've got 6 # of 2400 powder and a few thousand spm primers. I've got brass coming out my ears. That stuff isn't the issue, the issue is reloading it all. Not the worst problem to have but it's going to take some time. I deprime on a lee app which makes quick work of it. I tumble in walnut shell with some nu finish - I can only tumble about 300 at a time. I load on a single stage press, that's where my time gets soaked up. It's never been an issue, I load for quality not quantity . this is going to take a while.

Normally I wouldn't mind but like I mentioned before, my schedule has become pretty hectic. If I'm moving at a good pace I can do 100 rounds an hour. I can usually only squeek an hour or 2 per weekend . That means I'm going to have to spend the winter building back up. Not the end of the world but I need to remember not to get in this situation again. It's overwhelming but it'll be a project that pays good rewards . I did my first 100 today and I'm just going to stay at until I can get back to at least a few thousand and make sure I'm handling the brass as soon as I get home from the range. Having a mountain of dirty brass in a box is no way to be.

So not awful but I figured I'd share that with you all. Don't be like me, keep your inventory up and try not to fall too far behind.
 
After you get in the grove. Your stock pile will begin to grow before you realize you have a 1000 loaded. I learned not to let the brass pile up. It does get over whelming. I cleaned a resized and trimed a few hundred casings for my mosin in one sitting. Then i loaded up my RCBS bench primer tube. And went to town priming all my brass. I didn't load them all. Im working on finding a load for 123 grain bullets that group well. I found my load for the Speer 150 grain. One goal met at least.
 
When my son up and decided he liked 38 better than 357 I found myself in a similar situation. I have about 3k 38s and only 3ish hundred 357s. I get the magnums processed immediately, but I had the last batch of 38 in the bag when the clouds opened and his sudden proclamation was made. This means I also need to cast some low bhn bullets as there is no reason to load the good stuff.
 
ColtPythonElite said:
Buy a progressive press and don't look back.
Click to expand...
Ive tinkered with the idea but the only cartridge I load in bulk is 357 mag. Everything else is low volume and a lot of it is cartridges loaded near max , something I want to keep a very close eye on through the whole process. Even with 357 I check every charge, I do use a powder drop but I drop into a pan, weigh and then charge.
I know there are faster ways , even a turret would be faster . I know too that there are checking devices available for progressives for each step and they're reliable but at this point it's more than I really need .

In the future I may get something quicker but I still will need a single, never done buying . lol
 
Bazoo said:
I trim my revolver brass..... Lord have mercy am I behind! I am going to use my lyman trimmer on my drill press though and see how that does. The drill ain't so great, but better than the crank.

I have about 1000 357s to process right now. Not counting some that's already in the works.
Click to expand...
I trim too, this brass has all been previously trimmed and after that I don't bother. Yeah, I use the crank- I don't do it unnecessarily. I feel for you
 
Targa said:
Well sir…It sounds to me like you need to spend a bit more time with your Toklat to slow down your ammo consumption a bit..:D
Click to expand...
I do shoot the toklat a lot, but it's slow going and 100 rounds is about all I care for. I do load some 250 grain rnfp over clays for casual blasting with it but I've only got 500 pieces of brass in rotation plus another 1000 new in reserve - I've split a lot of cases and buy them when I see a good price. Generally I keep 100-200 full power casull rounds , another 200 45 colt power loads in casull cases and 100 or so in limbo. If the 45-70 didn't take all my lead I could shoot the thing more. I only shoot lead in the toklat and I only shoot jacketed in my 10" freedom arms revolver, I shoot the toklat way way more frequently with a wide range of loads and pretty much use the FA for the fastest loads. I do buy the 360 grain gas checked bullets I like for my heaviest toklat loads but if I can find that mould I'd be burning lead just about as fast as I do with the 45-70.

The bigger cartridges I can keep up with , those pesky 357s are tiny and a million cases fit in a shoe box, I lost track...
 
That problem is why I bought the Lee ABLP progressive press. I prime my 357s off the press so when I load them on the ABLP, I just set bullets and run the handle. It runs .357s really well, it's 4 station, but it's a small press so it you have bananas for fingers you may not like it.

I only load.357 magnums in it and it stays set up for it at all times. I load a lot of .357s so it's a pleasure to walk up to a press and load at a nice slow 5-600 an hour without really trying, once they have been primed.
Don't take long to get caught up with those speeds.
My LNL-AP does my 9mm, 327FM, and 41 mags and the Rockchucker does everything else.
 
Agree with quality over quantity, but.....you knew I was going to say....but.....you should REALLY consider a Dillon 550.

Treat the four position progressive as four individual single stage presses.

Add an external light for station 2 or 3, to verify powder drop, and you are set.

100 an hour, or less, is not terrible, but reloading should also be fun AND relaxing. Yes, you will save, at least half of your time, when reloading on the Dillon, but it is more than just time.
 
I work for myself as well, and the past 2 years in particular I’ve really had to put the spurs to my schedule. I sort of break everything down into stages… batch processes… trimming, tumbling, even priming in some cases, prepping as much as I can before I throw it on the press to load, that way I don’t have the entire process in front of me before I kick out the first cartridge. Even if it’s just 1 hour a day, or a few hours a week, I try to do something. Granted, I load handgun on a progressive, but I load quite a bit of rifle on the single-stage. Every hour of prep counts!
 
I almost always start the reloading process as soon as I get home from the range. The brass goes into the tumbler while I clean the gun...

I most often load on a single stage these days, and rarely go from start to finish in one session. I usually put the tumbled brass into a box to "rest" until I have time and inclination to carry on. Then I normally will size and prime during another session, and finish the cartridges in a third session. I prefer frequent short trips to the range, though, so rarely have more than a hundred empties to deal with at a time. If I have hundreds of rounds to do, I just pull up a chair in front of the Dillon.
 
ColtPythonElite said:
Buy a progressive press and don't look back.
Click to expand...

This. I can do 400+ handgun rounds an hour on my Dillon 550 once everything is set up and humming. If you're hand weighing charges, I don't know how you are even doing 100 an hour. I can't quite do half that when I hand weigh precision rifle loads (the only thing I hand weigh).
 
I’d fire your inventory control personnel :).

Obturation said:
I load on a single stage press, that's where my time gets soaked up. It's never been an issue, I load for quality not quantity .
Click to expand...
This is exactly the reason I looked at, and eventually purchased a progressive. I am not suggesting you do that, to each his own. But I will say for anything more than 20-50 rounds, it’s at the progressive. BTW, I load for quality and quantity. You can have your cake and eat it too. Good luck.
 
Gone Hiking said:
I don't know how you are even doing 100 an hour. I can't quite do half that when I hand weigh
Click to expand...

When I first started handloading, on my little RS3 press, I could load 100 .45ACP in an hour on it, from start to finish... but that was really cooking, and that was without the separate crimping step, which I prefer now, and with everything set up and ready to go.

I have to admit... 5000+ rounds loaded on a single-stage? I never say anything is impossible, but that is about 80 hours of work on a single-stage.
 
Gone Hiking said:
I don't know how you are even doing 100 an hour. I can't quite do half that when I hand weigh precision rifle loads (the only thing I hand weigh).
Click to expand...
It's a 3 in one step thing that includes priming. Yeah, I have a separate priming tool but it's just as quick to prime on the press if you consider how many times in picking up the brass and putting it back in the loading block.
I'll lower the ram, put a primer in the cup, raise it slightly, put a case in the shell holder, lower ram to install primer, raise ram to flare, drop my charge into a pan, confirm weight (it's typically right on or very close using 2400), trickle if need be, dump through funnel on the top of the flaring die, place bullet on top as I put it back in the block. Put my preset seating die in, blast through the assembled cartridges and then crimp in a separate step. Takes longer to type than it takes to do it. Not horribly inefficient but also not fast. I've got to be on a mission to do 100 an hour but I can do it. All of them with less than .1 grain charge variation.
I know that kind of charge accuracy isn't really needed for pistol cartridges but 2400 meters really well in my setup and typically charges don't need adjustment.

If we're talking about powders that don't meter well, it cuts me down to like 30 an hour. Good example is imr4198, I just can't get consistent metering (log jam :rofl:) so I dip and trickle. Same with trailboss, I've tried just about everything to get anything that resembles consistent weights but it seems impossible to me. Partially the reason progressives spook me a little. When I started reloading (about 5 years ago), I would just dispense directly into the case and check charges every 5 or 10, even with powders that meter well I had some that were a few tenths off.
 
Obturation said:
It's a 3 in one step thing that includes priming. Yeah, I have a separate priming tool but it's just as quick to prime on the press if you consider how many times in picking up the brass and putting it back in the loading block.
I'll lower the ram, put a primer in the cup, raise it slightly, put a case in the shell holder, lower ram to install primer, raise ram to flare, drop my charge into a pan, confirm weight (it's typically right on or very close using 2400), trickle if need be, dump through funnel on the top of the flaring die, place bullet on top as I put it back in the block. Put my preset seating die in, blast through the assembled cartridges and then crimp in a separate step. Takes longer to type than it takes to do it. Not horribly inefficient but also not fast. I've got to be on a mission to do 100 an hour but I can do it. All of them with less than .1 grain charge variation.
I know that kind of charge accuracy isn't really needed for pistol cartridges but 2400 meters really well in my setup and typically charges don't need adjustment.

If we're talking about powders that don't meter well, it cuts me down to like 30 an hour. Good example is imr4198, I just can't get consistent metering (log jam :rofl:) so I dip and trickle. Same with trailboss, I've tried just about everything to get anything that resembles consistent weights but it seems impossible to me. Partially the reason progressives spook me a little. When I started reloading (about 5 years ago), I would just dispense directly into the case and check charges every 5 or 10, even with powders that meter well I had some that were a few tenths off.
Click to expand...
I planned on using that exact arrangement when I bore out my expanders. Seem like a huge step up in efficiency. Now if I can remember to take the dies home where I have lathe access. Curious if the noe plugs fit the powder through die like the lee universal expander or I'll have to make or modify them.
 
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