OK! Thanks to all for your thoughts. Here is where I am currently.
1) I am not too sold on the hammer puller, especially for 1000 rounds! Quit casting bullets long ago and would like to save these bullets if possible.
2) Thought about trying to make a puller that would catch the SWK bullets flush with the case neck. I could live with a some of bullet deformation, as I don't think it would detract from my pistol marksmanship much if any. ( Side note: I once bought an ammo can full of 30 M2 ball bullets at a gun show, which had been pulled with wire cutters. All bullets were "dinged", some worse than others. 100 yd accuracy was no worse than expected w/M2 ball ammo and the few bullets I recovered in a sand bank revealed that the cutter marks were ironed smooth by rifling.)
3) This didn't work out as planned; marked bullets worse than just using the #10 wire stripper slot.
4) Had not considered using a collet puller since bullet shank not exposed, but decided to try a .308 RCBS puller in hopes it
might grip the SWC ogive sufficiently to pull the bullet. I accidentally bumped the bullet when inserting in the die and felt it push bullet about .005-.010" which I felt might help unseat the bullet. Was really surprised that the first one pulled beautifully, was sure I was onn a roll !....but then it didn't. Once the 2nd bullet slipped, I think it coated the collet w/lead, I think the lead acted as a lubricant and it never pulled a second bullet, no matter how much I tightened the collet (1st pulled bullet, shown on right, all subsequent attempts shown on left...Darn!
5) Head on my old Herters press is too thick to use stripper on the short .38 case, so made a jig to do so:
6) Next, sorted a couple of boxes of the batch in question and found the vast majority are Western (will sort all and see if possible to check weight of loaded cases based on data from the few I have broken down).
Extreme spread on 3 Western cases: ....... .9 gr
Extreme spread on 3 Winchester cases:... .4 gr
Extreme spread on 3 R-P cases:............... .8 gr
Extreme spread on 3 Rem-UMC cases:.... .4 gr
(As would be expected, all pulled cases contained 5.3 gr. of #5)
ES of the 12 pulled bullets was 1.9 gr. and with case ES of .9 should not have a variance of more than 2.8 gr.????
Looks like I will probably weight a large quantity of Western loaded rounds and see what ES is on them.
Some of you statisticians out there tell me if I'm missing anything.
As they say in the old blacksmith shop, "two heads is better than mine."
Regrds,
hps