lastofthebreed
Member
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2005
- Messages
- 223
The following post is aimed that those shooters who may have recently taken up reloading and those who may be considering taking up the hobby.
For those who have been reloading for awhile, you may find the post to be elementary and even a bit boring, feel free to skip to another, more interesting, topic and I will harbor you no ill will.
Some background: I have been loading ammo for over 50 years so I speak from some amount of experience in the art of making it go “bang!”.
The best piece of advice I can give the novice reloader is DEVELOP A ROUTINE and stick with it. The routine you develop may not be the same as mine but it needs to be adhered to religiously.
My routine is as follows:
1-Sort, count and inspect the cases I intend to reload.
2-Lube all the cases and place them in the first reloading block.
3-Resize and deprime all the cases and, as each one is removed from the press, place that case in a second reloading block.
4-Clean all the lube from the cases, clean the primer pocket and, as each case is finished, put it back in the first reloading block. If I need to, I put all the cases in the vibratory case polisher.
5-Once polished, I will trim and chamfer each case as they come from the polisher and place them in the first reloading block.
6-I now prime each case, transferring it to the second reloading block as each is primed.
7-It’s time to charge each case, again transferring each case back to the first reloading block as it is charged.
8-Visually inspect the charged cases by holding a flashlight above the reloading block, this will quickly identify any case not having a full, or no, charge.
9-Seat the bullet in each case and transfer the completed round to the second reloading block.
Why did I go to the trouble of outlining my routine? Because I violated it yesterday. While the result was not catastrophic, I would have been embarrassing had I not caught my mistake.
I had only 10 cases of 243 I needed to load. I followed steps 1 thru 6 faithfully as I normally do. I decided to charge the cases and seat the bullet as each case was charged. I was using Winchester 760 powder and my Lyman 55 powder measure. I would charge the case and place it in the shell holder, then take a bullet out of the box and seat it in the case.
As I was putting each loaded round in my carrier, I noticed one of them seemed light. I weighed each round and, sure enough, one of them was short a powder charge. No problem to pull the bullet and charge the case and then reseat the bullet.
It would have been bad to actually chamber the round and fire it. The resulting bullet stuck in the rifling would have been a pain in the arse. Not getting the deer I may have been shooting at would have left me po’ed.
Moral: DEVELOP A ROUTINE AND FOLLOW IT!!!!
For those who have been reloading for awhile, you may find the post to be elementary and even a bit boring, feel free to skip to another, more interesting, topic and I will harbor you no ill will.
Some background: I have been loading ammo for over 50 years so I speak from some amount of experience in the art of making it go “bang!”.
The best piece of advice I can give the novice reloader is DEVELOP A ROUTINE and stick with it. The routine you develop may not be the same as mine but it needs to be adhered to religiously.
My routine is as follows:
1-Sort, count and inspect the cases I intend to reload.
2-Lube all the cases and place them in the first reloading block.
3-Resize and deprime all the cases and, as each one is removed from the press, place that case in a second reloading block.
4-Clean all the lube from the cases, clean the primer pocket and, as each case is finished, put it back in the first reloading block. If I need to, I put all the cases in the vibratory case polisher.
5-Once polished, I will trim and chamfer each case as they come from the polisher and place them in the first reloading block.
6-I now prime each case, transferring it to the second reloading block as each is primed.
7-It’s time to charge each case, again transferring each case back to the first reloading block as it is charged.
8-Visually inspect the charged cases by holding a flashlight above the reloading block, this will quickly identify any case not having a full, or no, charge.
9-Seat the bullet in each case and transfer the completed round to the second reloading block.
Why did I go to the trouble of outlining my routine? Because I violated it yesterday. While the result was not catastrophic, I would have been embarrassing had I not caught my mistake.
I had only 10 cases of 243 I needed to load. I followed steps 1 thru 6 faithfully as I normally do. I decided to charge the cases and seat the bullet as each case was charged. I was using Winchester 760 powder and my Lyman 55 powder measure. I would charge the case and place it in the shell holder, then take a bullet out of the box and seat it in the case.
As I was putting each loaded round in my carrier, I noticed one of them seemed light. I weighed each round and, sure enough, one of them was short a powder charge. No problem to pull the bullet and charge the case and then reseat the bullet.
It would have been bad to actually chamber the round and fire it. The resulting bullet stuck in the rifling would have been a pain in the arse. Not getting the deer I may have been shooting at would have left me po’ed.
Moral: DEVELOP A ROUTINE AND FOLLOW IT!!!!
