What do you dislike about reloading?

ballman6711 said:
For me it's sorting brass. Not sorting headstamps, which I do on occasion after brass has been cleaned, but sorting before cleaning after coming home from the range.
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I disliked it enough I spent a number of hours developing a solution that worked for me. This is it, takes about 15 min to sort a 5 gallon bucket of brass.



There are a number of other tasks I also dislike and have made tools/machines to remove as much of me from the process.
 
AI (Artificial Intelligence) is probably already on some forums, maybe even this one. Who really knows? How can we know? I don't know that answer either.

All I know is that I enjoy most of it, except sorting the brass. If I lived near @jmorris maybe I could borrow his sorting machine, or just bring my brass over, along with his preferred beverage, lol!

chris
 
Trimming the brass and removing the crimp in the primer pockets.

I enjoy separating brass.
I bought and picked up over two and a half tons of range brass in the past two years. Seperated it all, wet tumbled it and packaged it up by the 500 piece in ziplock baggies
I just picked up two 5 gallon buckets of range brass, 125 pounds and got it all Seperated and half of it wet tumbled and on my drying racks.

These separating pans really help.
I bought the 380 plate and bolted it in the bottom of a three gallon bucket that I cut the bottom out of.
Seperated 380 and 9mm by hand is a royal PITA.
Not no more.
And the Corona make it a little more enjoyable.

20230618_195141.jpg 20230618_205144.jpg 20230618_195043.jpg 20230618_191629.jpg 20230624_081742.jpg
 
blackd24 said:
Trimming 223 brass
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If you dislike it as much as I did, the Dillon trimmers are one cure. Used with a progressive press, I can size/deprime and trim over 1000/hr without so much as a tingling finger.

DB58A41D-1205-453E-955A-4652F1275F40.jpeg

Now, I just dislike having to wear headphones while trimming, they are loud…. At least it only takes a small fraction of the time vs manual methods.
 
jmorris said:
If you dislike it as much as I did, the Dillon trimmers are one cure. Used with a progressive press, I can size/deprime and trim over 1000/hr without so much as a tingling finger.

View attachment 1158342

Now, I just dislike having to wear headphones while trimming, they are loud…. At least it only takes a small fraction of the time vs manual methods.
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What the?
 
CQB45ACP said:
What the?
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It’s just a size die that mounts a motorized carbide cutter over the case mouth. Adjust it to the length you want and trim away…




https://www.dillonprecision.com/62164

The motor is pretty loud but you also have to run a vacuum to suck up the chips. I have a board that I close in the window behind the press that has a hole in it I can run the hose through, so the vacuum/noise is at least outside the house.
 
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All aspects of reloading are mind-numbing boring for me. I don't trust myself to focus enough to reload.

I am an RSO at the gun club. We have a hunting sight-in service open to the public on weekends every September. I see two types of reloads. One type is meticulous with labeled plastic boxes of ammo that looks better than new manufactured.

The other type has ammo in coat pockets, pants pockets, or in twenty-year-old worn ammo boxes with missing end flaps. There are splits in shells, corroded brass, cocked bullets, and varying overall lengths.

I told one guy his ammo was not acceptable to shoot on the range. He told me his twelve year old son reloaded for him. He said he was going to give him a beating when he got home.
 
People. Ask me what I dislike about anything and the answer is always going to be the same: People.
When it comes to reloading, it’s mostly the people who work gun store counters. They either don’t know squat but are full of opinions anyway or they know just enough to be dangerous. Few and far between are any gun store workers who reload and do so safely. It’s always all about the people.
 
The lack of time I have available to do what I need to do. I had to (gasp!) buy 9mm ammo from an actual store yesterday for a local match tomorrow. Didn't get my gun project finished in time, so leaving the 38 Super at home and taking the 9mm I hardly ever shoot. Taking something different doesn't bother me nearly as much as having bought factory ammo.
 
For me, it was too much of it. Back in the '80s, when my wife and I were heavily involved in IHMSA shooting, I'd come home from work every night and reload ammunition. Then my wife would go down to the county gravel pit and shoot a bunch of it up in practice the next day. Then come Friday night, I'd load ammo for the next day's match - which was at the very least, a 65-mile drive from home.
My wife and I had allowed IHMSA silhouette shooting to become a job rather than a sport, and that meant reloading had become a chore rather than a hobby. So, we quit IHMSA. And I started enjoying handloading again. :)
Oh, don't get me wrong - I don't enjoy all aspects of handloading. I thought I'd like casting bullets too, so I got into that for a while. It turned out I didn't like casting bullets, so I quit that too.
I'm long time retired now, and I just don't do many things I don't enjoy doing anymore. Now, if I could just find some kind of grass that only grows 2" tall, I wouldn't have to mow the danged lawn once a week all summer long. :mad:
 
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Cleaning brass and sorting pins , trimming brass , lubing cases , wiping the lube off , powder charging , the shortages and prices now that keep me from reloading and shooting .
 
I bought a case of 9mm about a month ago, I lived through it, in fact I'm fixing to buy another case or two in a week if the price is at or below $11.50/50.
My dislikes in reloading echoes everyone else's.

Supplies being scarce is number one.
Trimming is #2.
Cleaning cases is #3.
 
Ive done everything I can do to try and smooth out the things I hate in reloading. At one point in time, every single one of these things annoyed me in some way.

Lee APP to decap
Dillon RT1500 to trim bulk brass
Giraud to trim bolt gun brass
Annealeez to anneal, other than having to load it
Big SSTL media tumbler (run both with and without pins)
Dillon media separator because its tough enough my grand kids will have it
Bullet and case feeder on progressive
RCBS bench primer for bolt gun ammo
AutoTrickler
FA VibraPrime

The only things I do by hand anymore are:
Sort range pickups and I have screened boxes to help with that. Shake it and the brass all stands on end, allows for quick sorting, and gets the dirt and range crap out of it
Cut crimps from mil ammo, which I hate, but luckily I dont have to do that much anymore

For me, the money I have invested in quality equipment that will likely last longer than I will is a good investment, because the one thing I cant buy is more time.
 
Nothing! I enjoy researching load data, researching components, inspecting brass (sorting if necessary), cleaning brass, processing brass, priming brass, charging cases, seating bullets, crimping and/or deflaring, packaging and labeling, recording load, shooting, analyzing and recording results. I like reloading...

If I disliked as much as some mention above, I certainly wouldn't bother!
 
johnjohn said:
I like to reload, some of these folks need to take up stamp collecting.
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mdi said:
If I disliked as much as some mention above, I certainly wouldn't bother!
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Stamp collecting and "not bothering" don't help shoot 338-378, 500 Smith, or 257 wby mag or even 338 lapua.

I've reloaded for 25 years. Never enjoyed any of it. Not a second. But I enjoy all the guns I get to shoot often that I wouldn't get to shoot at 100-200 dollar per 20 rounds.

I also don't enjoy cooking.... but I figure I might starve if I didn't bother or collected stamps instead... and I do enjoy eating
 
Currently I'm not liking charging cases with powder atm, It just seems to take me forever and it tears my back up due to my bench being low and my eyes being bad. My powder measure doesnt throw the same charge consistanly enough to where I trust it as the load changes relevant to the powder level in the Dispenser(FA). I check that on a FA digital(lol), then double check every load on my Ohaus which takes me forever and while I like doing it, it's just tiresome. Not a fan of Swaging Military crimps either...
 
MFInc said:
Currently I'm not liking charging cases with powder atm, It just seems to take me forever and it tears my back up due to my bench being low and my eyes being bad. My powder measure doesnt throw the same charge consistanly enough to where I trust it as the load changes relevant to the powder level in the Dispenser(FA). I check that on a FA digital(lol), then double check every load on my Ohaus which takes me forever and while I like doing it, it's just tiresome. Not a fan of Swaging Military crimps either...
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You could use a set of check weights and eliminate one of your two scales from the process....
 
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