Excellent post!
I appreciate the time and effort!


One thing, if you can.

Can you explain the procedure for setting the correct depth for the seating die, and the proper adjustment for the crimp. Seeing as how both of these processes take place simultaneously when using the bullet seating die, I could use a refresher.

TIA,
louie

I use about 4gallons of water and put 4 boxes of sure jell in it ,decap my brass .Put the brass in a net bag and than in a 5 gal.bucket pure the water and sure jell mix over he brass let sit about 15 min. Shake around alitte and wash off the bass with water and dry it,and it only takes about 2 hour of tumbling to be clean.
G

This is great as I am starting to reload myself (my own rounds, that is). I'm doing .223,.308, and hopefully soon 6.8 spl in the rifles. 45 acp, 38spl/357 mag, and 9mm in the hand guns (wow, I just noticed I have some really uncommon ammo requirements).

Anyways several questions:

1) I was told that you probably shouldn't re-size your case (rifle rounds) until after firing 2-3 times, because it will then be stretched as far as it ever will - T/F?

2) How important is resizing for hand guns?

3) How important is crimping for handguns v. rifle rounds?

4) What is the difference between roll and factory crimp?

5) what are good clues/signs of overcharging your rounds?

My main goal is to reload to save money, and have ammo when I need it, not really trying to tweak my groups to near perfection. .....................yet.

Thanks for any input!

This post has been edited by M-60A1: May 17th 2009 10:55 PM

Thanks for the informative post.

IIRC, this round was designed around IMR 3031, a lot of people feel it's the best powder for the AR-15. At least the gas-impingement units anyway...do you find the H335 performs better for you? I think the military currently uses H335, but what do they know? lol But if you're using ball powder, you might find magnum primers will give you better results. Well, if you can find any.

This post has been edited by tippet: May 20th 2009 7:23 AM

Great post. Thanks for taking the time to make it.

Thanks for this. Clears up some of my questions.

I loaded my first 50 rds last week, and this post helped immensely. I didn't have my laptop with me, but I had looked thru this enough times to feel like I was watching it being done. Thanks so much.

Smitty

How well does your Media mixture clean the inside of the brass?

Thx 4 the info. I'll be gathering supplies.

me and a friend have been thinking about getting into reloading but the process seemed quite complex. after we saw this we're pretty phsyced to get started. thanks pdog

Many, many thanks for this post. I really appreciate seeing the process distilled to these basic steps.

Nice post pdog! I always appreciate visuals over verbiage any day

I've never heard of "sure jell." What is it and where do you get it?
Thanks

To all,
I have been reloading with a single stage RCBS press for many years now and just got my RCBS Turret press in last night. I strongly recommend it even for the novice reloader as it is as close to a progressive reloading system as you can get and about only 1/3rd the cost, especially if you already have any RCBS equipment.

Never reloaded but am interested. How many $ would you say it takes to get started using the equipment shown in the pictures. Don't need an exact figure.

This post has been edited by stsrex: October 11th 2009 4:20 AM

you can pick up perfectly good old equipment on ebay very cheap.

Just have one question, is this about correct:

Hodgdon H335 ---> 26.7 charge
CCi primer
Hornady ?

What was the bullet weight on your 223 pet load, and is that the correct charge, I'd like to turn some out.

Thanks great job on the tutorial.

please tell me you can help. i've posted this in a new thread but havent gotten any answers and really dont want to blow my head off





so i put my new ar togatether and took it to the range and collected the casings after ordering reloading supplies . sent the brass to a buddy to tumble for me and first thing he noticed was that my ar gouged the hell out of the brass right by the neck and back further on the casing, kind of little dents. usually about 4 per case. wasnt sure if this will be a problem or not also he said the casings i fired first were more damaged than the later ones. so i figured here would be the best place to ask some questions

is this normal for an ar? or is it only normal for a new ar?

is it going to cause any problems reloading?

is there any special technique to getting around this?

since later rounds that day weent damaged as badly as the first box is there a chance that its just breaking in and it will stop happening soon?

My ar puts small dents on the necks and the deflector puts small dents halfway down almost every casing. I reload them all and have never had a problem.

thanks so much for the answer lol i thought i was gonna have to just try it and pray lol.

do you notice you need to replace the brass more often than other guns you reload for?

thanks once again.