BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO RELOADING 300 BLACKOUT

hey guys this is Mack again and today I'm bringing you the beginner's guide to reload the 300 blackout cartridge and I say beginner's guide because I'm a beginning reloader this is the first time that I've ever attempted to reload my own ammunition and it's incredibly fun and when you're talking about around like 300 blackout that manufactured cost close to $1 around this is a very expensive hobby and a very expensive round to shoot so today I'm going to take you through my process and what I've been learning here and how I can get the cost of my 300 blackout down to about 25 to 27 cents around which is much much more doable and actually is cheaper than most of the brass 223 that you can buy so instead of saying to think that you can shoot the 300 blackout cheaper than you can shoot 223 so I had a lot of good feedback on my 300 blackout build series so I just wanted to continue along in that series of videos and let's go over reload some cartridges in the 300 blackout so first off before you jump into reloading I would suggest that you you know definitely do quite a bit of research and actually you know meet and talk to people who are very good reloaders i've been thinking about reloading probably for several years now before i jumped into it and i'm fortunate that i have one of my best friends who is an expert reloader and he knows this stuff inside and out he actually has a youtube channel here too and i'll link him in the description as user names dr. gira is really good at reloading and you know I bounced ideas off him a million times before I've actually jumped into this because this is something that safety is of the utmost importance and it's very easy to load up a bad round that can blow up and injury or worse so first off you know make sure that you know what you're doing and make sure that you're safe when you do this I started out with a very inexpensive single stage press here this is a Lee breech-lock I've had you know numerous people tell me including Jared that first time reloaders are best served by starting out on a good single stage reap reloading press before they get into multi stage presses and progressive stages presses because you know you learn the basics and the process of reloading much better when you're going one step at a time gives you time to process everything so this is one of the more inexpensive ones that you can get it comes as an entire kit and I'm going to go through all the things that I got here that it's very sturdy and works really well I've already been you know loading up some rounds and I'm really impressed for the price and how well this press works also I picked up a really good set of Lee 300 blackout reload and dies and this comes as a three-piece set you see I got the bullets eating die here in my press but as we go through around you know I'm going to go back and I'm going to install my decapping and sizing die here it also comes with a crimping dot have not used just inexpensive 1cc powder measure also a chant for an D bar tool which is a really cheap hand tool you know you can get really expensive trimmers and chamfer tools and deburring tools but for the money and learning this works really well by hand and also a primer pocket cleaner this is the real cheap one made by Li and it works out real well it's got two ends one for large and small primers now also you're going to need some size and Lube this elite kit comes with a tube of sizing lube which works really well you just have to use your fingers to put it on you can also use sprays I went ahead and got a universal D cap and dye this will be good to use if I'm just sort of mass D priming and cleaning up brass especially converting 223 brass to 300 blackout and then also pistols and calibers and what-have-you it comes with a pretty inexpensive power scale which I definitely will be upgrading at some point because it works pretty well but this is a very rudimentary version here and then I think one of the best features of the kit is this guy right here this is the lead perfect powder measure it's pretty inexpensive it comes as part of this kit and it works really really well I've found it to throw really consistent charges so I'm pretty impressed with this also there's Ali hand priming tool it works pretty well interestingly you also can prime on this press it comes with both large and small primer attachments to crime on the press but as for now I'm using this hand priming kit which works pretty well for me also have micrometer this one's a digital one to measure cases with it works pretty well for me you can really spend a lot of money on micrometers you do want to make sure that you have one that's accurate especially when you're reloading then specifically for 300 blackout as far as trimming cases I went with the little pro gun works world's finest finest tremor which is an attachment for drills and it's easily adjusted with Allen screws and trims cases really well and for tunneling cases I've got a Frankfort Arsenal quick and easy case tumbler with corncob media and tumbler media additive made by Flitz which works really well as you can see it's not even plugged in and I've not even used it yet because my cases are already prepped so I haven't needed to actually use it yet but I probably will be throw in some 223 once fired brass in there at some point to get started on making some new cases now to get started reloading you need to first get your cases prepped and you got two different options for this you can actually go ahead and buy cases that have already been prepped and resized from 223 brass and D primed you find these on the internet you're just going to pay more money for them that way or you can do them yourself using fire 223 brass and the way that I make these cases is the pretty standard way that a lot of people do them you can see this all over YouTube you know there's no need for me to do a long video on it but it's using the Harbor Freight mini cut-off saw with a 300 blackout cutting jig that you can buy from a guy on a forum called 300 blackout talk.com and just go to the hand loading section and you'll see this 300 like out cutoff jig and it works so well it's really really easy to do a couple of cases here show you how easy this is so there's two cases formed from fire 223 brass and I have my jig set at one point three seven zero lengths and I'm going to be going for a final length of like one point three six three after I go back and reform this using my forming and D priming die so really really easy the cut off wheel you know obviously leave subbers you're going to need to chant for Indy Burgess once you finally get it formed okay now we have our forming and D priming die here set appropriate depth just go ahead and put a little bit of case lube on this case and we're ready to form in a deployment so now we have a nice newly formed 300 block out case you can see it's been deep round and our new lengths it stretches it usually a little bit in the forming process 1.37 fives need to take about a hundredth off of that with our trimming jig so you just need to wipe the size of the loop off of your cases before you start trimming them with your trimmer it will trim much better that way they specifically recommend you know with using this trimmer that I use and like I said this is called the world's fastest trimmer it attaches to any drill and works really well I have mine set to cut to one point three six five give or take a couple of thousands which is what I like my cases to start out as so you just this is made specifically for 300 blackout it's not only size case that you can cut with this particular trimmer and it's really that simple and when you're done you have cases that are one point three six five and length exactly what I want 1.36 for perfect and just the last thing i'll do here is just go and chant for the inside of the cases you bar the outside and we have cases that are now ready to be reloaded and they look really nice too now I didn't even tumblr these cases these were fired once fired 2:23 brats that I shot at the range last weekend and I didn't even tumble them at all and just you know in the process of doing all this they're nice and shiny again so these are really nice ready to go cases primers I'm gonna be using our CCI small rifle number 400 primers there are lots of options for primers these are what I'm going with and I'm using the lis small small rifle hand priming tool so we'll go ahead and get this loaded up and we're going to load up five or six of these breasts and go ahead and make some cartridges so this hand priming tool is really easy to use it comes with specific shell holders for different calibers number four is the 223 shell holder remember that you'll be using all 223 sized parts for these cases because they are 223 cases so I'm using the number four here and went ahead and load my primers into the hopper here and you'll just hold this away from you you want to point it away from you just in case a primer has an issue and just do it at a 45 degree angle here and that's primed and I make it a habit a feeling the primer after I do every single case to make sure that it seats at the appropriate depth so there's one private case to prime cases and so on and so on very easy now it's time to get our power charge right now there's a few different powders that can be used for 300 blackout haben 110 would be my favorite choice however that's been near impossible to find I was able to find some Winchester 296 which essentially is the same thing as H 110 so that's what I have on hand here but there are a variety of different powders went in different loadings that can be used for 300 blackout so you always have to do your own research and come up with a good combination for what works with you this is what I'm using here I'm doing a load work up using recommended load data that's another important point make sure that you go to whatever resource you have available for the particular projectile that you're using these are Hornady 150 grain FMJ boattail projectiles that I'm using so either go to the Hornady load book go to the Ciara website or the Hodgdon website is one I've been using and make sure that you're using established load data not somebody's recipe you found on the internet that's specifically why I'm not going to give anything specific that I'm doing here today because I don't want anyone to go and try to copy what I'm doing here today but I'm starting with a load workup and I'm going to be shooting ladders to try to find the best load for this particular grain bullet and powder combination so I'm starting on the low end at 15 grains of power and working my way up from there so I'm using this lead powder measure I'm just going to verify that the powder charge that's being thrown is correct and I've got this scale measure from 15 and I'm going to let it settle out here and that looks pretty good so I usually verify this several several times before I actually start throwing a charge into a case just to make sure I'm a little bit particular about safety okay now I know that my powder measure is throwing my desired charge go ahead and get my case that's been primed and I'm going to throw a charge I'm going to visually inspect and make sure that there is the powder inside the case and that it's the appropriate amount you know after I've done a few of these I'm pretty familiar with where the powder should be sitting in the case and I'll just go ahead and seat my bullet and I've already pre adjusted this die so it should be where it was last night I mean I was throwing some of these bullets last night using this you know you just will you'll fine tune your bullet seating depth using this knob on the top that's my finish round and now I'm just going to verify that my overall length it's correct and I'm shooting for overall length here of two point zero six five and I'm at two point zero six eight so I'm okay with that this is a finished round and everything looks good I got powder inside I can hear it when I shake it everything is nice and uniform and it looks really great and just quickly also this is my load data that I use I keep it saved on my iPad here this is from the Hodgdon website for 300 blackout basically every grain bullet you know gives you all of their safe data that they recommend from starting loads to maximum loads you know I use this for reference and then also this is from the Sierra website for you know 150 grain FMJ boattail right at the top you know they give you overall lengths and then also recommended starting powder charges so this is documented safe data that I feel comfortable using I highly recommend doing the same last thing that you're going to see me do here is keeping really good records of what I'm doing here so I got a load data book that I'm starting up for 300 blackout I'll do the same thing whenever I start loading up to 23 but this is what I did last night just sort of practicing my first set of cartridges that I loaded up 300 blackout load work up using these Hornady 150 grain FMJ boat tails and I've got all of my measurements you know that way when I take these out to the range and I run my ladder test and I find my preferred load for my rifle I'll have it documented and going forward if anything ever changes you know I can always go back and verify with my data so that's a really short and really simple version of what I'm doing here loading up 300 blackout it's just a document I put together tallying up the cost of these rounds you know just to compare to like $1.00 around just to see how much money I'm saving here cases are free if you consider that they're 2:23 picked up brass that I'm cutting down myself you know my only cost is my startup cost which is the cost of the cutting jig and the cut-off saw primers are about three cents each and you know buying a thousand at a time powder about four cents per charge if you figure I can get about four hundred sixty six charges out of a pound of powder bullets are twenty cents each I bought these in bulk 700 of them for like 145 bucks so total cost of each of these rounds one hundred and fifty greenhorn of these is about 27 cents per round so I'm saving a considerable amount of money there and I'm much much more likely to go out and shoot this rifle now I also do have two other loads that I'm working on 125 grains here a match King open tip match bullets they're going to be considerably more expensive - about 45 cents around because this is a sort of a match bullet a high accuracy bullet and then my subsonic switch our 208 grain Hornady a maxes those are about 42 cents around so you do you know spend a good bit more there but I mean then again compared to a dollar around you know you're still saving money and you're learning a lot and this is incredibly fun and so that's just a quick look at what what kind of money savings you're looking at here so I hope that this was helpful for you if you're starting out reloading like me you know the allure of the 300 blackout but the prohibitive cost of shooting it has led me at this point and I'm really glad that I've taken this step because I'm really enjoying this and I'm learning a lot so I would encourage you if you're thinking about reloading please do your homework do your research make sure that you're doing it safely use a documented safe data you know from from the actual makers of the equipment that you're using you know not just from something you found on the internet and get out of top of people who do this and who know tricks that's right you know there are so many little shortcuts and tricks that that I'm going to learn eventually that I don't know right now so I'm really enjoying this hopefully if you decide to jump into reloading as well you'll enjoy this as much as I have so again this is Mac with just the beginner's guide to reload the 300 blackout cartridge and I hope you enjoyed it if you did please like favorite and subscribe as always I'll be bringing you some similar video footage of these rounds when I go out to the range and try them out so thanks for joining me be safe and we'll see you next time

Channel: Bullitt Outdoors

Views: 208,636

Rating: 4.8905773 out of 5

Keywords: 300 AAC Blackout, reloading 300 blackout, 300blk, 300 blk, how to reload, how to reload 300 blackout, reloading guide, how to cut 223 brass, forming 223 brass to 300 blackout, sizing brass, lee reloading press, lee breech lock, rifle ammo reloading, how to reload ammo, 300 blackout cutting jig, 300 blackout cutoff jig, bullitt, bullittmcqueen, mcqueen, bulletmcqueen, bullet, converting 223 brass to 300

Id: fwgm3Tb0MhQ

Length: 22min 40sec (1360 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 01 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/Brute1100]

Nice simple video. Learned about a few new products. Thanks.

[u/drpetar]

This is my identical setup and process....except I use a Chargemaster instead of my Lee powder throw.

[u/joshcaza]

Can someone provide me with the link to the thread where I can buy the cutter jig for cutting hte .223 cases down with the harbor freight saw?