Ep. 23 | Reloading 101: What is it and Should You do it?

welcome to the vortex nation podcast brought to you by lovers of hunting shooting public lands the Second Amendment and good food [Music] we got a cool one for you guys today we're gonna be talking about reloading ammunition or in some cases just loading ammunition I think so in this case essentially making your own cartridges which I know could be interpreted a lot of different ways but we're talking about about that stuff here with Jimmy Jordan and Tom leather Barry two new guys on to the podcast oh I'm supposed to say this too if you happen to blow your face off with any of the knowledge that we give here or you try reloading immediately after listening to this podcast or while listening this podcast and and that happens we are not liable okay not again I think I think that covers it okay back to Jimmy and Tom whether Barry we had Jimmy on the mic here and then another Jimmy Jimmy Jordan and in time while you guys introduce yourselves real quick what do you do who are you sure I'm Jim Jordan I work in the consumer sales team here at vortex optics just taking care of customers day-in day-out phone calls emails just helping people who walk in the door so and you do some reloading right I do reload yeah what what primarily do you do that for well several cartridges well target and hunting application two to three 308 6.5 by 47 tons of random ones for my brother and friends and stuff too so perfect you Tom I'm Tom leather Barry I work in dealer sales I've been at vortex for eight years I managed the Midwestern territory so I work primarily with dealers and I've been reloading for about the last seven or eight years Grendel is my nickname it's somebody else you would so I obviously reload for the Grendel I'm a big six millimeter Creedmoor fan 65 Creedmoor basically uh any of the I don't know boutique cartridges that have come out in the last 5-10 years that's got my name on it Lutie that's an interesting way to describe it yeah so then in addition to these guys we got Ryan mocking her and frequent guests and then obviously mark sitting next to me here too so we're going to talk about reloading it's it's kind of a weird subject that Ryan mugging her and earlier you described it as what weird people do in their basements that is factual and so what what is it what is really it's fairly self-explanatory with the name obviously you're essentially like those people at the range that are all like scouring the ground picking up brass mm-hmm they're looking to brass rats they're looking to you load that brass is that right now before we get too deep I want to bring up something that you guys I don't think are aware of this ammunition it actually comes per 20 in a package so ready to go guys I think you guys are maybe making a little too difficult or hard on yourselves so I thought I'd fill you in on that little fact and that might influence you moving from that kind of ruins this great business idea I had where you would actually maybe reload for people and they might buy pre reload pre loaded ammunition I don't know if that has any legs to it it meant but not already it's something to definitely put into consideration pile so so people are oh shoot I should remind myself too before we get too deep in this I want to talk we're gonna say some terminology here let's try and get through this real quick we're gonna say some terms here that might not make sense to people who don't reload there's a lot of things that make the about reloading that don't make sense to people who don't reload anyway annealing that's a term what is it it is the application of controlled heat to a cartridge case so the brass case after it's been fired to change the temper of the metal okay so when we fire a cartridge case inside of a rifles chamber that's it's subjected to a ton of heat and forces and it becomes what's called work hardened and when it becomes work hardened it becomes brittle and it will lower the number of times you can reload a particular case and it can also change the dynamic of how the neck interacts with the bullet and that's a fairly advanced reloading step you'll see a lot of guys in the in the precision rifle and bench rest arenas doing annealing but it is very useful yeah so when you look at a cartridge when you take it out of a box whether you buy a new ammunition or you've seen reloaded ammunition it's got kind of that purplish rainbow hue to the top third of the cartridge so just below the shoulder forward to the top of the case mouth that is a case that has been annealed hmm okay makes it softer okay what is next neck turning sounds like something they do in those movies where there's like an assassin yeah and they just really quickly put something out yep turn the neck Steven Seagal pioneered neck turning I believe so yeah it's a process in which you remove material from the neck of the case itself to reduce its outer dimension so if there's too much brass at that point you cut it away with a special tool called a neck turning tool and it literally just cuts brass off the outside of it usually you see that when you're making cartridges from another cartridge which is kind of really where I think we're loading got a lot of its feet so if we're taking a 30 out 6 case and we're turning it into a 308 case or if we're taking a 308 case and turning it into a 65 Creedmoor case or something of those sorts you will end up with access material around the neck to the point in which you may not be able to chamber the round so you neck turn and it will all fit you guys do any neck turning so I don't neck turning or annealing interestingly enough I don't do either like Ryan said you know if your wildcatting or making a cartridge from another cartridge that's really where that neck training thing comes more into play I think a lot of people talk about like the concentricity of the case and I think one of the things we'll probably address today is just how all of us handle the reloading thing a little bit differently I think it all comes down to what your intents and purposes are and what you're looking to get out of that reloading experience so I choose not to neck turn and choose not to kneel by annealing you increase the life of the cartridge you probably get more reloading than I do but as I have a huge bin of brass downstairs probably of 1500 or 2000 pieces of once fired Creedmoor brass I just don't see a need to do either of those operations so yeah I don't have an annealing machine I don't send my stuff off to get a kneeled either I just live with the fact that I'm gonna get less reloading is out of the brass and then I throw it away when I think it's had too much and buy new stuff was very interesting all right all right now another one I had to ask Ryan Mike I heard about this one as I said hey what are some weird terms and reloaders use he said swaging mm-hmm what the heck is that actually at first when I when we wrote it down I thought it said swagging which i think is something that it the hippity hop stirs do that's correct yeah so swaging in reloading can have a lot of different uses and names I think most of us would look specifically at primer pockets or where the primer is actually inserted into the case and you need to occasionally remove feature that has been mechanically placed there to retain the primer so you have to force that material out of the way you swage it out of the way so that you can reload it you can actually put a primer in it so a lot of military cases for for the guys out there who are looking to get into shooting 308 or 2 to 3 even 30 out six and now soon hopefully six five or six five cream or excuse me you may have to suede your primer pocket so you use a special tool that kind of pushes brass out of the way in the primer pocket so that you can put a new primer in hmm I just want to point out that you almost said Granville I got really upset oh man yikes let's let's carry on we'll get back to some of this stuff to it or right now we're just going through terminology for those of you listening let's talk about two so so a cartridge is the entire thing when it's all put together and I think a lot of times people will look at something and they'll say you know they'll look at a finished cartridge and say oh it's a bullet but actually a cartridge is made up it has a bullet in it but it's made up of a bullet which is the actual little thing at the tip it's the little rock that you're gonna fling to the target eventually the projectile projectile I like little rock for some reason Jim throw rock yeah it steel then there's the brass that's the actual or the case is that right yeah that's the actual like old thing that holds the projectile under the internal job the primer is the little hockey puck at the base of it that you you're firing pin hits and then essentially when firing pin hits the primer it creates a spark that ignites the grains of powder inside right right so you've got brass primer powder bullet am I missing anything that's the whole shebang that's all is remaining that's called then the cartridge I mentioned one word I said it and it's worth that's confusing to me sometimes because it grains there's drain wait oh it's like a 55 five five six or whatever two two three but then also there's grains of powder right don't they measure it that way what what's the deal with greens why do they use it so much well there's 7,000 grains in a pound and that that grain is the same weight correct me if I'm wrong but the grain is the same weight for the bullet as it is for the powder so if you had a hundred and forty-three grains of a bullet or 143 grains of powder they both weigh the same oh really a lot of times I think one of the terminal one of the things that I didn't understand right away is you know when you pour powder out on the table or it spills out on the table I initially thought that each one of those was a grain of powder that's what I um so 7,000 little kernels wouldn't necessarily equal a pound a grain is a unit of measure not necessarily tied to the actual grant I guess it'd be a granule of powder is that we would call it I mean I look hard colonel it's British that explains it you know that does make sense let you look at different powders right there's different different shaped powders there's different you know when you're I guess when you're looking at the individual grain not the measure of a grain but an individual grain there's a wide variety of yep I don't have things there I mean in sorts I think probably some of those are specific to types of cartridges types of cartridges or whether you're rotating shotgun or rifle or pistol or yep true okay that's kind of some of the phrases and things I want to get out of the way before we talk about this because now now let's get into the meat of it why would someone want to reload what's the big deal with reloading or there's also loading not not reloading there's also loading what's the deal some people say oh I reload for accuracy some people say it's to save money which I kind of don't really think it does yeah you know some people look for competition because they want mass quantities or just think it's fun Ryan you like to watch netflix while you do it or whatever yeah that's what what is it about maybe for each one of you guys there's a big prepper I've seen if chef boyardee collection it's a real thing I do it mostly for fun and the personal enjoyment of being able to make my own a lot of times I find that I'm able to wring out just a little bit more accuracy out of my own personal hand loads than I am out of standard factory ammunition a lot of times the consistency of the velocity of the cartridge is also it's a tighter consistency than what I find out of out of a lot of match ammunition but but it depends that's that's not always true there's there's so much ammunition that's super consistent I do it because it's fun I don't usually save money it depends on the cartridge and it depends on how much you shoot if you have a cartridge that's very expensive to purchase factory ammo forth and you might you might save I definitely don't save time doing it but but I just I just like it I just like it it's fun so yeah depends on the cartridge to 5.56 I'll shoot that high-volume and I may be a little less concerned with accuracy and consistency out of it that might be more what I'm using for plinking in which case I'll just buy a lot of cheap factory ammunition for my 6.5 by 47 though I exclusively hand load for it you know just going for accuracy and and of course and for that particular caliber money savings as well okay Tom I think when I got into reloading one of the most valuable tips that somebody gave me was if you're looking to reload to say money don't if you're looking to reload to shoot more and to shoot more accurately then do I certainly found that to be the case early on what do you say shoot more because now I'm starting to think like saving money well yes but what you end up doing is you end up UN DUP losing that money in time you know and at the bench so the investment of the equipment yeah I mean one of the things that you find is that you'll spend literally hours at the reloading bench resizing and doing all this stuff so the per cartridge cost might be low corrects what work yeah and because you have everything in your basement you've got 16 pounds of powder and 5000 primers and bullets like it creates the illusion that it's free and so you end up shooting you end up shooting more true you know I mean it's really easy for people to come over to your house and say hey can you help me load up some 6by of cream or and you've got fully prep brass and then I go this is really easy you just throw some powder and a primer then you put a bullet in there but there was about two or three days of work that went into prepping all of that brass before it got to that point so like I said in the beginning I got into it because I want to shoot more accurately and I think thanks to our friends over at Hornady they they've made that a lot harder for me to do meaning that I can't get the velocities that that they're getting out of some of their em safely and it's so darn accurate that I really don't feel a need or desire to to load as much of that stuff as I once did so I guess I load more today for more of like the specialty stuff you know like the Grandal you can buy fat cream oh but I can't get that to quite shoot as well as I would like the Valkyrie can buy ammunition for but I haven't found any factory loads that that I like for that so those are two cartridges that I load for now but like 223 308 65 Creed 6 Creed those types of things I just go to that I think it's the same stuff that Mark was talking about earlier that you just go to the store and there's these neatly designed boxes that usually hold 20 cartridges and you can buy them and they're ready to fire it's pretty crazy that's pretty select deal yeah yeah Wow someone's really thinking well this is fresh in our brains too and I want to get over to Ryan bugging her because I know he he reloads like all the time in mass quantities but you you both have mentioned something now where you say that you can squeeze a little bit more accuracy out of your reloads or maybe like a factory load doesn't shoot as good as some here hand loads do what's going on with that that makes your hand loads shoot so much better than a factory and this isn't to knock back your ammunition by the way at all like there's tons of really good factory ammunition out out there that you can get match great stuff is awesome they're making it in huge quantities right so understandably so you would think that if you're in your basement taking the care and the time to personalize a special cartridge for your rifle you might be able to squeeze a little bit more accuracy out of it in your particular rifle but what what are you guys doing differently than is done in these mass-produced cartridges I think with you know one of the things with the mass-produced cartridges that they're designing that cartridge for you know multitude of platforms a bunch of different rifle so they're probably making some concessions here and there to make it run well in as many guns as they can and I think a lot of it is just about kind of tuning the load to the gun might might not be as fast or I might not be shooting the same way to project out but that's just the combination that that particular gun likes I might have a some factory ammo that doesn't shoot at all in my 6 5 Grendel and you might have a Grendel that we go out to the range with and the factory ammo shoots well in your gun and my reloads don't shoot well on your gun so I think it's just all about finding that right combination of the two is that like how things like the cases are shaped or is that like does that have to do with your gun how the feed ramps are how the barrel is twisted how it's cut right yeah absolutely so there's a lot of things that play into it you know you might be measuring your powder charges more precisely than an ammunition that's mass producer an ammunition company that's producing ammunition on a large scale you know they might not be measuring it quite as consistently as you are they might not be seeding the bullet at a depth that puts it at the optimal distance from the lands in your particular rifle they're setting it up at a depth that this will work really well for a wide range of platforms whereas you know most particularly push the bullet down into the neck rect yeah yeah how far the the ogive of the bullet the the part that'll actually become wide enough to contact the the rifling on the on the barrel how close you're getting that to the the lands they call it so yeah the depth that you seat the bullet at that matters the work you put in for case preparation you know sometimes you know sometimes you want to do a little bit more to the primer pockets or or clean more more thoroughly for instance you know all of those things are little details that can make you more consistent across the board with with your rifle just Jimmy just brought up another term you know lands which I think maybe a lot of folks may or may not be familiar with but I mean any of you guys want describing the lands and grooves and yeah yeah sure that's just rifling of the barrel where the rifling begins is referred to as the lands so the rifling inside of the barrel is their their grooves cut into the barrel that contact the jacket of the bullet and as the bullet passes down the barrel it causes the bullet to spin that's what gives it its its spiral spin or leaves the barrel right there's different twist rates and things like that which a twist rate is essentially how tightly those spirals go you know it could be like if you see a one-in-seven twist that means that it twists one full time around in 7 inches right correct one in eight means one full time around eight inches so if you see a one in seven that's a tighter spiral faster twist than a one in eight one a nine stuff like that right correct yeah and typically the the heavier the projectile you the faster twist required to stabilize that projectile lighter projectile you have you can get away with the slower twist okay and so when you're messing around with this stuff in it when you're loading your ammunition do you like load a bunch take them out to the range and shoot them and then you're like that kind of sucked you know I'll take it back a load a bunch again but I'll change something how do you like how do you decide when you want to change something when you're when you're set with it like we can't done changing stuff I think that largely depends on the real odor that you don't do yeah everybody does it a little bit differently you know there's some calculations out there for what they call like optimal charge weight Ryan probably knows more about that than I do you know and then there's latter tests but there's different types of latter tests what I generally do is I consult a couple of different reloading books of whatever bullet powder combination I think I want and I looked to see what similarities they are and then I usually load up you know three cartridges of of each charge weight and I usually start out with like three tenths of a grain separation and then I go out to the range and shoot it and see which ones show promise and then kind of narrow narrow it down from there but there's other ways to do like ladder tests at distance and try to figure out where the accuracy note is and like I said everybody does it a little bit differently but I usually just go to the reloading manual I always start out wherever they recommend and then I kind of take a look at the individual groups and see which ones show promise and kind of work from there what manuals are you looking at you know the Hornady I get that little hydrogen magazine that they produce I have the I have the Ciera book and then a lot of online stuff as well yeah so I don't know if it still exists but one of the places that I used quite a bit in the early days was called reloaders Ness and it was just a kind of a group of reloaders that had all kind of gotten together and we're sharing information but whenever possible I tried to take the information from the horse's mouth the horse being the manufacturing so I tend to rely more on Hodgdon and Hornby and Sierra for for the data okay Jimmy how about you it Tom mentioned one thing - like the node accuracy node isn't that essentially like once you've been testing out some stuff you find a certain point where you're not getting any better than that we're it's exceptionally accurate at this particular powder charge so my process is a lot like Tom's I'll start at whatever the manufacturer recommends I start at and then from there I'll work up five cartridges every point three grains up ok so eventually what you'll get to as you're looking for a couple things you're looking for accuracy you're looking for the consistency and velocity and then you're also looking for pressure signs because if you start loading too hot you'll you'll eventually either start flattening primers you'll get a stiff bolt lift and all that's unsafe to continue you don't want to load any any hotter once you see a sign like that stop immediately and back off that's your that's your limit so those are the things you're looking for so within the safe range of what you're able to load for your rifle and cartridge combination you'll eventually find a place where there is accuracy that's exceptional you might have several you might have several places that are very accurate and from there then you you would look at other factors like how consistent is my velocity at each of those accuracy nodes and and then you know this one's this one's faster but this one might be more consistent so that it might depend what you're doing with it are you working up a hunting cartridge in which case I might trade I might prefer a slightly flatter trajectory over saving those five feet per second for an extreme spread or if I'm a PRS competitor for instance I you know might go for the consistency or a bench rest shooter for instance might go for the consistency over the little bit of extra velocity and some of the guys will chase speed too yeah and then you know one of the reasons I'm not a I'm not a speed guy I don't do any competition stuff I don't do much hunting so I'm willing to accept a lower node because I don't wear my equipment as much I don't wear the brass as much I don't you know I get more use out of it I have to worry about pressure spikes or anything like that Jimmy alluded to the limit of the cartridge in like in the powder combination and I didn't realize I didn't understand when I first got into reloading that the limit changes with the temperature with a lot of the different powders so your limit might be different at 35 degrees than it is at 80 degrees so always watch all the ambient temperature that you're in correct oh okay so essentially what you're getting at to it and just to reiterate the node thing a note is like if you had a chart of different things you've tried yeah the nodes are essentially the ones you've circled that you want to go back to yep right this combination works really well it's either super consistent for velocity or it's super accurate is it weird to get behind a rifle that has bolt like cartridges that you loaded the first time first time it is yeah yeah I remember my first time for sure did you did you were you actually behind the rifle or did you like yeah I shot it with a string no far no I shot him I remember shooting him I got behind it and you know I'll never forget it I didn't have a string I did use my own hands to touch it up but I was not sitting on the right yeah everyone every time I get behind cartridges Tom's loaded super nervous yeah no III hear yet sometimes sometimes Tom's a little unpredictable Ryan you know let's go back to you real fast here too because so Jimmy you mentioned you do some like two to three reloading and whatnot I don't usually you do a lot of that like some days you come in and it's like hey how was your weekend Ryan's like dude I just watch TV and I loaded nine mil all day yeah so what's your is your reasoning behind loading like is it like therapeutic do you just enjoy it is it you can shoot a ton is it like it's really multifaceted so I guess I'll back up I started reloading when I was I think I got my first press when I was like 12 or 13 years old and I I just felt it was the thing to do as a young man like this was you know like trapping and going out and catching fish and eating stuff outside in the woods like it was just a manly thing to do and I had been reading a lot of outdoor magazines and books and things like this and and everybody you know talked about being this adept shooter they all reloaded and so I thought I had to do this so I talked my grandfather into quote-unquote loaning me the money I still haven't paid him back and it kind of got me going on this and then and then I think around the time I was about 16 when I started big-game hunting then I really started loading quite a bit and it was really more to find answers to questions that probably didn't need to be but like I wanted the better bullet I wanted the most accurate I wanted the most consistent I wanted the strongest hardest-hitting etc etc etc and so a lot of my rifle loading came out of a quest for the perfect hunting cartridge or the perfect combination of bullet in particular cartridge depending on what I was hunting with the fast forward a few years prior to working here at vortex that were I worked for a company that we did a lot of three gun shooting in action action shooting USPS a pistol and tactical pistol things like this and so the volume of cartridges that I was shooting was and at the time to socio-politically was it was almost unattainable like on the wages that I was making I could not afford to keep up with my my diet of ammunition and so I got into a different style of reloading called progressive reloading which is I use a machine that's not automated it's still hand actuated but for every pull of the lever I make a cartridge it auto indexes sets up my next case my next powder charge my next primer does everything as as automated as it could it's the one where like you put there's like four different I don't know how many you have on there but there's like you know four different things happening at once you have one pull of the lever correct yeah so again there's like this little spinny table thing on the top of it yeah so so it uses a series I've got the manual you can see two there spinning table so another term we should have talked about is dyes so when you when you talk about reloading you'll hear the term dye and all a die is is a specialized tool that executes a process so like you have in typically in rifle loading like a bottleneck cartridge you'll have a resizing die and decapping night generally they're combined you can have a neck sizing die and then you'll have a seating die so each one of these dies accomplishes a process we should back up a little bit further yet and then we have single stage or progressive presses so a single stage press you have a single die put in you have a single pole it accomplishes a single thing so like when Jim is loading his six 5:47 he sets his resized d-cap die out he'll do a lot of brass resizes a bunch of press so do that one process over and over and over and over yeah and you have a pile of them then he'll go through another process you know whether it's case prep or whatever cleaning so on and so forth and then he'll do all is loading he'll do his powder down being priming etc etc and then he'll just seat the bullets and that in itself is another die so single stage progressive you have all of those dies on what's called a tool head so they're arranged generally in a circular or square pattern on top of your press which resembles it's single stage counterpart only very vaguely and then it has an automated turret system or mechanical turret system that when you actually lever it actually moves a shell plate or a shell holder as they call it and the cases go kind of merry-go-round up into these dies as you're doing it so it looks like if you've ever seen the movie Edward Scissorhands in the opening scene where they're making all the cookies it kind of looks like that but it reminds me making cookies in large quantity but um so yeah long story short I got into progressive type reloading when I was shooting competitively action shooting and so I was able to with my current machine load around a thousand rounds an hour so it goes so with very little effort I'm able to turn out high-volume ammunition there's really good quality the machines are really good so the consistency is exceptional with it I can't say anything but good about progressive reloading for that style thing but I also load a lot on a single stage and for much of the same reasons that Jim and Tommy have talked about as well another reason that I reload is is necessity with some things whether it's a cartridge that I can't buy off the shelf or you know a cartridge it's extremely expensive like I shoot a 300 Weatherby in the ammunition that I like to load or excuse me the bullet type I like to load in it they're approaching $100 a box for 20 of those yeah so they're very expensive once you have attained the brass to do this which is really the the the vehicle that a cartridge requires to succeed because powders powder primers primers bullets are bullets once you have the brass case and if you've careful and you know judicious and religious reloading practices you can load them multiple I think for me to load a box of 300 Weatherby I'm doing it for around 14 to 16 bucks instead of a hundred after you've basically correct absorb right that's yeah investment and all the stuff correctly and you know so that's another good example of kind of why I reload or cases to what Tom had mentioned earlier cases that don't exist so there's Wildcats as the term you're gonna hear that's generally a case that has been created from either another case or completely manufactured in-home custom cases made that's very uncommon I there's you gotta make a custom rifle if you make a whole custom yes right yeah yeah or at least Errol or something yeah generally speaking it's a it's a full operation like we're not just looking at particular cartridge it's everything else but you know wildcatting I think really died off probably in the mid 90s you know for a long time especially post World War two post Vietnam there was like this big resurgence and in reloading at home now we had Metallica and and cartridge components available after the war or Wars I should say and shooters were looking for something more out of their antiquated cartridges and they were wildcatting so tom has a couple of Wildcat cartridges that are really neat 22 Creedmoor in 22 Crandall I believe you have both don't you and I have a six pendulum yeah so something he can't buy off a shelf it doesn't technically exist but Tom makes it another thing to Jim's got one a cartridge that I'm really fond of it's a very old cartridge just 6.5 by 55 Swedish Mauser cartridge I reloaded well yeah yeah and what's what's really special about this cartridge is in the US if you buy loaded ammunition for it its anemic because they're they're making this cartridge acceptable for rifles of the of the era and the period that it was originally chambered in so these are much weaker designed rifles and they're not very strong whereas the cartridge itself is remarkably capable we we have this whole laundry list of 6 and 65 something or another Jean on the on the plate available for the shooter and we forget about the 65 by 55 specifically and it is a monster of a cartridge one it's loaded to what it is capable of if you have a modern rifle as Jim does you can snus that thing up and it makes it six five Creedmoor look like it belongs on a putting green but no way yeah I've never seen this thing is it it's a modern rifle its erection 700 classic is what it is yep so it it was Remington did that in 1994 they chambered their classic in 6.5 by 55 Swedish and and I was lucky enough to find one in college and picked it up when I got it and started shooting it with the factory ammunition there was only like one or two kinds of factory ammo that I could even find for it to begin with but I was just so enamored with the idea of the cartridge and how unique and cool and whatever that it was I just yep started shooting it wasn't as happy with the performance I was getting with the factory ammo that I was able to shoot it you know I was getting you know Remington soft points going 2,600 feet per second I think and and with that case I knew I could get a lot more out of it and accuracy wise to everything I was shooting was shooting about you know inch and a half or so which is certainly you know acceptable for a you know moderate distance hunting rifle but I just knew I could get so much more and you know with reloading techniques I'm I was able to get you know 140 is going well over 2,800 and in half minute accuracy half hinge group at a hundred you know and that's that's out of a hunting rifle and that's that's where I stopped I'm sure it could do better but you know I just knew I that there was more to be gained there certainly is you know that's pretty sweet yeah gosh you guys were just blowing my mind over here I'm like trying to trying to direct this but I I don't reload I've only it's been it's been interesting to me because I could never tell personally like what route if I was going to I'd want to go like for super precision like I know my brother Dave has been on here before he loads 65 Creed and he loads it for like some crazy insane precision he gets those things hot too I don't I don't get how it works I mean he's like pushing insane velocities oh yeah he's pushing like he's pushing like 20 what is it like 26 or 27 hundred out of a 16-inch barrel but he's well within the safe boundaries and anted and to Jim's earlier point with his cartridge is 65 Swedish a lot of what you're buying on the marketplace is downloaded for liability reasons you know I shoot a three hundred Weatherby as I mentioned I was loading hundred and thirty grain barns TTS X's in that you couldn't buy this combination loaded from the factory I was pushing that little pill at thirty six hundred and fifty feet per second so it's like yeah yeah so it's it's like a 22 250 with a varmint bullet and except I'm now capable of taking antelope and mule deer and so yeah I mean the shooter can look at a given cartridge and see the available loadings from the factory and become I guess disenchanted with what that cartridges capabilities may appear to be on paper but as a hand loader with different bullet weights and different powder charges and things like this you have the ability to unlock capabilities that your cartridge may not on paper seem to have so dude is totally like motors you can always use like an old 5o from a Mustang and it's just like and then also son dude comes in and just Tunes the heck out of it is a machine and that's exactly what is a tuning it is a tuning tuning exactly or the cartridges just gotta put it in terms you can understand exactly yeah I'm totally like as a car guy what bugs me is and you know like when somebody goes to the lot anyway yeah just take it it's got a sunroof right and I'm like they're just kinda like no dude I'll just take whatever is available you know and then of course like I go into bullet you know oh it's in cartridges and I'm like yeah just give me the Hornady you know 65 Creed Martin yeah other people are probably like you could get so much more sometimes though that will frustrate you too you know like when you spent all that time at the reloading bench and somebody shows up with their factory load of the ammunition ya know here you sit with a custom gun and a nice scope and custom ammunition if you will and then the guy comes in behind you with an off-the-rack rifle with factory loaded ammunition like I said there's so much good stuff out there right now you just have to wait your time and if it's something that you're doing because you enjoy it you should do it but the time component of it has gotten harder as my kids get older they enjoy reloading with me but it still doesn't change the fact that it's literally hours at the workbench just to get the cases ready like I think one of their chores they're not gonna be the typical kids that are going to do dishes and do laundry they're gonna prep brass because once the brass is prepped I enjoy that part of it like the actual reloading and loading of the cartridge I enjoy that but the prepping of the brass i I don't enjoy that so you bring up now I wanted to make sure we talked about these two things which is like what equipment does somebody need and also like what is just the process look like because we've mentioned now like dyes and presses and then you've said prepping brass things like that I've also done a terrible job at the very beginning of bringing up all the terms necessary because we keep bringing up new terms that we didn't bring up but can we talk about like you're at the range your brass rat you're picking up a bunch of brass let's say it's George your brass right so like you shoot your 65 whatever what's the process obviously you pick it all up you take it home what do you have to do everyone's process differs but the first thing I'll do is clean I'll throw it immediately into a tumbler different types of tumblers exist I've got a corn cob media tumbler just keep it basic just throw a bunch of brass in there with you know it filled up halfway two-thirds of the way full of corn cob media screw down your lid nice and tight flip it on and it it goes in the vibratory tumbler for several hours a lot of times I'll do that and I'll just go to sleep and pull it out in the morning or I'll you know put it in in the morning and come back after work and pull it out so I know that it's had a ton of time to get clean and then there's that just taking all the rough stuff like all the burnt powder here takes all the carbon off and all that dirt and you know just you don't want to be running a I think most people would agree that you're not gonna you don't want to run that cartridge uncleaned up into a die you don't want to damage the die in any way but there may be some people that just bring it home from the range and and run it so that there are yeah it's bizarre to me there are guys especially in some like the bench rest communities well don't have their press on the adjacent bench they'll fire the cartridge great if they're handling it when it comes out but it comes out covered in soot and you know dirty powder so they'll even wipe it down or know the house run right in there yeah I mean that's like Jim said it's very interesting talking to other reloaders because everybody you know everybody has a different marker yeah don't your own ending book so ok you threw it in the tumbler and you he cleaned it up overnight that doesn't sound too bad Tom what's the whole thing about brass prep units so that's just one step oh yeah so first thing I do is I run it through a decapping die so it's not an actual die that's forming the brass at all but I like to get that spent primer out of there just so that when I'm tumbling and I can clean up that primer pocket as well a little bit so if my first operation I'll come home and I'll decap everything meaning then I'll take the spent primer out and then it will go into a tumbler just like Jimmy's it'll either go into stainless steel media if it's got a lot of wear to it and needs to really be polished up I'll put it in my wet tumbler otherwise I'll put it in corncob and now I've got a piece of prep brass now I need to loop the case and resize it get the dimensions back down to where they belong because it yep so you have to you you any any real odor that hasn't hazily some people use motor oil I mean like lube isn't that that's like another conversation can we do another podcast on that I've always wanted to see this on the microwave you use lanolin seriously alcohol is the best if you don't if you don't lube the case in whatever way you choose you will have a stuck case at some point and that's a nightmare when that case gets stuck up if you haven't had a stuck case you just haven't reloaded long enough and your first one is gonna cost you some time and it's probably gonna cost you a trip to the store I'm sure there's some homemade you know things that you can do to get it out but I just went and took the easier out and bought the little stuck case remover is what it's called and it happens enough that somebody decided it was a good idea to manufacture a stuffed Capon remember there's there's lots and lots of debate over what is the best stock case remember to I also found a replacement set of dies is very depends on how good and stuck you got it so so now you've resized the case now you need to you have to measure the case and make sure that it hasn't grown too much and that it's not past its trim length if it's past this trim length and I'm going to advocate and this is another topic of contention but I always trim to whatever the specifications are so I find that with them with not annealing and with the amount of working that my brass is getting I usually have to trim every second to third firing maybe every third to fourth firing so now you've had to trim the brass you're trimming it's weird because that material was always there yeah but you're moving it around when yeah when you fired it forms to the chamber yep it's expanding during the firing but then you're moving it back into place and so that brass that brass isn't that mine isn't work hardened so like my brass is probably moving more I would guess then so it actually stretches out hang out at the end so then I have to trim that excess off so then I trim it then I chamfer it and I deburr it and then I sometimes choose to or not to clean my primer pockets and so now you have a piece of prep brass then the rest is pretty easy in my eyes then it's a primer and powder and bullet but it's all that stuff leading up to that and it's you can make it I know I know guys like Ryan said that that they tumble and then resize and then go straight to the press I will say to maybe I don't need to do this but because I've got all that Lube on the case from resizing it goes back into the tumbler before I actually load it so now I've got that and I've dirtied the case again just in a different way so now I have to tumble it and oh wait wait so the case Lube isn't on when you're actually like shooting the gun no no yeah that could be very dangerous okay yeah at first that's whether you're talking I get it now I get it so all this stuff is done is it eight is this the same for pistol no depend well depends on your pistol I can we in on the actual pistol itself no I did be cartridge all the cartridge so goofy case that I reloaded for it's called the 5.7 by 28 oh yeah neat neat little cartridge right and it was a very good friend of mine that bought an FN five-seven pistol not an FN p90 and then he had a bolt-action Remington 700 chambered in it yeah yeah he got a PT G manufacturing bolt the single Shroud is a cutest thing you've ever seen and he's like hey load for me because we can turn this cartridge that again on paper seems rather anemic into some thing that maybe it was never intended to be a couple things I learned loading bottleneck pistol cases is a very interesting process and then to FN five-seven brass is turned from solid bar stock which is very different in the process of brass production and you can only load it a maximum of two times Wow yeah is that because it's turned is it like it's not as hard and there's it's not it's not as strong so yeah when you look at the case like you look at the outside diameter that was the maximum diameter of this rod right and so they shaped it a particular way but they had to like trim the neck thinner so the neck is very thin on a 5.7 by 28 and and the processes may have changed as I was loading for it but notice after the second firing the cases were always split every single one of them didn't matter how we loaded it out careful the practice was it drove me bonkers sound safe yeah because if your trip if you're just trimming metal and you're not like like hardening it in its kinda way then the grains of the metal essentially are issued I don't know you're just like billet vs. forged right billet you can make nicer fancier things but it's not as inherently strong exactly correct exactly correct and so yeah that that that's a little goofy but with pistol cases so I'm just gonna single out like 9 millimeter and 45 Auto you can you can generally get away with less brass prep like countering what Tom had said so when I when I pick up nine-millimeter from the range after I've shot up either match or I've just been out shooting recreationally I'll take it back and I'll clean it using either a vibratory tumbler like Jim had mention or I use my stainless steel tumbler without any of the stainless steel in it so I'm literally just putting it in a bucket filled with water and dish soap and I'm rotating it in washing dirt and debris off of the case from here I then run it through my press and with straight walled cartridges meaning it doesn't have a shoulder or a neck like a like 9 mil and 45 yeah right so they're just straight just looks like a garbage can yeah little things sticking out of it if you use what Bob yeah bullet Bob if you use a particular type of but die called a carbide die you don't need to lubricate them so the process is like sped up exponentially so I use carbide dies and lubricate him I don't trim him I've never trimmed a pistol case I'd could untold tens of thousands of rounds have passed through my press never lube or trimmed a single one pistol case not straight vol case anyway or like a 9 or 40 issues I've trimmed 357 now I mentioned that gosh but yeah it's so it is a little different with pistol and it is rifle but but yeah it's case preps an arduous process with a bottleneck cartridge pistol cartridges not so much clean him load him do you prefer loading pistol over a rifle or rifle just oh yeah I mean it's like a different thing though like what i'm voting for pistol it's like so with nine-millimeter specifically i've reduced the charge way to make my pistol shoot a particular way to get the job oh is that because you want your pistol to be a light felt recoil correct yeah so for competition use your not like you're not trying to shoot a night in 100 yards you're trying to light up close in person knock over steel knock over steel target or put two holes on piece of cardboard yeah I see you just want your slide to move back and go forward and oh yeah they like jump a whole lot correct so I'm reducing the load intentionally over what you would buy a factory to like fairly anemic levels and just enough to function reliably and then shoot well and in that sense like I can load a lot of ammunition in a short amount of time but it's way less sexy when I'm looking at a pile of nine-millimeter I made a my go you guys will do the job when I load like a high-performance rifle cartridge or something interesting I got into shooting black powder cartridges I have not ventured into loading black powder yet I will when I have a safer space to the load black powder but to accomplish something different with a rifle cartridge like my 45 seventies now to look at a pile of those smaller number like 20 or 50 of them that are loaded in a very special way like that is way cooler to me than a bucket at 9 millimeter or 45 just because they're they're just neater they do things cooler Nate you're accomplishing to vastly different things absolutely correct piles man yeah one is a strictly volume yep and the other is aberration an application yeah in the process and when it's interesting hear him talk because he makes it sound a lot easier so part of me is thinking man I should have got into loading pistol but I think the thing that's always scared me about pistol is that you can double charge a pistol case where it's not charged or not charge them but with rifle cases there aren't many rifle cases that I know of that you can really double charge and so you know your your highest likelihood of hurting yourself or someone else is by using the wrong powder combination or by having too much powder in the case and with the rifle I'm not gonna say that it's impossible but if you're using the right type of powder it's really hard to to do true catastrophic damage whereas we blow up yeah but with a pistol you can double charge that case so you have to be even with the right power yeah although he's making it sound safe and it is you need to definitely need to watch that powder drop and make sure that you're not double charged in a case will happen in a Glock if you double charge with a 9-millimeter and the powder I used nothing illegal bang louder cycle harder the piece of brass is probably shot so yeah I mean modern metallurgy is exceptional and you can get away with a lot of things and so there's actually practice and now kind of a it's not a different cartridge but it's when you load it to this capacity it's considered different cartridge it's called a 9-millimeter major and so you're gonna read this term or hear this term specifically in USPSA IDPA and similar action pistol shooting it's where you take a standard nine-millimeter case and you overcharge it deliberately to bring your velocities up to accomplish a term called power factor again this is a very strange and and not often discussed or discovered thing that your actor 9-millimeter major this is all competition based so you're you're deliberately overcharging a case with like double the powder and depending on the powder it could be more than double to two gettable and going a particular velocity you can shoot it one time the case is completely destroyed after that it can't be reloaded again but you know you can't do it so like worst case scenario with a nine-millimeter I I can't say for sure I've never double charged I don't believe I have I've seen them go off and it's usually just you you can tell on the cadence you know the guy bang bang bang boom bang bang bang and it's not the boom is the double check correct okay if you're looking at a cartridge if you're looking at a larger cartridge let's say a 357 Magnum or a 44 Magnum Warren yeah or something like that like then the implications of danger could probably point cuz like a 357 is likely in a revolver - yeah doesn't have a nice big thick meaty slide no forth no it's my hand to go in - so I mean yeah there is sort of your me there is certainly you know some steps and imprecise checks that you can do when you're loading in large volume to prevent that I've got a special dye called a powder cop so my case runs up and do it and pushes a stick up if this stick goes either too high or too low it makes it beep if it beeps I pull it down and look at it and see if there's powder in it or not hmm so yeah there's ways to get around it policing your your process correct fur gems very early disclaimer in this podcast should we briefly cover if a person is or is planning on reloading both rifle and pistol you know potential dangers for water mix up mostly practices yeah I mean if you if you put pistol powder in your rifle cartridges slow it up we've had a scope come back to us yeah 338 Lapua loaded with with a pistol oh a full charge 120 some grains of pistol powder in it and yes we had a gentleman was unfortunate his rifle exploded like I mean when I say did we send that back was there anybody just said yeah there was he did survive all right but covered under the VIP warranty that's for life perfect yeah it wasn't the doubt of if we send anything back it's just so no mark mark makes a great point I and and I'll get into this debate with seasons reloaders because they're usually the same personality type regardless of how many cartridges you reload or how often you do it if you see two types of powder spilled on a table you will not be able to definitively tell me that it is X or Y unless it's like there's a couple of specialty powders out there there is only one that looks like that it is not worth the gamble if you have different types of powder keep them separated if you're using powder measures and and powder files and and scales and powder dumps when you're done with that unload them dump that powder back into its respective containers do not real able containers do not use containers over again it's not worth it a simple mistake and a double charge on the wrong thing or if you put pistol powder and a rifle not so much rifle powder and a pistol but if you if you do that like you could seriously end up injured or dead so this is just not worth the gamble just say no cracks right fantastic well can we talk a little bit here too and I want to make sure let's try and as we wrap up for those like interested in getting into reloading if you guys had an idea of like the basics that you need to do it what would that be to get somebody by if they just want to start with one cartridge and and also maybe even an idea of like what is there like a super forgiving or easy cartridge to start loading for or like 223 308 Winchester one of those really forgiving cartridges that have a lot of load data out there on the market form the one in your gun safe yeah good point yeah okay yeah that's fair so what what should somebody get like basics to start with the internet will tell them they need everything yeah but from seasoned reloaders this is all you really actually from all of the major manufacturers of reloading presses and components so dies and otherwise I think that all of them offer a kit that you can purchase so our friends at Hornady is called the Lock and Load our friends at RCBS it's called the rock chucker our friends at lis it's called the classic and it has absolutely everything you need sans a set of dies which we get from them correct for you whatever it has to be for whatever cartridge you're shooting mm-hmm and then your components like your brass your projectile your primer it has everything you need to load ammunition safely and rely we into your point Jim everybody's on the internet saying it got to have a digital this you got to have a mechanical that my good friend Jim Jordan over here two loads on a balance scale and he he shoots ammunition that is flat-out fantastic so you animal you don't need to do you don't need to spend a lot of money I often do if people ask me this question if you have three hundred dollars that you want to invest in this you can get absolutely up and running for life and require no further investment in equipment that's it and then you just need a little blank space on your workbench downstairs yeah okay definitely enough to get started but you will fall into the same trap that ever you that auto just go faster yeah let me ask you this too now how does one decide like you look at the 308 I feel like there's so many different projectiles to choose from and then there's a bunch of different people that make brass and you hear people about like oh there's a little pool brass and it's better than the whatever brass I don't know and then different kinds of powders how do you like how do you decide what I mean cuz that's an investment I wouldn't want to go out and buy a ton of powder and a bunch of brass and like you know bullets and then all of a sudden try it out and it's just shooting terrible and I'm like why I have all these and I gotta go buy another one I don't know if that's gonna work it's kind of part of the process actually I mean you inevitably you're going to end up with pounds of powder that you've only taken a sip out of and boxes of bullets that you have only hand loaded a few out of just gonna have it seems to be the case I mean the the the load manuals available nowadays and the quality of component that you're purchasing from any of the major manufacturers is exceptional and these guys the ballast ditions that these companies haven't dialed so it's very difficult to say jump into your Hornady or your barns or your Cyril load manuals and find bad data because it's just it's just not there those guys are very good at what they do but it does happen how do you choose look at the bullet look at how it's designed look at your task you're trying to accomplish if you're shooting long distance don't buy a hunting bullet if you're hunting it don't buy a bargain bullet so fit your projectile or kind of your goal towards your application once you've it once you've identified that then get into the nitty-gritty of what makes a bullet special what makes a powder temperature-sensitive what makes a powder forgiving that kind of thing it just experiment that's half the fun true yep weaves fair we get this a lot I say well if you don't use that component it's gonna shoot terrible I've never loaded 26.5 Creedmoor in my life I have shot thousands of 6.5 creamer cartridge I've never loaded a single six five cream or I have dice I have powder and bullets I've never loaded it the factory stuff is so good that I just have not had a need to do it yet so I've had guys tell me how if you're shooting Brand X or brand Y it's gonna shoot terrible I shot a lot of point zeros with Brand X I've shot a lot of the point zeros with brand Y so you know get out and experiment with it very interesting all right hey I'd say that was a pretty comprehensive basic rundown of reloading if somebody's looking to get into it you guys got anything else as far as like somebody who's listening right now doesn't have a reloading bench in their basement but they're like I want to be a weirdo in my basement loading bullets you guys got anything else sawsan fun be safe be careful wise words well hey as we close out here we did get a suggestion in from somebody said hey maybe your last calls could use a little more spice so with that said we're gonna have MC Ryan do his thing here MC Ryan take it away [Music] mark there you have it I like that a lot done in that case we'll just close with a nice bye bye see ya alright that'll wrap it up for this episode of the vortex nation podcast thanks everybody for listening hit that subscribe button so you can always stay up to date on the latest happenings over here at the vortex nation podcast leave us a review or comment down below we want to hear what you have to say about the show maybe what you like maybe what you didn't like so that way we can make these podcasts as good as they can be you can also follow us on Instagram at vortex nation podcast we'll be posted about each episode released so that way you can go back find these things maybe grab a little nugget information that you could take with you to the range out of the field or maybe to the kitchen if we're talking about some good food so again everybody thanks and happy hunting and shooting we appreciate it have a good one

Channel: Vortex Nation

Views: 4,313

Keywords: Vortex Optics, Vortex, Vortex Nation, Vortex Nation Podcast, Podcast, Optics

Id: Q1Jy4LtZ-e0

Length: 58min 23sec (3503 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 16 2018