Reloading Basics (Decisions To Make)

thus is the circle of life hey Hickok 45 here completing the cycle from empty brass to loaded round ready to shoot we're ready to go again Hickok 45 in the reloading room yes I finally get to it I've had about a million requests to do some reloading videos this one don't get excited it's just going to be the basics because a lot of you are trying to decide whether to even reload I know that you're also trying to make a big decision about whether or not to start out with a single stage press or go ahead and get a progressive press right yeah I can read your mind and also read your messages so I know that's a big topic it's a big decision you're trying to make maybe even whether or not you want to handle it or not you know that's that's an issue so those are the issues I want to touch on right now whether or not you want to even reload yourself hopefully give you a little insight a little insight into making that decision maybe just based on my own experience again as everything is that I do I've been reloading since 73 74 and I've gone through a lot of different presses well I say a lot not that many really I've gone through two or three different major change overs and I've had some good experiences of a few not so good experiences I just want to give you some of my experience but also mainly I want to give you the questions probably that you want to ask yourself some of the things that you may not have enough experience to tell what questions I ask sometimes okay and so I can't really answer you know ten in depth questions and you know in messages or email about what I should do to get into reloading so I want to do some videos and hopefully this will help you a little bit whether or not to reload first of all whether or not you want to do it I know a lot of you are thinking about it some of you that you may see this video two months from now because you're not really thinking about until then but I know a lot of people are now particularly with the cost of ammunition and so many more people buying guns you know these days last year or two and with the price of ammunition escalating at the same time and it was a major major issue so let me go over some things just some basics of hand loading in this video I'll do a part two and get a little bit more in depth at some point here first of all big question is how much am I going to save I know that's one of the reasons a lot of people get into hand loading of course you do save some money per round of course not as much maybe as you think depending on what it is if it's a big heavy expensive bullet at the forty five of some sort you tend to save more heavy rifle round or whatever but then by the same token I think with a two to three which is a very light bullet 55 grain bullet now you save a fair amount there to it so it just depends on the caliber and with the rifle with the cast bullet whether it's a jacket round and you know there's all those things you know play role how much you shoot is a big factor bottom line is you probably won't save any money all right you will save some money per shot but you probably will shoot twice or three times as much so as far as more money in your pocket wouldn't count on that because once you start hand loading you'll start wanting more brass to fill up and go shoot it and you will if you like to shoot what you do you wouldn't be looking at this video you wouldn't be thinking about hand loading would you so you won't save a lot of money but you will shoot for a little bit less per shot so it comes down to accuracy is a point that comes up sometimes am I going to lose accuracy with hand-loaded ammunition I don't think so a lot of people hand loads so that they can get the rounds tailored to their specific gun and experiment of course factory ammo these days is really good in a lot of selection but if you're one of those people that I want to reload I need good accurate ammo I'm not going to stuff my own bullets in there I see people loading those lead cast bullets and you know pushing them in there and going out shooting them and maybe you've seen people shoot their hand loads they couldn't hit anything with it or I don't know what your experience might be but my experience has been a can telling difference I mean it's just the zaccharas factory ammunition of thinking the but anything you've seen me shoot 9-millimeter has been my hand loads I don't load 40 caliber right now I used to lie loaded for 10 years I ripped off my 40 caliber dies to load 10 millimeter when I got into 10 millimeter and so I don't have those dies I just didn't think I'd be shooting as much actually I've turned out I do so I probably start reloading 40 again but I reload all my 10 unless it's some of the factory ammo you see me shooting the videos i reloaded 45 cold all the 45 ACP really virtually everything else in pistol caliber I hand loaded so anything you've seen me shoot out here and hit anything with it's been with hand loads for the most part 44 Magnum the the two 30-yard video with the 44 Magnum those are my two hundred forty grand cast bullet hand loads same thing I've been loading for that gun for since 74 you know what I got it anyway so hand loads are quality long as you know what you're doing take your time study you got to study I'm not going to recommend loads or anything like that and generally in these these videos however many I do on hand loading this one will stick to the basics so so catch me if I start getting too detailed and stop me okay raise your hand or something ask me a question slow me down alright when you reload yeah you got by your components there's no Bradish you can get in ball up you get about a this is a bag of a couple hundred I picked up at a local shop here in Nashville bullets you want to buy in bulk these are nine milliliters that's 500 right there consumers those it's alright these are I think zero bullets that's what I've been using in 147-grain configuration one reason I load 9-millimeters because I like 147-grain gold here's a box of laser cast 45 long colt that's a box of 250 right there no that's 500 250 grain so you want to buy them in bulk you know that's how you save the economy of scale they would buy buying in volume you generally save a little bit of money powder I usually buy it by the pound as a Penta that's a $20 on that that's sometimes you get a little bit cheaper than that being on the type of powder usually buy that by the pound your brass you know most people to get into hand loading they have thought about for a while so they're saving the brass or they're policing their brass from the range so they're they've got some built up of course you can order it from Star Line or Winchester or any number of sources what else here of course if you're shooting you know some of the modern noir old military rifles you know you have a steel case so you know those you can't load and that's one thing that's attractive about course the old military guns and various calibers if you have a lot of surplus ammo is still available you don't save as much reloading it staying on what you're doing what kind of shooting you want to do primers usually buy those in a box if that's an old box I've had that's a thousand primers right there so terms of money you want to buy in bulk when you can you know you're going to hand load and you're going to be loading quite a bit go for volume yeah you definitely want to do that now the big question that you're going to have I know because I get it often is when I start out do I want to use a single-stage press like this one or a progressive press like that one the one that we just loaded that bullet on now when we loaded that 9-millimeter they're just for demonstration purposes to open up the video that was thought the you normally do that of course you have four or five pieces of brass and bullets on there at a time which I'll show you before the video is over and this is the the single stage bow that's the question of the hour - that is the big question do you start out with this like I did this is my old RCBS press that I bought in 73 and 273 I guess and loaded with it for about 15 years loaded everything 44 Magnum they shot 357 as about it at that time I did it I never loaded a lot of rifle rounds I've loaded 45 70 and I think I'll lose some 243 on this back in the day but mostly pistol rounds that's a single-stage press it has you see this one holds one case at a time put him in there that one's already capped and you just do everything you're going to do you do it to all the pieces of grass if I'm going to load now normally what I used to do with is not not use this press in two three years photos but I had to move it from the old location I just got kind of clamp there for demonstration purposes but what I would do was get about 50 to 200 like 44 mag cases or whatever I'm loading and get them all cleaned and I would just put them here stand just like those and get in position here and I was just okay first step I want to D cap them and resize them and go up with it put it down different spot do the next one punches out the primer and bell's the mouth reading oh it resizes been a while since I've used this thing and just do each one of and used to go through that process and when you're ready to do something else now you notice how shaky that is I cannot stand a shaky press i bolt these babies down this thing was really bolted down I just moved it over here temporarily so you do all the cases whatever step you're doing at the time why because then you need to change the die out so then I put a different die in the next day is going to bail the the mouth a little bit so it will receive the bullet and put powder in and if you're using a single stage press we're this is my dad's old he's to reload some you need to have a powder measure here and you put the case under that and you hold it up there and you just flip the handle and it puts down the the preset amount of powder in the case then you set it there carefully some people use a special thing to set them in so they don't turn over I never really did I just put them together there and didn't knock them over made a point not to drink too many beers while I was reloading actually you never drink while you're reloading you knew that was a joke right smoking is not advisable either when you're reloading I'll let you figure that one out so say they're all charged with powder now change the dye again and I put in the bullets eating die and I just got some of these random dies to show you and this is the one that would seek the bullet and that's probably the most ticklish adjustment for me but you get that seated he said just right and it will seek the bullet to any depth you need to seat the bullet because the bullet has to be the right depth obviously if it just pushes it down to there that's not right needs to be seated down into that little crimping groove right there so now I'm not building so I don't think it it won't go down in there see one step actually builds the mouth a little bit to receive the bullet so it's got to be seated the right depth after you have the powder in that's always advisable right okay and I guess I didn't set any about the priming step on that this is a little primer what you do before you put the powder in as you put it back on there and you gotta go through all of them the same way you go up this is full of primers it picks one up push it up in there bring it down seek that primer you got to do that that's one step itself - okay so you have four or five different steps you go through with with each go around there you put a new dye in and do that it works it works fine yeah that's a single stage press the operation you know I could load on that if I had to go back to it but I've been loading on these progressive presses for about the I guess almost twenty year what's 20 or more than 20 years actually with these Dylan's for about 20 19 or 20 years once you try progressive you'll never go back to this I just don't use it I last thing I use this for was loading some 500 grain 4570 rounds that's it black powder actually had seen them on this bullets but other than that I just I just don't use it I may never use it again I don't know if I'll load those again but that's a single-stage press when you hear people talk about single stage versus a progressive and it is a good way to start but then again you have to pay whatever these things cost now they're probably $150 I know they may cost you a couple hundred or two fifty maybe three to get the press and everything you need a set of dies it takes you know your dies if you're loading 357 you have to buy the die set and I don't know what those costs now you can Bonnie for so long 50 60 maybe 70 bucks I don't know a set of dies for that caliber and in all your accouterments your primers and the primer trade you're going to have a nice little chunk of money in it getting set up anyway and if you think well I'll start out with that and maybe in a couple months I'll get progressive well you spend a lot of money on something you might not need after that depends on what you're going to load in with your primers definitely you want one of these now this is a nice big one Dillon makes that's a primer tray the way it works now this is regardless of whether you're using a single stage or a progressive press turn that over and you the primers in there a nifty little I'm getting a little sloppy here on the camera and see those little ridges you just shake that and then I'll turn the same way put this lid back on just turn it over and there they're all are facing the correct way for you and you take a primer - now I didn't have any hipty ones for the small pistol primers and you just pick them up you just punch them up into you always wonder glasses when you do it and just go around there and these tubes hold about a hundred this is a Dillon primer tube and that's how I still do it they make an automatic primer tube filler but I've never used that I know you see one work but this is but maybe the whole long and show you how it works now it's full all right but it just picks them up and then they go up into the tube until it's full and then you load the primer tube on the press on the this one if you do it with this tube right here so either way that works pretty well but primers obviously get them a primer in the bullet so we just deep Prime these you see the primer is gone so you have to replace all the primers that's one individual step on a single stage press even on a progressive it's it's a done one of the stations all right this is the press again as I started out with and it's old dirty of course still works fine if I need it he is it I could use it i I have my father's here up it's a Pacific I don't think they even make them anymore that's a single-stage he got into reloading a little bit and the latter years of his life he was not as avid a shooter as I am but he enjoyed it and reloaded thirty thirty on that some 357 until I made him question doing it and so that's the single stage operation like I said I just had this on here to show you and I really hope I don't think too much more so that's a single stage press you need to decide how much shooting you're going to do and I know that's hard to know maybe you're just in the shooting and you want to get into reloading already and you're thinking about it if you think you're going to do a lot of shooting and you're going to do a lot of especially maybe well any kind but pistol cartridge and you're the kind of person that can figure things out and you don't mind tinkering with with some of this and being careful with it doesn't intimidate you I would recommend make it go ahead and take the jump to the progressive press I just really would all the things you have to do with a single stage press they're just as important and you've got to do it right and you've got to you know put your best tinker's hat on or whatever you want to say and get it right you've got to just the dies all the die just menteur still just as ticklish had to be be done correctly and you're going to have rounds you just got or get a bullet puller and pull it and you'll save the components but you're going to mess up rounds you know whenever you set the dies it's just just going to happen it's going to cost you a few rounds to get the the dies adjusted properly but once you get them adjusted man you can just go to town I do recommend Dillon again I don't get any money from Dillon but I get good service and a good product it's one of those deals where you almost wish you could find something wrong with them because everybody likes them and it's like the lock or something and some things just work and Dillon does also they have great customer service you know something breaks on this thing this thing is almost twenty years old if something broke tomorrow they probably send me a piece for free so but there are other progressive reloaders and and again just to be honest with you I don't keep up with with some of the no RCBS has always been a great company Lee does some good stuff I had some lead they were pro one thousands at one point before I got the Dillon's they worked okay part of the time I was have to say I would never have another one that maybe they made some improvements in them but the Dillon is like ten times the quality at least and you just don't have the trouble I watched I went to a friend's house and watched him load on with these 550 be Dillon presses and he showed me how to do it and I sat down and loaded a few and of course I learned one the next day has unbelievable difference and I had some experience with you know progressive reloaders too so I wasn't a brand new realtor on a progressive type press that's one of the big decisions though you got to make all right again I just want to cover the basics here you know what you have to have the essentials I may have left I may be leaving something out you know I don't have done this so long I had to rethink here what exactly do I use and how do I do this yeah it's just like how do you walk I don't know I just do it you know but these are the components and these are the choices you you need to make if and I know the money is one of the concerns you how much am I going to say I gonna save like 50% or 75% well you're not really going to like I said earlier you may not save anything you'll shoot more the you can kind of figure yourself primers I think the cheapest you're going to find a thousand primers these days is about 30 bucks probably more than that so you're talking for a thousand so you're talking three cents for a primer okay to load one of these bullets depending on what you're talking about we're talking nine millimeter to get a thousand usually jacketed bullets and what we load a nine for the most part yeah any price in my head spot if you built up I think they're around a hundred dollars you know for a thousand in the ballpark there may be more or less 10 $20 down though you can just look it up and see you can do the math so let's say they're roughly for round figures they're $100 for a thousand of these well there's ten cents okay so so that's ten cents you've got three cents in the primer so your 13 cents per shot at that point powder depends on what you pay for it there's 7,000 grains in a pound of powder and it depends on your load like you might load just four or five grains in a nine millimeter or even in a 45 it's bets on a powder you use it really does some powders more bulky you may use 10 grains of powder to get the same velocity there's another powder you use four or five so you just have to know what your load what you're going to use but you have 7,000 grains and a pound of powder so you can see pretty well do the math and that's not counting the case so you've got to figure if you're having to buy the cases that's another expense or if you're saving your cases and how that's going but excluding the case those are pretty much your expenses they three four cents for a primer anywhere from ten to fifteen cents you know it just depends on the bullet say for a UH for the bullet and the in your powder maybe two three cents could be more if it's a bulky powder it was that it was a such that expense wise a lot of people did not reload ten or nine millimeter because you could buy it at Walmart if you get for seven or eight dollars you really couldn't load it for that I know it's gotten hard to find and so area so something we're loading it just so they can get it but you don't save a whole lot of money with 9-millimeter generally speaking okay but you can run the numbers and you know you can find out pretty quickly got it as shipping tax and everything get right down nice to do this on a spreadsheet back when I started reloading back when it was like a nickel a shot four cents three cents a shot those are some of the things just to think about okay the big decision again though is how am I going to start and if you have the money you might want to look at the Dillon website or RCBS orally or Hornady there's several companies now to make the progressive presses and there may be some just as good as Dillon and they may have just a good customer service I'm just not aware of all right so just full disclosure there I I don't know I'm partial to Dillon a lot of serious shooters are you've probably heard that before because they're a great company but you have to make that decision do some research and see what they cost because they really work well let me show you real quick how this this thing works you've seen this I'm not going to load a bunch of ammo you know I haven't really used it much lately hope it's not working so you put one in that first station there and that's where it D Prime's it punched the primer out and resize the case and when I go to the next station I put one in there again get out the next station and I now gone through this before in my other video it bells it outputs power in it okay now that same one's going on around the next station I'm ready to seat the bullet and you might be you'll see the powder in there so I sneak the bolt set it there and it seats it okay and it does the taper crimp and so you've got all that going on so I can sit down and watch what I'm doing just get into a rhythm like that and it doesn't take a genius to be able to do this obviously I wouldn't be able to do it now you again when I push down on that handle right here that's where I'm pushing a primer back up into the empty pocket there you notice I don't have an automatic case feeder bullet feeder or anything like that and you get into a rhythm looks where you just grabbing the bullet with one hand grab the case in Florida and even when you're reloading this expensive proposition these days to shoot so you're probably not going to be trying to load 10,000 on a Saturday so he's got was plenty fast enough for me no game later so you can see how it goes there pretty smoothly and that brass actually is not very clean was it but the old progressive reloader generally if you get a good one you don't have a lot of problems you got adjust all the dies just like you do on a single stage once you get them adjusted then your said I'll show you how simple it is to switch calibers to reports partly you take those two pins out pull that out and I can reach over here I'm not going to do it but I can reach over here if I were switching a 10 millimeter pull that up slide it in there put the pins back in see how simple never do it for an awkward position here put the pins in and I'm ready to go generally now not always also sometimes have to change the head and it's about a panel 3-minute operation to change to totally different caliber because I'm using of course the same press I'm just switching out the case head or the shell plate there and the tool the holes of dies so now one of the luxuries too if you go that route is over the years I've you know it's different powder measures and some people will use the same powder motion readjust it I hate to just readjust the powder measure I just really hate to do that and try to get back right exactly every time I switch so I don't do that so I've got powder measures for most of my calibers and but that's a progressive reloader you're working really well you saw me to do that with the 4570 and the other reloading video if you've not seen those you know look them up there I'll link maybe these tool but this video to them but I have one where I'm demonstrating what I just did there and then also one on the other press where I'm loading 4570 I haven't know the press just like this over here it's kind of cluttered up right now I haven't used in a while but I load that's another luxury and I have I love anything that takes a small pistol or a small primer on this press anything it takes a large primer on that press because if you don't you have to change out your primer beater and all that kind of things not a big deal not a big deal but I load a lot of different calibers and so it's just one of those luxuries that makes it a lot nicer so what I'm going to forgot to show you now the other route you could go as I showed you the other day in the cap-and-ball video you could just get a gun like this and have your reloading press on the gun right that's one option so primers bullets cases dies either way single stage or progressive you're going to have to have all that and the only other recommendation I want to I want to make a point of is if you and I have a lot of people I communicate with it just gotten into reloading by all means find a bullet that you like and stick with it find a load and a bullet that you like whatever it is and just stay with it for a while because it is really I also hate to adjust a seating diet a bullet seating die man you've got a really it's a test for your sanity sometimes you know getting that next bullet seated the proper depth so get a bullet you think you're going to like I probably standard bullet and all that goes back to is the cost of bullets - if you're going to love it a forty once one of the most common bullets out there that you can find and you know you're going to be able to find 180 grain or a hundred sixty-five grain bullet whatever it is when you know you're going to be able to get maybe it's the least expensive I don't know most available maybe that's the one you ought to shoot because whatever you adjust your dies for and your load yeah it's nice if you can leave it set that's 9-millimeter I guess I have not adjusted that powder measure or that seeding die oh I love 15 16 17 years you know now that that's pretty extreme but you sometimes you just have to but get a load that works get a bolt it works and had practice with it you know that's that's one of the secrets to shooting well is getting a load not be messing with it all the time I think I need a different powder a different bullet maybe I'll shoot better no just get one that works and then practice with it and you also want to be readjusting your dies all the time so hopefully this is a some help to you you know I haven't barely been I guess extremely opinionated in too many ways I do lean towards the progressive press if you're gonna do a lot of pistol shooting if you're going to see yourself loading some big rifle rounds that also is a factor in determining what press you buy the under the dillon 550 you can load anything pistol or 4570 on a 45 70s on there are some of the smaller presses even the Dillon makes it are I think mainly for pistol rounds so you got to ask yourself those questions if you're just going one caliber you know I mean interesting any others or maybe two I forget what it's called Dillon makes a there oh call an entry level press but it's a it's one that is designed for that you don't care about anything else you're just going to load forty caliber you know you can buy it's already set up and take off loading with it uses a different type die I believe unless they change that but anyway I recommend progressive if you think you're going to do a lot of loading or you think you're probably going to want to move up to it in a few months maybe you just want to start with it but by all means get a good manual alignment manual some good reloading manual check on the web there's a lot of information on the web about it about different loads and all that make yourself educated on the subject and be a student of it you'll enjoy it you really will it's fun just reloading the ammunition you know it's another component of the hobby of the sport and I think you'll enjoy that and I'll do another video and get little bit more in depth on on some of this I hope this has been somewhat useful to you and come back singing life's good

Channel: hickok45

Views: 1,898,119

Rating: 4.933784 out of 5

Keywords: jReloading, basics, Dillon, 550B, RCBS, Jr., Brass, primers, 9mm

Id: irC3NuIKDm4

Length: 31min 19sec (1879 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2010

Reddit Comments

[u/Adaekor]

As someone just starting out trying to decide if I should start reloading, thank you!

[u/PR3VI3W]

Oh, obviously all credit goes to Hickok b/c he's a boss. I just found this today and didn't realize he did reloading videos until now.