Reloading to the Extreme - Every Single Thing You Need

all right vortex nation as you know mark and I are gonna be taking on this year's vortex extreme not in an ordinary fashion for us we're we are green to the reloading process but we figured a lot of folks have been very interested in reloading on the podcast so we figured that we would give it an actual try so we would have some more to speak to when we talk more about it in the future and this is part of our arc vortex extreme reloading pod venture now one of the big things you need in order to reload is reloading equipment otherwise I don't know how you're gonna reload and we have a special guest with us today who actually got to helped us come up with this topic it was in a car ride back from a show that we were at in Indianapolis lovely trip lovely trip he was a guest on the podcast at the show now he's a guest again it is Trent Reni how's it going Trent great great morning thanks for joining us once again you brought up in the car ride back how we done some reloading podcasting you know 101 and 201 or something like that and very few sources or it seemed to you like it was it was difficult to figure out everything that you actually needed to reload cuz a lot of times and I've I've kind of seen this with a lot of different things out there not just reloading but a lot of different hobbies you see out there people say oh it's really easy to get into you know here we have for example like a reloading press so all you need to do is just get your average ordinary press kit and then you're good to go and the next thing you know you're watching them and they're like yeah so we're gonna grab out our you know case prep multi-tool or our hand case trimming system we're gonna use our powder scale thrower you know and then we're gonna throw it in the tumbler here and I'm gonna grab out my MIG welder and we're gonna get out the inhaler and then it's like whoa whoa whoa there's actually way more to this than you made it seem and it's just it's always kind of like a nebulous thing so we're gonna do our best to actually give in this podcast you know for mark and I as we as we reload and then for Trent it for in your reloading endeavor in the future it's much of an idea of what you actually need and I should mention we have Ryan mucking her in here well who is our in house right now professional reloader I guess I don't know if you call yourself professional right we've been reloading a lot I still have all my fingers oh so you're not a pro yet Yeah right shop teacher yeah you got to give one up okay and then you get your pro title okay yeah still working on that yeah you know so here's how we have it laid out now we got a bunch of stuff here on the table if you're watching on YouTube you're probably overwhelmed right now by the amount of things on the table and and keep in mind that these are not all things that that one person would need for one reloading set we actually have three different kind of sets here or avenues that you could go I have been calling them affectionately the pencil dive the cannon ball and then the straight up swan dive into reloading headfirst and does it make the most sense I guess if you will beginner mid-level expert level reloading stuff does it make sense to start out at your more entry level area I think so yes now we we have over here in our in our more entry-level area this Lee classic hand loader it's in it's incredible Ryan showed me this on YouTube there's a guy out sitting on a log with a hammer and some some cases of fired brass some powder bullets primers and he had this thing this contraption here it's the Lee classic hand loader Ryan showed me and he was like oh man this thing's a classy you can't find him anymore well little little did he know that they've come back with it we went on a Midway USA you can find them for like less than 30 bucks incredible it is pretty incredible am I getting ahead of myself too should we should we talk about real quick the bullets the powder and the and the primers on that stuff or does that come in it's all part of it right so it's all integral to each step it's it's the the thing that we're trying to achieve at the end of this is a loaded cartridge so aside from the equipment that you need you have to start with a couple of couple of basics here so one cartridge case is to powder three bullet for primer reloading or loading whatever you want to call it is the act of putting all those things together in a sealed container we call a cartridge right and so then that can be fired so yeah I mean we can start with it it's it's super simple really there's there's a couple different ways you could classify a cartridge I've in my hand a 308 Winchester cartridge excuse me a case not a cartridge it's just the empty once fired brass so this is what we would start and reload auto neck cartridge they call it because it's got that that neck shaped like a bottle so in reloading terminology which we talked about earlier in a previous podcast that's a bottle necked case we've got bullets I've got some barns TTS X's here I've got some primer some federal two tens which is a large rifle primer there's a couple of specifications of primers so make sure you match your primer to the cartridge you're shooting and then some powder XBR 8208 for my friends over at IMR powders so yeah put all those together you use the reloading equipment to just to turn them into one cartridge and you're done mm-hmm it's that simple how do you choose the exact bullet that you're gonna wind up putting in is it is it application based is you based on your rifle that what bullets it likes and doesn't like to what do you what do you look at first is it first my application and then what my rifle likes yes what my rifle likes then try to find something for the application um I think for me the best success path has been application and then I come up with a smattering of projectile choices that fit the criteria that I'm after so like for my hunting rifle like I shoot these 130 grain barns tts X's I picked those because I wanted a rifle that did a particular thing I wanted a heavily constructed bullet that I could push pretty fast and it's that bullet and then I have to tune my rifle to shoot them so application first that bullet it's really not dissimilar to when people are selecting a rifle scope and they say yeah ask the question what rifle scope should I get correct and our first question is what are you using it right all right like we wouldn't go out and buy a Golden Eagle to go hunting necessarily unless we're like groundhogs but wouldn't be an amazing hunting rifle scope for say the Midwest so application then been bullet gotcha and then the the primers it seemed like when I was looking at it there's like small and large rifle yep more or less so yep there's there's pistol and well that's a different thing altogether rifle there's small and large and then there's some outliers like for 50 BMG and some other weird goofy stuff you would probably know if you have a Beretta rifle that you were gonna need that yeah yep but but for for the rifle side of this it's small rifle or large rifle okay yep when it comes to these combinations when you're looking at reloading manuals do you try to pick I guess forgive the ignorance on this one but in reloading manuals are usually done by certain companies like you have one I Hornady on the wall there so when you're trying to get combinations is there a reloading manual that has all those bullets in them do they have the bullets and then from the other brands so generally it'll be a bullet company will put out a manual okay so Hornady will have their own manual Nosler will have their own Barnes will have their own in there you're going to find only Hornady Naza or barnes respectively there are a lot of publications though that will have a smattering of bullets from different manufacturers and powders and a lot of the powder manuals will have all sorts of different bullets that they've you know tested and then also there's a bunch of online resources and even some programs a good one called quick load that has a huge combination of bullets and powders to use but but if you select an ammunition or a bullet manufacturer the likelihood is that they only have their projectiles in that book gotcha yes yeah and then the in the powder yes being the next thing there's so it seems like there's a lot of different kinds of powders we talked in one of the last reloading episodes how like sometimes the temperature at which you're going to be shooting at you know determine what powder you're using you know when you look in this Little League classic hand loader thing they give you a recommendation it's like a 308 Winchester chart here and you know if you're using for example a 100 and fifty-five grain jacketed bullet you know it says h VAR get IMR 48 95 and there's a bunch of numbers in this table after it so they're recommending different powders you like but like what is what does each one of those mean is that always going to be the right powder I imagine it has to line up with this little powder thrower thing that they gave you that's like something got it it's called a Dipper yeah I'd also be curious to I mean like with this kit Ryan you know it seems somewhat rudimentary it is right so are the powders there when you're looking at them are they very forgiving I guess actually there's just some other ones yes and and I think that's just part of the like certain powders are gonna rise to the top and in Scott parks he's been a guest on this podcast before us talked about that as well certain powders are gonna rise to the top as being ultimately the most forgiving versatile and like high-performance for what you're getting you can get into some interesting rabbit trails and get some super super specialty powders for some super super specialty loads but for the most part the what they have listed here like bargain like Jim had mentioned 8208 which is what we have here is a powder than thing oh these are okay yeah these are all pretty common popular powders because they're good not necessarily because you know of any other reason they're forgiving like you said they're commonly found and they're top performing so they recommend them and so like deciphering this chart here the powder type they have listed in the left column and this looks exactly the same as the Li load manual so when you open those up they kind of give you an idea gotcha they talk about the Lee Dipper which is the little yellow device and Lee has over the course of probably a half a century devised this volumetric dipper so this isn't by weight it's volumetric it's this cute little thing it looks like yep looks like something out of like an old little scoop little scoop yeah yeah like a like you'd see this in a Super Smash Bros video game or something like that like a little hammer yeah yeah whatever little corncob pipe mark this thing freaked you out because you were like oh no no way would that thing be exact enough well I mean I don't think it's gonna be as exact as like a powder scale but you know when we were first looking at it it actually reminds me quite a bit of with my muzzleloading kid yep I just or well I guess it depends on which muzzleloader I'm using but I mean it's by volume you know you have 100 grains 80 grains you slide the little brass thing up and down and pour the powder and give her a little shake yeah level her off and I think it says three point four down the barrel on it yeah so volumetric charge with this Lee dippers three point one cubic centimeters which they've done the math on what that should average out to if you have your dipper leveled on the top so let's take 8080 208 which is really convenient too because they recommend 8208 with a hundred and twenty-five grain jacketed bullet we're shooting 130 rain bullet so we're pretty darn close to the same number see Eric I think it'd be a safe bet you know to look at this if we're gonna use this Little Dipper 8208 they see 3.1 cc dipper is going to give us forty three point six grains of powder which is then a charge excuse me a volume or a weight measurement oh okay yeah and then if I look at the average velocity or the calculated velocities they call it that's about right in in the pocket that's where you want to be twenty-eight hundred and fifteen feet per second out of their test would it be a smidge lower where the heavier bullet then I imagine yeah so as you go up in bullet weight and if you were to stay at an equal powder yeah measured volume or charge your velocity is gonna drop yeah but there's a couple other things that occur there too so you gotta watch us and the left side are shooting me the furthest right side of the column Lee calls out not exceeding 40 9.2 grains of powder so that would be considerably more than what this dipper offered for the loader that is going to be using this device it would be my personal recommendation to simply use the devices Lee intended a scoop is going to net you the charge that you're going to use don't do like a scoop in an eyeball third because that's how accidents can happen so they've this is actually a pretty precise little critter it's cool yeah it's super neat I think so I just I'm going further down the rabbit trail muzzleloading rifles and it reminds me of something that you're doing back in the pioneering days like I've got this pre-measured thing that I carved out of wood or antlers or bone or something to make a powder does the only thing you're missing is like holding a bunch of old tin soldiers over a fire to melt them down and then like crimp them into a little ball and shove them down your musket right but we're not that far off so it's pretty cool let me ask this right yeah so with that are you putting like no matter what are you doing an even scoop with that thing doing your best yeah and are there some cartridges like is it always an even scoop are there some cartridges you'd put two scoops or is it like no matter what this can scoop this kid is only made for 308 this is specifically for copy that 300 whiz oh yeah why did I say that for another cartridge and it'll have probably a different subtly different scoop okay yeah he has a huge variety of these dippers too and you can buy him in a kit and they're all this cool yellow color it's like nothing changed from 1957 but I love that so much but I I do not dismiss this reloading practice I think this is a really cool thing if somebody wanted to just get their toes wet yeah so and I really what were you gonna say I just say well when we were talking about this before the podcast like I just I find it amazing that with essentially a kit that you can fit in your pocket literally I fit it in my pocket yeah you can make whole cartridges that go bang and we're talking I mean like talk about like the ultimate prepper yep kit I mean throw this thing in your basement what you know if you got if you got powder brass primers and this bad boy you can make things Gil bang and I think that's pretty cool it's true so to get into this kit I know I kind of cut myself off a little bit's talk about the bullets and the primers and the and stuff to get into the rest of this kit so we have this Lee SiC rifle loader again we got it specifically we got it for 300 and then we bagged on the 308 a lot say it's a period cartridge this ancient one step one step newer than the than the old musket balls I was just talking about but anyway it's it seems to be a good forgiving cartridge to load for there's a bazillion in one bullets for it cart you know cases are easy to come by powder and all that stuff is easy to come by rifles are easy to come by we have this Ruger American and 308 here a very inexpensive rifle shoots very well nice and light and handy good hunting rifle you could do some shooting target shooting with it I'm sure as well so anyway that's what we got we got it specifically for the 308 and again like I said you can find it for like I think it was 28 bucks on it on Midway amazing which is amazing and they had like a drop down menu and you could scroll through and there was like every cartridge in the book there what else we got in this kit here again I think everything came in for at least shy if not right around a hundred bucks that loader we got a little bullet cartridge holder thing once you've once you've got some empty brass or you've got some loaded cartridges we got a hammer for like five bucks or something like that on Amazon we got a dial caliper we got this Lyman case prep multi-tool this thing's kind of nifty it does the Ryan what does it do this is everything that you would need for case prep now I should say it's not required right you can you can do with just that this thing this classic loader we we I don't know maybe we got a little bit ahead of ourselves we got a little crazy with getting these these two lime in the EZ trim and the case prep multi-tool but it doesn't hurt it doesn't no no and this thing costs 20 bucks the easy trim costs another 20 bucks it's like so with reloading right so explaining some processes here the cartridge case is made of brass and when you fire it in in the rifle inside of the chamber it generally has a tendency to grow so like it'll lengthen right and so it can get to a point or can lengthen to a point where it's unchangeable or shootable potentially unsafe I think it would take a long time for a modern chamber and a moderate load to get that way but nonetheless it's gonna happen and so if you wanted to extend your brass life and and increase your accuracy potential for a loaded cartridge it is it is a good practice to prep your cases as they call it case prep trimming chamfering deburring all these things are going to lead to a more accurate cartridge right like look at it if you're making a cake we're not we're not making the cake with handfuls of flour we're measuring it out this is all part of the process right so getting back to that case purposes you're screaming it would be just I guess you know the the end of the neck just yeah trimming that off so yep this is what the easy trim here would do okay actually you actually chuck it up in an electric drill and then essentially I think you handhold it or something you'll have yeah you'll hold the case in your hand you hold this case in your hand so you're actually not really trimming you're grinding it off you know so this will use a cutter it'll probably have like a three-three oozing yeah it's got four oh four little cutters on it and we'll shorten edging and see the guy on the back doing it see his hand holding the okay santé holding the case and this holder thing and then he brings the trimmer up to it anyway yeah the instructions on the back for those that'll trim the case mouth so when we're talking cartridge terminology that's called the mouth the neck the shoulder the body it'll trim the case mouth and then we'll take the chamfer and deburr tool which is that device there the looks like a lemon yep squeezer thing yes so the lemon juicer part goes goes on the inside of the case mouth and it puts a chamfer on on that case mal so imagine when we cut it we're gonna end up with a that's gonna cut that bur out we have a nice chamfer to taper to entrance for that bullet to go into the neck easily it's not gonna distort it's not gonna shave the jacket of the bullet off yeah you're gonna have less of a tendency of run out where your bullets actually entering your case mouth kind of sideways I've seen up yeah so that's gonna help Center that up and the deburr is for the outside of that case mouth so it's gonna put a nice like a reverse chamfer on the outside so you have a nice smooth case mouth there quality product at the end of it is get a chamber better it's gonna feed better the potential for bullet deformation when it's being loaded is going to be decreased on the inside of those tools or I gotta get the primer pocket cleaners or something like that right and there's some I know a lot of guys that don't do that so later on and this podcast we'll get to the stainless steel tumbler which is a really nifty product but primer pocket cleaning when you this is another expendable on the cartridge case so the primer actually gets replaced right so that pops out we put a new one in that pocket will get dirty it'll get covered in primer soot or compound and if you clean it out your primers are gonna seat evenly the flash hole which is a hole at the back of the case at the the priming compound when it's ignited flows through to burn the powder that will be free and clear of debris and then if you uniform all that up if you keep that primer pocket cut again this is like that cake you're taking an added step to make sure that you have a good product at the end of it so it's it's kept uniform is kept clean and it extends the brass life it increases the accuracy potential so that's that's all that is this happens to be a crimped case which is interesting we'll see when we start loading that if that presents a problem what tells you that it's a crimped case so you can see on the back I should say crimped primer pocket on the back of the case head this is the head you can see that there's like where the text is has horn D and then there's like a little lip and then there's the primer okay yeah that little lip is a is a crimped primer pocket this is most often found on military ammo that pocket is kept crimped to keep the primer from backing out under you know the duress of transport or if we're say firing a belt-fed machine gun like an m240 that would be chambered in 308 that rattling of all that going on it's gonna keep those primers from potentially walking out okay yeah okay yes there's a variety of tools out there too for that I actually just used the the lemon squeezer part the the deep chamfering tool I just knocked that edge down no problem is the prep usually the same for straight walled cartridges as well a little less prep than in the bottleneck cartridges depends depends on your cartridge there's a few other steps if we want to jump that one so like 4570 is probably my favorite cartridge to reload you you do the resizing the decapping which is where you knock the primer out that parts all the same but in a straight wall cartridge because it doesn't have a neck you have to prep the mouth and you have to do what's called a bell or a flare and so whether that's 9 millimeter like on the on the dillon press that we have next to us here or 4570 i have to open that case mouth an appropriate amount to allow the bullet to be set in there seated properly and then I have to close the case mouth oh really yeah so with a bottleneck cartridge like a 308 generally you have a to die set full length sizing and decapping is combined in one die and then seeding and crimping is in another on a straight wall to our pistol cartridge most pistol cartridges will take nine millimeter for example you'll have resize and d-cap will have seating and then we'll have crimping so that'll be its own critter so it's a whole different dye and that's just a tool that squishes the case in a particular way so that its chamber bowl fireable so a good question straight wall cases yeah you'll have an additional step very interesting mm-hmm now back to this classic one before we go on to our cannonball so to speak I think it's oh we also have a little bit of I mentioned the case Lube yep just in case actually most videos I've seen of people using this thing they didn't even I don't think they were using case Lube but I would it's not a bad idea you gotta the this thing works kind of funny you know you have all these different little pieces here and when you pull it all out I mean you wonder to yourself how in the heck is this actually gonna reload a bullet a cartridge but it's like all these little all these little things they screw together you got this little thing this takes your primer I mean we could even do it right now able to be out of the clean one so like here's here's not I'm drawing on my YouTube watching knowledge here but for example we've now put the 308 case in this first step here which is this little seat and it's kind of like a toilet for a bullet because it's got a hole underneath and it's gonna take a squat down there and then we're gonna just like put this put this primer bunker in there and you drop it down and it fits exactly in the neck of the of the case and then you give it a bonk with a hammer and then it comes to a stop and if you did it right that comes right out of the oh look at that there's the spent primer down on the table and so now you have what is that that's a D capped D capped yes now can I look at the case so it yeah it also did a kind of a preliminary reshaping of the case neck so oh because this thing's it's it's like like a mandrel yeah because I had to push it in there yep so that's good that's so like your decapping stem on your regular die would do that too now - a little bit I guess more of a precise degree I think looking at this setup it's going to redo it and finalize it later but that was brilliant that is so exciting I'm so excited and so you've got now where this is probably the point at which we should maybe put a tiny bit of the case Lube on there and this comes in oh no we had to get this separate from the kit I think a little bit and then now and then put it just kind of around yep okay so it doesn't get stuck in because actually at this point you have to have to use this this kit you we're gonna pound in the case into the the mm to die I guess you would call that the die yeah I'm gonna do the thing I used to do that my parents get mad at me for and just wipe off my fingers on my closer the chair but yeah now you put in the you put in the case in this side here and you can kind of see down there it actually it actually is sort of like the outside shape of the case or what the case should look like and it drops down in there and it doesn't quite go down all the way at first and then like I said this is all drawing off what I've watched on YouTube Trent there's so many things in your way I'm looking right through this periscope right through the through the tumblr so then you're just gonna give this thing you just give this a couple couple of whacks until it seats all the way down there we're just again this this hammer that reason I've seen people use like a household just metal hammer but I just found one with like the polymer I think those good quality it's probably a a good way to go yeah so this is the part where I remember watching and being like how the heck is the bullet not just now just stuck in there or the case not just stuck in there and if I remember right this is the part where you then put the new primer in so Ryan you said you have new primers yep so what we just did now this step is accomplishing resize so that resized it now this and only next sizes this is one of the downsides of you could say this reloading thing is that it's they say that you can't use it for a semi-automatic rifle oh and so generally because it only next says isn't full-length size the case and so there could be issues with with feeding and so it works it's four lever actions and bolt actions generally I could yeah I mean depending on your chamber dimensions I follow these recommendation they're better at this than I could ever hope to be I think it's just cool as heck otherwise so now we have this little thing that looks like I don't even know what but it's got see this like see this silver thing around the primer it's like spring-loaded yep okay and so what's gonna happen is now our cartridge is stuck inside of this like times capsule looking thing and we're then gonna flip it upside down it has a hole that goes all the way through and we're gonna flip it upside down and it rests inside of this it's it's amazing how lis made everything fit together so well and this is an old product this is not this is not some revolutionary whiz-bang no yeah this is this is the classic so then what'll happen is and this is the part that freaked me out I remember at first I was like how in the heck are you say actually want you to hammer hammer down on a brand new primer but the way that it works it actually or the way that they do it it actually works like you put it the knurled end down if I'm wait no that might not be right I think you put it up so I think it goes if something goes bang here on the potted meat business directions out Jim yeah alright I was hoping we can make the whole thing about it something goes bang here you know you know I'm conservative when it comes easy so like knurled end up yeah all right cool don't need those instructions only seven steps YouTube man so then you go think I hit it enough I think so let's go there we go the sound changed a bit it's like mapping rings you hear that coos T okay so there's no more primer in there look at that okay and let me see that thing it's flush yep you do a little finger check on there too you just got you know just kind of see if it feels brilliant perfect so that so that now the now the new primer is back inside and with all that banging in tap and we did the case just comes back out even though it looked like we totally hammered it in there as jammed in forever missing looks like just like a retro socket set Oh doesn't it yeah it does it looks like sockets that are threaded and joined together the case mouth is perfectly round now at that really a hundred percent really that looks exactly as it would if it came out of my hundred and $29 carbide neck sizing guys we have success so then essentially what you're gonna do is and I think I actually I prematurely took it out because at this point we actually need to need to pour powder in sure right so you'd grab your little yellow yellow thing here and I'll double check to make sure we're doing it right but yeah we are indeed doing it correctly place the tool on the D camp yep yep leave the case in this position next three steps okay so yes we will leave it smells like apple yeah it's my favorite part about gunpowder you smell like a smell it smells like I should it smells like candy green apple that you yeah not not like I like real apples but like Oh caramel candy cream expected that you think they do that as a courtesy I think so pleasant yeah pleasant fragrance well he's measuring that Ryan what's uh if a few different materials for dyes is there one you prefer over the other depends entirely on the cartridge and that's a great question so I'm it looks pretty level now you know this this thing here down here makes like a funnel but I think we'll actually oh here's what we can do we can have this meet up ha everybody on YouTube didn't do this Jim is living in the 26th century I do like Trent's questions I wouldn't yeah but there's also a small funnel out here we gonna want to utilize the Hat well there is a small funnel that's that's part of a different kit but not necessarily required if this was a windy day and you found yourself out in the field and you were reloading it is so now we got it now we got to give it some taps you say that there's to be a little residue there well just just like essential static something with powder that should be instead in my in my case so excited back to your question yeah back to strands question now hold on let me I'm gonna I'm gonna ask something here gems because I saw you put your finger in there are you introducing if just grease and things like that if Jim had a bunch of goo on his fingers I would say yes like a bunch of keys like Casey well I want I watched him wipe his finger clean yeah you are okay the thing generally not a good thing to handle your powder with your hands we'll just put it that way okay you know but speaking to modern propellants they're fairly resistant to moisture and I'm not telling you that they're like oh it's gonna be completely unaffected but you'd be surprised at how little so instead of using your fingers folks use the little primer you got quite a bit in there yeah I did I think maybe it would be a good idea when you get one of these things - just like wash it out with some dish soap you know in water before you use it because yeah I think there there must have been just like maybe some residue in there that's how it was sticking to most people that I've seen I mean they just they pour it in and it just kind of falls right in [Music] but I mean this is this is now going in pretty well and the what you might call it this primer called the t kappa t kappa tool actually it's doing a pretty good job yeah there's a lot of static well you know what we're just gonna finish up visual purposes only it'll be close Ryan Ryan is noting a gander requesting oh heck that's fine a gander yeah you're good good to go yeah cool trans taking notes do not use fingers to do not use those okay writing down questions so I don't keep interrupting the process I wanna I want to address it the question that you asked so in Trent's question to be addressed as well I'm so even Palmer tips too are okay with this now we literally are gonna drop our bullet down in there how cool is that I'm in here I want to look and see what that looks like Trent asked whether or not you have to use a specific dye for a specific cartridge or material yes style or material so historically speaking dyes are steel which is fine it has a great wear life you can love thousands and thousands of rounds off of traditional dye without having to spend a ton of money on these exotic materials but some dyes will and some properties of some dyes will allow you a little more lenient or forgiveness when we're loading and so like take my Dylan for example here my resizing die is carbide which interestingly enough on nine millimeter does not require that I use publication this had also had longevity over a stainless yes so I was looking at that Jim and before you started I was like well how do you know how far to go as it pours it tells you when it bottoms out and the little starter if you will she's in there now begins to bounce I think I think were you supposed to set it on this device when you hammered it so that it had some place to go I don't know let's consult the manual they do have that indicated let's say that Frida up oh I see we done it now no I think there's an easy way out of this one Jim is unscrewing that the device back to you back to your question yes carbide doesn't always require you to use loop in straight walled cases I use carbide for 223 loading on my Dylan as well but you still require case Lube because it's a bottleneck cartridge so I do i do use case lube on two to three when I'm loading with carbide dies I use carbide dies for very high volume things like 9 millimeter like this press has loaded tens of thousands of rounds of 9 millimeter with that same die and does not require the use of lubrication to the case I actually still lightly lubricate my nine millimeter cases with a drying Lube it's a mix of lanolin pure lanolin and isopropyl alcohol lanolin yeah Eric's favorite Montara yeah how's that and that should be free now bingo oopsie did it - yeah screw in this thing all the way couple things there so yeah case case that got seated too deep but we can normally you can adjust the seating depth with this thing by screwing right now I had to screw it all the way in because I was a screwball and I got it stuck in there gotcha cuz I didn't I didn't finish it out on top of the little stand well good news we've got 20 retries go alright we're gonna do it another time because I keep interrupting trans questions okay but for the most part if you buy a good quality steel dies they'll be fine there are some other exotic materials out there but steel dies you usually like to get dyes made by the press manufacture sometimes so the dillons are pretty unique in the dyes that they use for a couple of things but no I've got a lot of lead eyes I've got a lot of reading and RCBS and Hornady and my dillon dyes are unique to my dillon press of course but no i'm not exclusive to that certain dye companies do things that I like better than than others in a particular set of dyes or a cartridge but no I don't I don't necessarily adhere to maintaining a standard between press and die they're all fairly Universal for most cartridges so no I would say look at a particular attribute of a dye and if it does something that you like that's great if it fits your press even better than going with it speaking of dyes should we go into our cannonball so our next step up from just hammering stuff and potentially screwing up like I did well we are missing one tool and that's the bullet puller so that would be our one tool that's not on the table that we could say for mistakes they actually make a little bullet puller it looks exactly like a hammer indeed and you copy that right I mean I apologize for wasting one of your bullets now I feel like if I feel like I failed there is no such thing as waste and Jim I'm gonna tell you as a novice reloader you did ninety-eight percent of everything correct if you don't think I have a bucket it's a Christmas popcorn tin next to my press that I throw these in because I do it every time well I imagine you got to probably have a case of twenty or so to get your proper depth because you're gonna want to try and screw ball around with this little threaded portion because that's gonna adjust your depth and then once you get that right after a couple then then just lock it in at that and use that setting forever well I suppose you could even kind of start somewhere and you just keep and then look at and then that's true of just come true when I'm loading for magazine-fed rifles like this Ruger is here that's what I do I'll start and I'll do an intermediate seating and I'll check and I'll seat and I'll check and I'll see you know check and then do you actually put it in - yep the right so I measure that that clearance that I have between the like the the front of the magazine and the rear of the magazine like where the cartridge is actually going to fit it okay gotcha I try to seat to that depth and that I do a mag fit yeah so for someone who isn't as experienced would you measure that final product with an overall length if you didn't have say a chamber checkered or something yeah so there's two ways to do that well we got our dowel Cal yeah I mean you can always consider yourself restricted to your maximum cartridge overall length by your magazine if you're shooting a magazine fed rifle so no matter what you can only go that far unless you shoot you know a sled or something like that where you you don't you're not restricted to that if you're going to use like the old jive gage is that what you're referring to so that's a little different I would call that a more of an advanced tool it's not hard to use but follow the manuals recommendation recommendation for cartridge overall length and about 90% of the time we're gonna be just fine unless you're running an exotic bullet profile or an exotic chambering style I wouldn't worry about it I do have I do have a question hmm so I mean it does appear we got a little bit aggressive with our seating depth here right yep what would happen if somebody put this in their firearm and pulled the trigger tast Rafi really yes okay so deeper the deeper that we see the bullet we're compressing a powder charge well and actually I even noticed on this when a piece of powder actually came out yeah and was on the edge of that so what could what could have happened is because we had one of those hanging out oh that had been that I don't I don't I stick this thing I do some dish just soap and water and more water and clean that thing out first yes so the seat depth will also modify pressure and so it would be to to I to be safe right now yeah and and so be cognizant of that too when you're loading don't grab a giant bullet like a 240 grain sea rat match king and then just assume that the powder charge listed on here for the 190 Greiner is gonna be okay because you're gonna modify your pressure substantially if you're seating the bullet to that appropriate lay okay right because that bullets gonna be so much longer it's pushing down to the case yeah but no this this is mistakes have to be made before we can learn so yeah I'm just don't chamber and fire that one noted so let's move on to the next one we should I'll mention one other thing too if you're using the classic I've heard that you gotta use it on one rifle you can't reload that cartridge and then put it in another rifle because it only next sizes again I think it's just like because that that brass has been fire form so to speak to that rifle yeah so now anything that we would make correctly out of this rifle would then be only used in that rifle so next up we have the single stage press this is probably is this would you say maybe the most common mm-hmm Trent it like when you were looking at getting into reloading or when you have me looking and getting into reloading have you been looking at something like a single stage or have you been looking at the crazy like the Dylan well I figured I would probably start with the straight walled because I'd probably be most interested in rocking nine-millimeter as fast as possible so that's why I was looking at a church that's right away but if I was loading for precision I would start on a single stage makes sense okay so you're looking for volume like that's your primary yeah at the moment that's what I would do okay okay so for somebody who like you said is looking for more like the precision kind of thing that this Ingle stages is your next logical step up and I gotta say the we were shopping around then for again kind of thusly classic came in for a door under a hundred bucks or so the next step up the leak classic single stage press you can get for like it's like a hundred and thirty or hundred fifty bucks and I was kind of like oh wow and is this the kid that they actually sell all-in-one it is yeah everything that they everything that they sell is right there and I kept looking for stuff in there where it was like well they can't have that nope they had that they had the measure the scale the I mean all kinds of different tools right and you can get into what these things actually need the only thing they didn't have was the dyes for your particular cartridge and so we threw in a couple of extra things that are really optional ish for you optional but we figured if you're kind of in this mid stage they you might be interested in them so that's that's why we have like this Frankford arsenal intellij pour and then we have the rotary tumbler with some stainless steel media that that is a little bit of a nice thing but I brought this up to now around a three hundred five hundred dollar kit so now we have more of a not defined jump up but what is what is the single stage press Ryan what does it usually come with what do you need in addition to you know some of these little tools that we got for the the classic setup so this particular kit comes with almost everything short of a lot of the like the case prep stuff like the trimming and stuff and I think I should know this one does come with it okay it does come with the Suzy trim comes with they're easy treatments like this little looks like an old school pencil sharpener classroom so I want to give I want to give a little bit of credit to leave reloading equipment today because for as long as I can remember like even being a very young youngster Lee has always offered everything our loader needs to make quality ammunition with one flip of the switch when you buy the kit it it does have everything there's some convenience items like Jim had mentioned we're going up to a digital scale here and I think that is a worthwhile thing but if if you were looking for a set up to get you going and make like absolutely top to your animal you can do it with this this little press mounted trimming deal is a pretty novel idea when they're using the the press itself as kind of the workstation for everything so it's not just a press for resizing and seating but it's also trimming and powder dumping and it's really well thought out they've they've done a good job like I said over the past probably half century yeah yeah every everything happens on the press which is pretty sweet yep so you would in this case you'd need this kit mm-hm and again like we said if you're interested in and you want to kind of have these convenience items the stainless steel tumbler in doing the digital powder scale and thrower is is an added on thing but this would be everything that you need it in many cases I've always found I think Trent you even mentioned this we're in the car is there's like oh yeah I'll get the kit and you think you have everything and then the kit fails to mention that you need you know a bunch of other stuff that that it didn't come with and then it kind of makes you wonder like why did you even sound like it if it didn't have everything in it but this actually in this particular case it has case lube for you it's got everything you need the only other thing on top of all this stuff would be some sort of a surface to mount the press to you need small it looks like it looks like if you had an honest-to-goodness a vertically mounted 8 by 8 you would be okay yep it doesn't take up a whole ton of space we got the die set so this is obviously different than the whole guy and all in one thing of the classic kit right what did we what do we actually get here when actually load data we alternate 308 Winchester complete think they're carbide maybe so we have okay full-length sizer call it neck sizer which is nice it's a added bonus I'm gonna see if I can master this bottom piece boy I'll tell you they made they engineered a really clever box that has destroyed my caveman brain gym I can't get the Box open well that doesn't mean I'm gonna be able to get the box I don't want you in it to me so while we sit here struggling with the box see it open this is a four-piece try forcing it set okay right use your hammers hold on a second while he's doing that tell me about different media for your tumblers cool so I got it we got a stainless steel tumbler Ryan this was something you suggested so there's like two different types of tumblers that are standardized and there's a people out there that are using other methods too but cleaning of case is oft debated topic I think it's a good practice again we're talking about brass longevity and then also we're kind of talking about some firearms maintenance too because if you can imagine like so these wants fired cases came off our Range floor which is really clean because it's concrete and well maintained but let's say we pick this up from the dirt yeah and we had great common practice oh yeah I see very scouring ranges moving all the time it's called brass rats you get that that you know that that gravel dust on that that silica or whatever it is if you kept that on there and you never clean that off even even by wiping it off you're doing yourself a service but imagine running that into your die it's gonna H the inside of your die oh and it's gonna wear your die out and it's gonna it's gonna wear your cases out we're actually removing material will imagine that great for your gun and it gets into your chamber it's doing the same thing so cleaning your cases is I think a really important step and so I you know wiping it off with even a towel is something but there's also case cleaners and so the two common ones that we see a lot are a vibratory cleaner and then a tumbler like I would I would consider what we have in front of us here a tumbler and then the media types are typically crushed walnut husks or corn cob for the vibratory tumblers or in this case water and stainless steel these are these tiny little pins they look they're well here the exact dimensions are point zero four seven thick I think little our details yes exactly by 0.255 long so a little bit over 1/4 inch long a little bit under point zero five thick and all we're doing is we're using on a abrasive in this case it's the stainless steel pin in the other case of the vibratory tumbler it's the walnut husks or the corncob media and we're just kind of lightly scouring the outside of the case the inside of the case the primer pocket we're trying to clean out all that crud and carbon and soot from the inside of the case now stainless steel tumblers I have been around for a long time and an industrial application like they're used for parts cleaning and deburring on some other stuff they they kind of really hit the scene for real odors I'd say about five years ago eight years ago and there's a few companies that have had them out in mass production but Frankfort Arsenal I think really brought it to the affordable side of things because this is a pretty expensive item even a vibratory tumbler is not an inexpensive thing you know I think they started about 50 bucks or really good ones about a hundred and all it's doing is cleaning your cases well this stainless steel media is really neat it doesn't really need to be replaced which corncob media wears out depending on how much you're using it and it's it's really fast and it's extremely thorough if you decap the cases and you clean them it cleans the inside of the primer pockets and cleans the inside of the case as good as even an ultrasonic cleaner cut and in fact I'd say it cleans it better because I've used ultrasonic in the past and I'm not that thrilled with it I do have a frame for an arsenal stainless steel tumbler and it kicks butt I mean it makes like new brass about how long do you have that in there then two hours oh really yeah it's it's relatively quick is that quite a bit shorter than the vibratory tumbler to fit you're trying to get to an interior clean as well I think so yeah the only downside to one of these tumblers is you are using water and so we know water and powder don't mix that well you have to ensure that your cases are very dry so there's a few different ways to do that you can get to like the hanging things for the inside of your a laundry machine and it'll dry that way you can put them outside I know people that use their dehydrators to make like jerky and a cool hack that I found got this online from long-range shooters at Utah denatured alcohol which you can buy large quantities of for not a ton of money but in a bucket take your cases out of here shake them dry or shake them like it get the majority of the water out and then don't come into that denatured alcohol what it does is it immediately displaces the water you pull it out the majority the water has been displaced off of and inside of the case and inside of the primer pocket flash hole and then I just take them I spread them out on a towel in front of a fan and they're usually dry in about twenty minutes thirty minutes an hour yeah that's pretty yeah yep Sun drying is another good way to do it too I think it's the best way to clean cases if your particular about cleaning your cases I think you get the best product at the end of it and it does last indefinitely so I'm on my first five pound bag of stainless steel tumbling media I will likely never need to purchase another five pounds like yeah what's the what's the ratio of material and cases or how many cases can you put in here what the material at one time so the bag that's inside of the tumbler right now there's Mizer's one satchel could easily do a hundred cases at a time hundred cases fit that easily that tub yeah and then I guess water yep so water and then I like to use it's a cleaner yeah so everybody's kind of got throwing recipe I use a squirt of Dawn dish soap and a 380 acp case full of lemme shine I don't know let me shine it's like a detergent additive for your dishwasher it's just it's kind of interesting yeah and yep just tumble for a few hours and and it comes out like it looks like gold it's beautiful yep and like I said just dry them off and you're good one thing to with with case tumbling generally speaking anyways there at least for me I'm not going to speak for it's not they're reloading but for me I load a lot of or I prep a lot of brass at one time so I don't have to do it every time I load so like 4:45 70 if I have you know a hundred pieces of brass I'm not gonna load them all up and shoot him I'm gonna look like 20 up but I prep all the brass at one time so that I have that store there when I get to the end of that then I go through a brass perhaps cycle and I'm done so when you're doing this tumbling and cleaning thing and you're worried about like oh I don't want to contaminate my powder you're generally doing it in spacing it out between loading sessions so that you're gonna have time to like I have the cases dry naturally so I really the detractors of the the liquid tumbler they're minor in my opinion good product cool then the other luxuriate and we add it on like we've mentioned a couple times now is the digital scale and thrower or I don't know if it is also considered thrower but it's a digital scale it measures you throw powder in here and you tell it exactly how much you want to come out it puts it in this cute little metal thing and then you put a funnel on the case and you pour it down right yep I mean that's that's pretty much how it goes correct I mean the whole point of this is it's not like it's not like super trick what it's doing I mean like how it works it's pretty tricky and how technologically advanced it is but really all it's doing is just making sure that you get the exact right amount of powder correct and saving you a little bit of time while you're doing it yeah so it's it's not so manual it's somewhat mechanized very handy tool powder dumps so you're not you're stepping away from the dipper at that point in time I'm you're getting into a powder dump with you like like you had mentioned you can adjust the amount that comes out and they're pretty darn close a lot of times they're all you need I know shooters that don't even use a balance scale passed once they've set their powder dump like they set their powder dump but they're done they're like well that's it and they just go to town yeah depending on the accuracy of the powder dump that you're using and the style of powder and the term that they'll use is called metering how well that powder flows through that powder dump you can you can be on the money you may not need to worry about the balance scale and well and I guess how particular yeah being yeah you know for the application if you're making an if you're making ammo to hunt you know gay respective distances I mean if you have a two minute of angle gun you pretty you have a pretty good shooter right like you could you could hunt deer with that that's a huntable gotten you know respective distances but yeah sweet should we chat about these dies quick yeah so cool so like Trent you're asked about dies earlier now this is a this has four dies in it and it has the little yellow thrower yep so it looks like he's like the classic can't use dad interesting so we have a full length sizing die so we're gonna resize the entirety of the case so Jim's earlier device only to the neck this does the whole case so if you have five 308 Winchester's lever bolt single shot and pump and how many was that semi-auto you can load all of your ammunition off of this die and feed it in all your guns yeah it's gonna reshape the entirety the case back to just like it wasn't as new yep I'll call it next sizing guy so I'll call it this is the call it died here these are clever it's it's like four petals for metal pedals that go in and they resize very evenly every time and again we're talking about eliminating that run out so if we weren't using a collet if we were just using a shaped like the inside of a die in a traditional sense yeah just like the classic add yeah if it's a skew now our neck is askew a call it has to close up the same every time right so it's like a mechanical device that opens and closes around something it's putting the same amount of pressure around the hole yeah the hole radius in the neck a bullets eating die so this this they separate the seating and crimp on this set the bullet seating dies all its function is doing is pushing the bullet down under the case and then to a specified length yeah but you'd grab by your handle yep you are adjusting this part here on the die it's just higher the die we can screw that out and that's going to adjust the depth of what's called the cedar plug and that's going to control the test of your car your bullet into your cartridge and then they factory crimp die which is really really cool to that's another collet device I think Lee makes the best crimp die if you guys are out there thinking like hey I want a crimp my cartridge like my 4570 for example I crimp Li's factory crimped I call it type same thing even pressure around the outside of the case mouth and it's just rolling the edge of the case mouth into the bullet if your bullet has what's called a candle lure which is a groove that's been rolled around it or in the case of the 4570 projectiles that I shoot they have a crimp groove and I use that crimp die to do that and it's brilliant it's just all you do is you run the case up into the into the the die on the press and you just kiss it and it's done so I get all my ammo loaded and my last step is crimp on the shell holder OOP pull it out just give her a kiss yep just just a little smooch also coming is that so you're doing that actually so let me so is it actually a kind of like a mechanized pressure or are you just doing that by feel and just giving her a little and off you go so I set that die so that when I'm at the top of the stroke so my handle is the lowest my ram is the highest right that's it boom right there so I moved too so there is a little fine-tuning of how you say your dip you can't just screw the die in all the way and be like okay bang yeah you have to kind of modify it a little bit and this is something that you know they'll outline in the directions of the load manuals of the press manuals and things like this about setting dies of every rifle is gonna be a little bit unique in individual and even the case is like there's two specs for case length for 4570 there's the Hornet II FTX spec which is for a very specific type of bullet it's a shorter case and then there's the other case the other 4570 case and I shoot the other 45 70 case so you'll have to be cognizant that when you start reloading some of those specialty things what they'll go over that in the in the manuals of the dies and in the the load manuals too so pay attention to that also includes another dipper different volume on this one this one's a 2.8 CC dipper gotta love the dipper and what's called a shell holder so this goes on your press yep spins apart that holds the bottom of the bolt the case yeah so it clips into your extractor groove and holds your case had and this is going to this is going to be cartridge family specific so alley number two for 308 will also fit 22-250 at 243 six Remington thirty at six two seventy twenty five about six six Creedmoor okay anything with that same case head and so that clips on there and holds the case while you do all the functions lovely yep so that's the cannon ball set and if you're looking you know at another at another kit because there are other kits than the sleeve this is the fiftieth anniversary like we said and they don't have everything that this one does you can at least use this as a reference for what all you would need because we did find it to be very extensive and having I mean literally everything it was it was kind of like I was actually hoping that there would be things missing from it so that we could point out like oh you're gonna need to get this but no I pretty much made a little money now let's move to your swan dive Trent this is where I'm sure you'll be jumping in with it sounds like most your questions because this is the next up Ryan this is the Dylan you said 650 yep this thing is a turret press like for example right now it's set up to load nine-millimeter there are are multiple cases on the turret right now a lot going on what the this is I don't know where to start yeah so we would call I saw this in Terminator 2 yep pretty much probably it's like it's tau its it's in his back so this is what they call it progressive press so every pole of the handle accomplishes the entire function of loading of one cartridge so I'm resizing I'm D priming I'm charging I'm seeding I'm crimping and when I released a handle or move it forward a finished round pops out this is how Henry Ford would have done correct reloading yeah so I think this is how Henry Ford would have done reloading because one person would do one step every time and then that's the advancement I see fair enough observation Trent it very good so is this the Elon Musk of I would go yeah that probably close like your sounds alright one machine does it all yeah so it's an advance pressed I mean it's not something I'd tell somebody who's never been mechanically inclined or is intimidated by backyard explosives to just jump into because there's some stuff going on here but really once you shake it all down and you look at each part it's not different necessarily then what we're dealing with here it's just putting it all into one place the set up is considerably more involved though like the tuning of the press the initial set the initial go-round is an involved process you are having to adjust in my case for dyes instead of one at a time right yeah I mean they're all at different depths where you've where you've threaded them in they're all doing different functions how long does that how long would you say that the setup took you um so initially I was terrified when I got it it took me days like I looked at that thing I'm like what did I do I'd like I bought an alien I don't know if it's hostile again it took it took me a while but uncertainty there watch yourself in your closet with your 9 millimeter a little bit and waited if it came after you and then I I came out and I I got to know it I introduced myself and I started monkey and with it and made a lot of bad ammo the first half hour 45 minutes to tinker ate a lot of this stuff going on okay yeah yeah oh let's see - two deep crimps too much crimps too little flares too much flares too little once I got everything indexed though I actually have not adjusted this press since I moved to Wisconsin almost five years ago are you serious now I haven't touched a thing on it I took it off of my bench the other day for this podcast and it's been sitting by my front door I'll put it back on my bench I'll do it once around make sure that my powder levels are correct and my cartridge overall lengths are correct and that they still chamber and that'll be good it isn't it is a remarkably robust design I honestly I couldn't put a number to the number to the amount of animal that I voted on it but it is in the tens of thousands of rounds when you set it up like right now set up for nine mil yep just do you try to avoid at all costs setting it up for something else no he can look have you ever loaded anything other than ein Milan yep so you said you've never adjusted it uh in this configuration do you have like how do you deed do you have like a whole lot like 308 configuration they can just take out and bolt in or I don't have a 308 but you can so on the top of the pressed is what's called the tool head so the tools referring to that we've gotten in this case we've got a powder measure we've got what's called a powder cop this is not standard this is this is just a convenience item so basically if I'm loading cartridges and to put this into scale as I have it configured a thousand rounds an hour is not inconceivable you can really well you can really move on this press and you can actually make them faster I don't have a case feeder that will aid in this tremendously and you can get like expanded primer holders and that kind of thing all the powder cop does is it runs a loaded or excuse me a powdered case up in to this die and it just uses a little stop that tells me whether or not I have powder in it if I failed to load powder in it it makes a super obnoxious beep how do you how would you fail the little powder it's doing it all for you is your attention you ran out of powder yeah like somehow I unindexed or like you said I didn't go into powder or ran low on the powder volume it's really hard to do I've never had cross my fingers a squib knock on wood is there anything else I can do this in lucky cuz I just said it but I've never had a squib off of this it's fun right off of this press so yeah if I was to have done something out of sequence or somehow goofed it up and it's very difficult to do on a dillon 650 yeah it would alert me that I didn't have powder in that that case there's also alarm on the top of it that tells me what amount of primers oh that's even worse wait and so when you're out of primers it lets you know it's it's pretty handy but yeah like you said it's a tool that I got a number of years ago I got into competitive shooting pretty heavily especially on the pistol and rifle side of things and my ammunition bill was high enough that after a little bit of a little bit of you know you study I figured out how much I could spend on a press and then come out money had after say a shooting season and I actually got the soft Craigslist I found a guy in in Pelican Rapids Minnesota he was a he was a elderly gentleman I wish I would have kept his information because he was very interesting he bought the whole set up plus like ten tool heads and ten die sets and like every little bit and piece you could buy put it together he's like oh I didn't need all that and he went back to his single stage yeah and so he put on there for a song it was still pretty expensive I went up drove up there shook his hand handling up some cash and drove home with my my my Dylan 650 cool cool thing really you can actually automate these ones can you can and I've done that no way yeah extension cord on that it'll take over the world I the 650 is not the device to automate they make another press up so actually they have a series of presses Dylan's are all you could call automatic in some regard like their entry levels called their square deal be you have to manually put a case in and manually put a ball in the next is their 550 which you have to manually index load a case and a bullet then axis is a 650 which I have to load a bullet the next is the 1050 and the 1050 is like a commercial loading machine and like a person can buy this they're just very expensive you're gonna invest two thousand to three thousand dollars into the whole shebang to get your money's worth out of it or you can get a bullet feeder you can get a case feeder you can get a mechanized or an auto arm on it so you push a button stand back eat a sandwich it makes you a ton of ammo and there's some other companies out there that have now come out that that do that even more like a mark 7 for instance you're loading 1,500 rounds an hour and as long as you keep it well powdered well bullet and and primed it's gonna do your job for you but that's no fun so I like this this is still somewhat intermittent makes me feel scope all lever yep so what's to look at if maybe or is Dylan probably the best option for a turret style progressive press I think the 650 for what for the the pistol shooter is a 650 I think if you were like just a very recreational shooter you enjoy going out and and you know shooting a pistol or to look at the square dlb I also one of those that's a really nice little press I got that one for a song too I I have it set up like exclusively for 45 ACP I have two 45 ACP s and they both shoot the same load very well so I just hum along with that one if you're going for USPSA three gun IDPA tactical training with a pistol I think a 650 s where you go I think you get it in a very similar configuration I've got a couple of aftermarket parts on here that are completely convenience items you can get more or less everything from Dillon reloading products as you see it right here done you're probably looking at about twelve to fifteen hundred bucks so Trinity now out of curiosity like when you're looking at something like this and you're saying oh it's hard to just wrap your mind around everything they actually need does that does that totally answer or like what else what else is in this thing because I don't even know like what one of these comes with what you've added on can you like point out the things that you've added on that that one of these wouldn't ordinarily come with so when you order yeah you can kind of piecemeal it from Dylan they do a really good job of giving you a product you can use out of the box and then what you should have to make it a really efficient setup so talking earlier about assembly line stuff they don't come with the stand I don't think the stand is required you I could hard mount this to this bench right here you'd be fine I like to stand because it puts the press up in front of me so I'm working I'm looking in my cases while I'm running it I'm I can see everything it's at eye level it's not low I'm not goofing around right there here somebody use five ten there's nothing wrong with being five ten you just lower your bench but the stand the stand is important so it comes it comes out of the box with one powder measure one die set one tool head one press and that's it okay and so from there like you would add the stand stand you can get the stand from Dylan there's also a couple of aftermarket come to make excellent stands and then I added the tool accessory holder so I get all the little Dillon wrenches and it also comes like a box end wrench that you can then put an acro pin on the backside to act as a loaded bullet catch I recommend this house I also did a drop tube for a while so I used to load like three four five six thousand rounds at a time and I had a drop tube you have so much time on your hands I had a drop tube that went off the edge of my bed or off the edge of my bench into a bucket or a bin I actually had a case detonation which was the most terrifying thing I've ever had as reloader never I've never had a primer go off and never had a primer column go off I've never had a squib or a round blow up but I did have a case detonation as it dropped on my prime or might might drop tube so I'm not a fan of that I switched back to the box so what what caused that so the best I can deduce I was loading ten millimeter Auto which is a pretty snappy cartridge and I was loading it hot Ida yeah so I was like flew great one to have all right I was like forty one mag velocities and pressure like when you're trying to make Barry medicine do it correct okay and it was a large large quantity of them and it was a hundred and eighty-five grain or 180 green scuse me Hornady jacketed hollow point I can't remember the powder charge it was substantial it was not a comfortable load to shoot out of the gun I was shooting it out of and so the drop tube was like twenty nine and a half inches long and I think what happened is I built it into the drop tube in which it would spiral the round and slow it while it went and then it would fall down the tube slower okay but I was going so quick I don't know if it just bounced but it like it didn't do the spiral and it just dropped twenty nine straight inches down without slowing down at all and one case one like bullet hit the primer of another the primer detonated well when it's not contained inside of a chamber there's no gunshot but the thing turns into a fragmentation grenade so whatever that powder charge was completely detonated the case failed totally it exploded to a bajillion pieces the cardboard box I had the at the time probably nine hundred loaded cartridges in shredded and like blue open and in my parents basement I don't think my dad will ever listen this podcast I never did tell him about it if there's a line on the wall of like shrapnel from the case like shredding it and now Ryan can't hear anything when he calls name so the best part like not to make a short story long so boom this goes off it's as loud as the gunshot my whole family is upstairs I'm like oh my god my dad's gonna take away my reloading press I'm never gonna be able to load ammo again in this house and so like I collect my things I do a you know a check to make sure I'm not bleeding out anything I like sneak like salt like sulk upstairs just waiting for my old man to just drop the hammer on me nobody knew what happened they never heard it you know I'd have to assume or at least I would I would hope Ryan that like if any child is down in the basement of regardless of age and somebody upstairs hears a gunshot in the house they maybe investigate to make sure nothing horrible has had no not wait for you to go upstairs and I don't know that was the only there's the only accident I ever hadn't that's the only one huh that's it so I'd have to assume that all the other cartridges that were in the mix there were fine they're fine I inspected all of them so it was really neat the bullet never went anywhere it just stays there the case explodes right I have a picture of the case I can try to find it on my old phone the case explodes it like banana peels the powder course burns the box box split that was the end of it I just for whatever reason I would have thought like micro particles or micro part yes I made that up Jim like you know contaminants whatever you know possible slight imperfections used by the explosion it thankfully didn't okay yeah so my class talking about acro bins that we talking about Ryan blowing himself oh yeah house one time to a holder a crow bin a crow bin holds about 300 loaded cases when you add this nifty acryl in damn it's called from inline fabrication great company a lot of their products roller handle this is not a standard accessory they come with a ball handle like this yeah after you get to like a thousand rounds you look down and you'll have a giant blister on your palm so you'll switch to a roller handle so that handle spins freely I've got what is it like it's just it's gonna happen yeah I've got what's called a skylight kit on it so there's like an LED strip here that illuminates the inside of the press inside of the D of buzzy yeah and then I've got a primer drop tube so your primers would normally just fall out and they make a little bent ones yeah they make a little tray that can go in there when you're loading a well even if you're loading 500 rounds an hour if you're going pretty slow 500 primers is a lot of primers and that thing fills up really quick and if it fills up to the point that it jams it it locks your press up so I run this tube just down into actually an empty powder bottle and that'll hold thousands and thousands of primers so I only have to empty that like once a year and then I've got a live primer catch bottle on here so the way the dillons work is they use a turret inside of the turret that's loaded with primers and every time you cycle it this little this little doodad indexes and a primer I'll skip if I can get it unlocked here we go a primer can skip this turret and now I'm dumping primers into that powder bottle well these are good primers so if I run out of cases and I do two cycles well I just lost two primers well not with that because I have this little cup on there so it catches that and then I've done some bearing upgrades on there again this is not required earrings yeah so underneath the shell plate this is called Swiss ceramics or I don't know what the word is Oh rollerblade it is it's a yeah so it's a fancy bearing everythings ball bearings these days [Music] the Internet the shell plates on these can flick and then you have powder spillage and when you're like the 1,000 rounds an hour you don't want it to flick I actually still press my finger on the plate as it's indexing you get into kind of a groove and you can do this but I did a bearing upgrade and it eliminates the flick and then that is that's about it that's about it huh yeah I do have a question you'll have to forgive me it's a big back track here but you were saying you've got multiple dies right yep which are gonna be these guys up here yeah and maybe I just need to see it in action but you're saying with every pull yep you're getting a complete cartridge right just like this one that came down the tube so with these multiple dies how are they all engaging I guess the cartridge in some fashion at the same time sure it's my off base with this question no no so it's not it's not like so there's five stations on on the press it's not your you're not getting five load of cartridges every time I'm getting right so the shell plate rotates okay as we index the handle each rotation places a case into a different stage of the sequence so first the first stage a case will come out of the case feeder tube onto the load tray which then indexes into the shell plate the second index will run that case up into the sizing decapping die which resizes it reshapes it and then knocks the primer out the third will put it into the powder drop and so this the powder can only drop if there's a case in there it's called a case activated powder drop brilliant design that subsequently flares the case mouth the next stage on this one is that one that we talked about this not necessarily required it's the powder top stage so it tells me that I had powder on it but now we've have we oh I forgot to mention priming so we have a resized primed powdered flared case after three polls Oh after okay there are multiple polls then well to load it like when you very very very first start out and there's nothing on the turret you got to pull the lever a couple times before you throw the sequence before you start getting a loaded round coming out every time okay so my fourth set is going to be a seeding of the bullet and the fifth set is going to be a crimp okay so once it's crimped then it's done once I move the handle down all loaded round spills out the tray at that point in time the array is full or the turret is full each subsequent pull produces one loaded cartridge okay yep so all I have to do is pull the lever and set a bullet on top and they even make a bullet feeder for this but again that's not that fun you got it yeah I like to do that visual inspection manual transmission it's yeah Trent what do you think that's the one now with that being slight and your wife has a horse do what you told us right so this is okay absolutely yeah sky's the limit on excuses when your wife has a horse because what can be that expensive well I remember I remembered cuz when we were when we're on that road trip you know Trent has a lot of hobbies real oh how shooting competitive shooting just any number of things the man is an onion and I asked my goat man how do you I hate to use the word permission but I guess it was like in dude yeah he goes she's got a horse that's and the conversation was essentially over at that point we just all understood yeah I mean that is just a license it's just free license free rein one of us got to give your partner an equally expensive hobby and you're good to go ma'am what happens if she doesn't have a horse she will okay gotcha that's another horse she's also a triathlete so her bike in the clear man yeah in fact you're I think you're a little bit behind on Barbra hi it's time you go get you know what why not the 10:50 Ryan mentioned early party at the a MOBOT stage that's cool I will say this though progressive presses are fantastic tools I still really enjoy using my single stage one you saw it we the listeners you heard how much Ryan even geeked out over the leek class I'm so exciting $8.00 yeah reloader thing that's pretty cool well hopefully this gave everybody a little inkling as to what is actually necessary in order to do reloading market I think we know kind of what we need to do in order to reload for this vortex extreme I think maybe not the classic maybe not I feel like the after if I don't shoot if I don't shoot something that we reload on the classic I'll be upset but I don't the extreme is it the extreme probably isn't that you know when when we first started this we were looking at the the array of equipment here and you said you know use the word overwhelmed and I was a little bit were whelmed when I got here in fact I had a little bit of anxiety saw just looking at that yeah it's better I think I think we're gonna use this I think we're gonna use the Cannonball this the single stage press cannonball I think we can sort out the cannon we got to make 80 rounds a piece for the extreme I think that's doable because we got time to times on our side all right well the only next logical step is to actually load up the ammo so you're going to stay tuned in this series because we got another special podcast for you involving actually putting this stuff to use Trent thanks for joining us as usual thanks for having being a guest got anything to close this off on I guess what we're seeing in the first two stages you might look at that and say wow that is a huge amount of space and things oh what's different with these is you also would have to have trays of ammunition staged for every prep and remove every die every time you go through a step so honestly you probably have four or five hundred rounds worth of space on each side of the equipment where that is in an all-in-one situation so if you don't have a lot of room that might also be a better idea for you might be a little more expensive but might also save space hmm fair point I like that Trent's closing argument is to just go with the swan dive I am looking at roads lead back to the progressive press let me ask this question though not to extend this anymore you've got some reloading experience behind you right like if you had zero experience I mean it just seems like there's a lot going on here like you're doing a lot of checks and you have you even know you know what to check for mm-hmm I don't know this thing is intimidating to me I'm gonna have Ryan set but my cell phones that wouldn't yet you know if you did have one mentor that knows how to work something like that true I think you are pretty well good to go we'll set Ryan up with a Ford Transit van he can start his own business where after work he'll just drive around the country and set up people's present it'd be cool to have a mobile reloading setup if any listener out there has do people put their fly-tying benches on the pickup bed no I find that if not as cool possibly cooler that did not know that if there's any listener that has a mobile reloading setup my hat is off to you for for not you know living in the constraints of your basement or garage please I want to see that that's cool that'd be cool I think the hardest thing there would be stability even with a standard desk you usually don't have enough stability for self leveling those engineering self leveling air tables I think that's I think that's where you're at all right we've had like eight closing statements so we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna count this one I've got I've got another one stated in comments mark if you can do it in less than four minutes cuz that's what we have done hour and a half here's here's my last call right now at this moment of time I've got all ten count them stay tuned stay that's perfect thanks everybody catch you next time 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 you can also follow us on instagram at vortex nation podcast and everybody thanks and happy hunting and shooting we appreciate it have a good one

Channel: Vortex Nation

Views: 71,069

Keywords: Vortex Optics, Vortex, Vortex Nation, Vortex Nation Podcast, Podcast, Optics, podventure, ammo, reloading

Id: e8N9ShSmkqs

Length: 86min 54sec (5214 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 27 2019