Reloading tools you need - Whats missing from your reloading kit

hello and welcome to bolt-action reloading in today's video we're going to go over my top five items that you're going to need to start reloading that didn't come in your reloading kit stick around welcome back to the channel if this is your first time here you'd like to see how I and the rest can be here make our group smaller start now by subscribing to the channel and hitting the bell icon that way you get notified when I post next week's video and you won't miss anything guys if you're just getting into reloading and you're wondering what tools you're going to need this video is for you it's very frequently we buy a reloading kit think everything's going to be included and are disappointed when we finally get things set up and start to try and reload the various reloading manufacturers certainly don't have to buy a whole ready kit this is going to apply to way more than that in fact you can obviously see a Hornady press is not what I have on my bench in fact let's clear some space on the bench to go over some of our tools various reloading manufacturers sell some very nice kits and some of them even come with varying content but most kits over all don't contain the parts we're going to go over today just a quick tip if you haven't purchased your kit yet and you're getting ready to select one make sure that it actually you want the things that come in it if you're not going to end up using it it's not adding any value so don't think you're getting a great deal it's just going to be other things that are cluttering up your reloading bench let's be honest for most of us are relating bench is very precious real estate I would love to be able to tell you guys what kit to pick up but reloading presses are just kind of like cars you're gonna have to pick the one that fits you the best you very well may pick wrong the first time but it's going to help you figure out what you like and don't like but regardless likely tools we're going to go over today are going to prove useful to you if you pick them up anyway my perspective is largely based on Rifle reloading however the majority of what we're going to discuss today will translate to either pistol or reloading as well if you're interested in any of the items that I'm going to go over in today's video I'm going to include Amazon affiliate links were applicable in the description box below two items on Amazon if you buy any of these items I'll get a small piece at no extra cost to you and it does help support the channel so I can bring more videos like this to help you guys out one of the first items if it's not perfectly obvious there's very very few kits that come with dies occasionally you can buy a presence actually auto fitted for a particular caliber you're going to have to adjust your dies anyway most presses are not going to come with so you're gonna have to pick the dyes for whatever caliber you intend to reload a lot of my reloading that has done for 6.5 Creedmoor and I've got a little bit of a selection here as far as dyes are concerned depending on how much money you want to spend you can go anywhere the bargain-basement bottom of the diet world Arlie dies and that's not saying that they're bad Lee actually provides a pretty good value this is the ultimate kit which actually comes with four dyes significantly on the other end of the spectrum is reading reading makes some very nice dyes but you're going to pay for them as far as the price index is concerned a little bit above leads to me a company like corny point does make some very different and actually makes different levels of dyes you can get a standard set a match set depending on what you're actually looking for but another one of my favorite options which if it isn't apparent by me reloading bench is Forster you have to decide what's right for you but dyes are something you're certainly going to need in whatever calibers you intend to reload if you're very new to reloading I would suggest just picking up one die set and getting familiar with one caliber at a time jumping in and thinking you're going to reload seven different calibers right out of the gate it's very easy to get distracted I would recommend becoming good at one caliber liking your results and then being able to transpose results to another caliber as you move along in your reloading journey there's lots of different options that are gonna move your dies even if you do pick something like forest or dies you can get a full length die and a bench rest model if you really want to upgrade you can upgrade to something like the micrometer seating die the micrometer she dies allows you to dial in a very precise measurement if you're doing any overall length testing it's a very good feature to have but if you want to spend a little less money you can buy one micrometer shooting stem for the horny die and actually convert all of your all of your seating dies for Hornady into micrometer dies for somewhere in the ballpark of $28 it's a very good update if you're just starting out and a micrometer seeing die sounds like a good idea I do not think you're going to go wrong with Hornady dies if you want to step up to a little bit nicer die Forster you can't go wrong with and if money is no object Redding is where you can go I don't have anything bad to say against writing but they certainly do try and win the award for the most expensive dies usually and you can get some great results with any of these other dies it's very commonly your kits are going to come with a loading manual that's going to have some load data in it especially when starting out please make sure you have published load data but our next item is going to be related to what we're going to find in here when you start looking in your load man you're going to find out there's a lot of different measurements at least in my experience it's very few kits that actually come with calipers being able to measure the overall length on your loads is an absolute necessity I'm not going to tell you what CalPERS you need to get or even that they need to be digital however you can get a reasonable caliper for not a whole lot of money as you can see what I what I have on my bench this is a Cabela's brand new one they're fairly nice to be perfectly honest the when I picked my first one up I had one fail in about eight months but Cabela's has a one year return policy on it I returned it and I've had this now for a little over two years and haven't had any issues with it besides obviously having to replace the battery when it goes dead I have other videos they're gonna cover the tool that's on my Hornady kit here but Hornaday actually makes a nicer calipers if you actually look at some of the dimensions the Hornady caliper is a little bit thicker it's not super significant but it does make the horny tools slightly easier to use they work really well with the various comparator tools that Hornady has and so I honestly run my bench with two Harbor Freight probably isn't going to be something that's new to a whole lot of people that we're talking to on the video but Harbor Freight has cheap tools Pittsburgh obviously is the brand I think that I picked these up for somewhere around ten dollars and I'm not going to tell you not to use them however I will be happy to tell you that I've heard some people insinuate that the calipers you get from Harbor Freight are just as good as any of the other ones I'm going to agree to disagree I hope it's really hard to get it on camera but comparatively the moving this is extremely gritty even though these are still made in China calipers these are far far smoother it's really not even a comparison if your budget is super slim and you need to get a set of calipers these Harbor Freight ones will work if you have a little bit of money to spend I would upgrade the Harbor Freight ones some run you know on sale somewhere around ten dollars give or take another set might run twenty or thirty dollars I actually don't have a set but I've heard some pretty good things about them I gauging on a my amazon brand they're a little bit higher feature than that so if you're looking for something that's a little bit more high-end than your reloading company branded calipers you certainly can go that I think those runs somewhere around $40 so they're a little bit of a step up if you guys have an unlimited budget for your calipers you can actually pick up a brand like Matteo pretty much everyone I'm aware of is going to agree that those are some of the best that you can buy though your budget is going to decide what you want to get and what your comfort level is but overall I've had pretty good luck and got some very consistent results with some 30 ish dollar calipers but most kits don't include these things make sure you have a set of calipers otherwise you're not going to be able to reload effectively there's just too many things that we need to measure when it comes to reloading there are little ways around some things but you're gonna need to know some of your measurements especially when you're recording them get yourself a good set of calipers it's worth the investment since we talked about why we're gonna need the calipers to do measurements obviously we might have to modify the measurements of some of our cases and one of those measurements is going to be the maximum overall case length why this is important is the more we fire our cases and we resize them they actually grow in length and if they grow too long you're not going to be able to properly chamber them they're not going to be safe to function in your firearm so if our cases are too long we're going to have to actually be able to trim them and that's one thing that's very frequently not included in your reloading kit and so the tool you choose to do this is going to be a little bit personal however if you're just starting out one of the tools that I would highly recommend are these case length gauge and shell holders by lis these are very inexpensive depending on the caliber some lasers are somewhere in the ballpark of six dollars per caliber some do I'll go up to 10 and some vary on the availability however you actually need to buy the this particular part for every single caliber you can purchase the other this bit that can go in any power drill that you can chuck and tighten down you can search that in your case and that trims your case and so you can get actually pretty darn good repeatable performance with this system for very inexpensive if you're just starting off one caliber is all you're starting off with this is a very good place to start to be able to make sure you can get your cases trimmed down the length for all the ones that I've purchased I know that I haven't had any issues getting these down to a safe leg that's always going to be in my manual a little more expensive option would be something like this Lyman Universal trimmer for our Lyman Universal trimmer you can insert your piece of brass lock it down there either as a hand mechanism on this where you can actually why this by hand or you can get this adapter to be able to use it with a power tool such as a drill this is going to have more availability as far as calibers are concerned all you need to do is dial in whatever is your neck dimension to be able to trim these down to length we can adjust these in Thailand with an Allen wrench however it's going to take you a little bit of time to set it up but you can do lots of different calibers this was the first one I purchased because I thought I would do so many calibers the lead case length gauge and show holders are very easy to use and very simple and so I've honestly find myself using those more than I do these depending on the solution that works best for me but you'll have to decide for yourself but you are gonna need something that can trim your brass to length the except of this might be loading pistol calibers your brass might actually not work very well anymore before it actually gets too long I don't reload very much pistols so I don't really want to comment on that if you are reloading rifle and you're not going to use new brass every single time and if I don't know why you would a tool that's going to trim your brass is going to be needed to be able to reload so after we've sized our brass one of the things we're going to have to do is be able to remove our lube I always like to clean my brass before I sighs I want to keep my dyes clean you're not going to want to get a whole bunch of grit and dirt in your dies it's going to make them more difficult to clean and frankly they're just going to work better if your brass is nice and clean depending on how exactly you want to do it you might want to actually be able to remove that loops you might honestly clean twice it depends what the process you decide on being able to clean your brass is going to be a necessity at some point in time I have two different methods for this though there are more if I was to start over I'll put a quick picture on your screen so you can see it I picked the Frank over Arsenal wet tumbler it is a little bit pricey but being able to wet tumble gets the brass extremely clean it's extremely effective it's not difficult overall it's given me the best performance the other brass cleaning system that I have is actually from horny it's an ultrasonic it has worked pretty good if you're just doing small lots the ultrasonic will be a fine solution it provides pretty good results but if you're trying to clean a lot of brass all at once it is not the most effective solution it just depends on you you couldn't decide unless you're only going to be next sizing and you're playing wiping down all your cases I would plan on being able to have some way of cleaning your brass part of your loading kits are probably gonna come with some type of a scale and I don't want to start bashing scales you're just gonna have to decide what's good for you but having confidence in your scale is something you cannot compromise whether you're using a balance beam whether using a digital scale whether you buy an aftermarket scale you're gonna have to decide on what solution is right for you having confidence in the reading on your scale it's absolutely crucial one of the things that I don't reload without is my check weight set some people might disagree with this even though you might have a calibration weight that came with your scale these check weights they're not really cheap but the accuracy that they're going to provide you they're going to give you extreme confidence that your scale is reading correctly and confidence from around around this particular kit which I will have in the description box below has a hundred grain weight of 50 grain weight to 20 grains a 10 it also has a pair of tweezers though they're not the best a 5 grain weight - 2 grain weights a 1 grain weight and a half a grain weight with the combination of all the weights that come in here it's going to be very hard to find a cartridge that you can't verify a weight that's very close to what your intended charge way it is so you'll know your scale is reading correctly in the range that you want to load the last thing you want to do is put a 50 gram weight on there and assume that your very small powder charge for pistols is going to be accurate it's very important with those smaller charges to be very consistent and frankly it's only going to take a couple of seconds to put the relevant weight to your reloading session on your scale verify your reading correctly and have all the confidence in the world if you have any question on your scale you can always throw your check weights on there if you see something that doesn't seem right you'll know that you have a problem and you won't continue on safety is utmost important when reloading and these check weights in my opinion are a must-have if not this set they have a slightly smaller set but having a check weight set and knowing what your charge weights are and that your scale is going to read them repeatedly incorrectly is very very important and that's why I recommend this is one of the items that you should have the couple more things we're going to talk about today are going to fall into probably an optional category regardless of how I feel about them one of the things that I would encourage you to pick up especially if you're new to reloading is the running Imperial size and I wax you and say I have to this stuff goes a long way I think I probably have reloaded certainly over twenty five hundred rounds probably over three thousand rounds mostly using this container though it's obviously on its last leg this one's brand new and so I'll be dipping into it very shortly it's very likely that your kit is going to come with some type of a case Lube but I don't think I'm stepping out of turn here to call this kind of an industry standard you really should see how your press operates with Imperial size and die whacks to see how it feels and you'll know how it's supposed to be whether using enough Lube or not enough Lube it takes just a little bit of this one of these little containers can be used to resize lots and lots of brass it does a great job as long as you don't put too much you won't dent your cases and it'll keep your cases from getting stuck which will cover one more thing that we really need to have right here is a kit stuck case remover if you never have a stuck case you'll never need this tool but if you don't have this tool you're going to end up needing it we're not going to go over this in the extreme extent but one of the things I would certainly put on your list they're not extremely expensive is a stuck case remover with this you can actually you can drill the primer pocket out in your brass tap the hole and use this kit to I don't want to say quickly but at least effectively hopefully remove a stuck case from your die get you back going not an extremely expensive tool but certainly a good idea to have on your bench and if Murphy's Law ever applies to you if you have it you might not need it but if you don't have it that's probably when you're going to need it now guys this is kind of get into the bonus section depending on what dye sets you pick some of your dye sets actually come with shell holders otherwise you might need to get a universal shell holder set that's going to be specific to what dies you decide to get and that is certainly a consideration of when you purchase them one another thing of consideration a lot of tools are going to come with universal funnels these will end up working okay if you're looking for any upgrades to make starting out using these right out of the gate they do tend to a static is an issue once you end up reloading with them long enough that problem tends to go away you can rub them down with a dryer sheet or something of that nature to help I'm not gonna promise it's going to be perfect or if you're looking for another little upgrade to make or if you're looking for that one other present someone's looking for you to put under the tree for Christmas your think about upgrading your funnel game you could look at something like this precision funnel set hopefully you guys can see has different calibers 22 243 6.5 338 30 and 270 versus or 7 mil I certainly don't want to say it's a mandatory item that you have to have but certainly something you could consider if you want to upgrade your funnel game out of the gate or if you get tired of the little plastic funnel it's something to think about in another tool that we're going to cover under the bonus features here is going to be something like your trickler if you are going to trickle up a charge on your scale to get to the charge you want if you're looking for more precise reloads trickler is probably something you're going to look at at least if you're weighing out every single charge however at least the trigger that came with my Hornady kit I don't want to blame all kits but I just haven't had very good luck with this trickler a relatively inexpensive upgrade you can probably make Lyman has a new trick ler that's cast very heavy it looks very quality I wanted to update my trick or game and this is what I picked to do it I'm probably to cover this in an upcoming video so make sure you subscribe if you want to catch that those are some of the main items that I think you're going to need to purchase if you're getting into reloading if your regulars here on the channel and there's something I forgot feel free to add that in the comment section below but overall I really hope you guys found today's video informative if you have any comments or questions that's what the comment section below is for if you like the content here on the channel please consider subscribing the channel hit the bell icon so you get notified when I post next week's video I hope to see you back next week and until then stay safe and small groups

Channel: Bolt Action Reloading

Views: 163,421

Keywords: relaoding tools, reloading tools needed, reloading for beginers, start reloading ammunition, reloading dies, scale check weights, brass trimming, brass trimming tool, case lube, trickler, reloading funnel

Id: bCNqymrIu_8

Length: 17min 4sec (1024 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 07 2019