What You Need to Start Reloading Rifle Ammunition - a Walkthrough

hey there Gavin you hear from ultimate later calm if you're thinking about reloading rifle ammunition there's a whole bunch of things to consider one of the first things you have to think about is the equipment the components and the supplies that you're going to need to get started and it's a non-trivial list there's a whole bunch of options so rather than have you get completely overwhelmed I'm going to walk you through those essential components that you're going to need and then not so essential components that are going to make life a little bit easier on you so let's get started I'm going to give you an overview here one of the first things that you're going to need to consider is what kind of press to start with for rifle ammunition a single-stage like I've got here with the reading big boss to is a great way to go because it's very simple it's not very expensive and in this particular case I've got this Lock and Load bushing conversion kit installed so that I can really quickly insert and remove dies which is a great convenience a turret would have a spinning head that allows dies to index and you've still got one shell holder on the RAM that holds the brass and that will allow you to have multiple things set up at once but again with this system it's so easy to insert removed eyes that you don't feel like you'd particularly need a turret turrets are great as well a progressive press will have a shell plate that has multiple stations and multiple die stations and will index each time so that each time the RAM cycles multiple operations are going to go on my recommendation start with a single stage press and use a bushing system like the Hornady Lock and Load bushing conversion kit all right in our lineup of equipment we've got a couple other things this is a case trimmer this is the reading 2,400 and what you do is you insert a brass case and the cutter head will take off a small amount of brass this one has a micrometer to adjust it so it makes it really easy to make precision adjustments you notice here we've also got primer pocket cleaners so if I was D primed here I could just twist the the brass there and clean out the primer pocket having a trimmer is really important for rifle brass because each time it's fired the case mouth typically gets longer and longer and longer and eventually that's going to cause chambering issues so I've got a couple things here I've got a micrometer this is great for measuring bullet diameters brass diameters things like that not an essential but definitely nice to have digital calipers I would call this an essential you're going to measure cartridge overall length with this you can also measure things like bullet diameter and other things definitely a good thing case overall length as well to know when you're going to need to trim we've also got the powder major here so during the rifle reloading process if we're manually throwing powder we're going to hold our brass onto the bottom and then in this case we've got a rotating drum it's going to dispense a powder charge this one has a micrometer which is really nice so that we can make precise repeatable adjustments to to the metering insert all right let's work our way back a little bit all right here I've got a die set so this is a three die set and for rifle that's going to be decapping it's going to be your seeding dye in your crimping dye we've also got the the shell holder here we've got a case lube pad this is the our CBS case Lube system and what this pad does is allows you to charge it with lubrication liquid fluid and then you roll the cases on pad to lubricate them and then you can you can roll your case mouth brush on there and then you'll apply lube to the inside of the case mouth so that your expander ball has minimal friction and then the case Lube on the outside of the case is going to prevent the case from binding in your sizing die so there are other options here I've got some DCL from Dillon this is a spray-on case lubrication there's also the Imperial case sizing wax which you apply to your finger and rub on the outside of the case you can also use a q-tip or a brush to apply that to the inside of the case definitely an essential for for rifle loading this is a powder tickler and what you do is you just fill it with powder and then turn the knob and what that does is it trickles granules of powder out into your tray the tray is part of the digital scale so here I've got the Hornady gs350 and what this allows you to do is weigh bullets whey powder charges weigh cases whatever you need to do and so what you'll typically do is you'll zero out your your pan and then you'll either just have the pan do a charge measure the charge weight and then trickle or you can even zero out the scale with brass on it and then go ahead and charge it and then put the brass back on and then you'll actually have just the the weight of the powder on your scale so digital scale another must have if you don't want to buy something expensive like this mid Grange Horner to gs350 scale you can get inexpensive jeweler scales that are used for weighing things like diamonds they do a great job down at the grain level this is a powder funnel so this is sort of funnel shaped on both sides so it'll work with a variety of different types of brass and you can use this to to assist with powder you can empty powder with it another nice to have it's not totally an essential this is a case deburring tool so what this will do is it'll allow you to deburr the inside of the case mouth put a nice little chamfer on it and it will also do the outside of the case mouth so after you trim your brass you're going to want to do that because it's going to have a slight burr on the case mouth this would be an essential if you don't have a power to case prep center here I have the Hornady hand priming tool so this you you've put your primers in you shake them until they are all oriented properly and then you use a shell holder to manually prime your breath now that reading Big Boss two that I showed you actually has a slide bar priming system so you can either prime by hand or prime on the press let's go to the back row here a few more things that we're going to need to get started rifle loading of course brass either new or previously fired powder I would recommend Varg it as a great very versatile powder it'll do two to three is I'll do 308 it'll do thirty out six it's a very consistent burning powder and a lot of people really like it because it's extremely accurate this is a universal loading block this is the quantity loading block and this allows you to keep track of your cases as you're going through the loading process you can even put this right under your powder measure and do multiple throws at the same time it's great to take a look down and inspect powder charge level that sort of thing so one thing that I'll do typically is I'll load some at the front and then I'll move them to the back as I'm going through a particular process loading so that I can keep track of what's been processed for a given stage and what hasn't so ammunition boxes factory ammo boxes styrofoam and cardboard work great this is an MT M box that I've used for 420 to 250 you can use this as an ad hoc loading block if you don't have a loading block great way to categorize and keep track of your ammo I recommend using labels I've got free labels on ultimate reloader that you can download bullets of course you're going to need bullets any cartridge is going to need two projectiles so you know it's good to have a variety of bullet weights and so that you can experiment a a variety of types polymer tip hollow point boat tail non boat tail that kind of thing and then of course we've got primers so better makes great primers I also use Winchester wolf I've got a variety of different primers that are used for different things CCI BRS the BR series are great the bedrest primers so that's pretty much it so there you have it those are the essential and non-essential items that you'll need or want to get started loading now this is by no means an exhaustive list there's a whole bunch of other things that you can use that I like to use progressive presses bullet feeders fancy case cleaning setups that sort of thing but it's surprising what you can get by with with a little bit of ingenuity to get started now there's a whole bunch more resources that I've got on ultimate realtor.com and if you look at the accompanying full blog post we have links to all sorts of resources that will help you get off the ground reloading ammunition most important thing take your time be safe and have fun thanks a lot you

Channel: gavintoobe

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Keywords: 5.56 NATO, .223 Remington, 30-06, AR-15, AR-10, Reloading Blog, Reloading Press, Reloading Data, Ammunition, Handloading, Rifle

Id: 6rDppDH1IN4

Length: 10min 37sec (637 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 08 2014