It seems odd to me that there are not a lot of countries in the world where the average guy can reload his own ammunition. When I started, it was out of fascination with the whole thing. I was about 14. My first set of dies were the old original Lee things that you needed to use a hammer with. It also started with casting my own bullets. Those were different times, when the only cinematic themes involving guns were about cowboys. Over time, I became fascinated again. P.O. Ackley became one of my heroes, after I read his two books. It was all about trying to make the most accurate and efficient loads possible. Big goals for me were gained as I struggled against a simple efficiency formula that I derived, where the plan is to attain the highest energy per grain in charge weight. It's nearly impossible to beat the lowly .22 LR in that, which produces about 40 ft./lbs. per grain or more. There are other reasons to reload, I guess. A lot of people say that it's to make their shooting cheaper. For me, I can build ammo that is not available from stores, and tailor it to my guns. In this political forum, I think it's important to note that it's one of the freedoms we have that are forgotten, unless we use them.
I know a lot of people that reload, then again these guys are all a part of the competitive shooting community. I reload for economics. A 9mm round sells for about 30 cents retail around here and I can make them for about 13 cents. I shoot about 12,000 rounds a year.
I've done some hand loading. 1. It's fun. Put on a movie to watch while I'm loading or load with friends and it can be a way to pass the time. 2. It was somewhat less expensive. Before the shortage when reloading supplies became rare it was a good way to shoot more for less money. 3. Quality control: I use 30-06 which is fun, but can have pretty heavy recoil. I could scale back the powder charge so I could get more rounds out of a pound of powder and reducing recoil which was helpful if I wanted to teach others how to shoot. Also with experimenting and testing you can learn what loads work best for any given gun. You can get better results out of experimentation than any factory load.
It would be very easy to have a trusty old .30-'06 as your only rifle. There are volumes of loads for it, using gas checked cast bullets with reduced charges of faster powder that equal the power of practically any "lesser" cartridge. Part of the fun for me with a bolt action .223 was to make my own .22 Mag. equivalent, using "about" 9 gr. of Blue Dot and bullets from gun shows that were made from used .22 LR casings. Cost was less than factory .22 Mag. Velocity was around 2,200 fps from a 26" barrel, and accuracy was "minute of varmint" out to just over 200 yards. I've always used single stage presses. That keeps me mindful enough of the work involved to keep from wasting ammo. We're in a kind of "golden age" of metallic cartridges. The technology has come about as far as it can, and it's all there for the reloader to use.
I reload for two reasons: 1. Cheaper. I am loading .45ACP for about $.17 a round, instead of $.43 a round from Wal-Mart. 2. I can load tailor made ammunition. I am in the process loading .300Winmag (tailored to *my* rifle) for long range shooting. There is a 24" steel target at 1,200yds, my goal is to hit that consistently and repeatably. I am using match grade Wilson Reloading dies (the bullet seater was milled to my rifle). The quality of the Wilson products are simply stupendous. Ordered the wrong neck sizer bushings. <_<
Ultra long range has always just plain stumped me. Looking at your goal of hitting a 24" gong @ 1,200 yards seems like a pretty simple idea. That's "only" 2 MOA, after all. But the bullet is in flight for just about 3 seconds at that distance. Because of the trajectory, a difference of 60 fps in velocity will mean that one shot hits while the next falls short. I don't have the patience or the discipline to jump through every one of the hoops that it takes to do that, every single shot! Here are a couple of resources that you may not have found yet: http://www.accuratereloading.com/index.html http://www.reloadersnest.com/ It's so compelling to consider that with some of the new VLD bullets at .300 WM velocities, you can stay super sonic to well beyond a mile. Did you build the rifle, or is it one of the factory models? I read a test of the new ArmaLite AR30A1 http://www.armalite.com/Categories8.aspx?Category=61ba8397-6e04-41d7-a96e-53e57c07e43f, where the guy was shooting in a competition that was sponsored by Sako. That was done at 1,200 yards. He mentioned that the "standard" rifle there was the Sako TRG http://www.sako.fi/sakotrg.php which Sako promotes to be accurate to zero MOA. Just imagine... Also, I was recently reading about the premier sniper rifle being made for Russian military. The specs all looked very impressive, but it's chambered in .308. There's nothing you can do with .308 that will keep it super sonic to more than around 1,000 yards, so why bother?
This might be stupid, but I want to see someone neck down a .50 BMG to accept .30 bullets. A 240gr bullet could easily exceed mach 3. But as for 30-06 I really like it. .308 is pretty close, a little more compact, and cheaper. Still the old 06 just feels good to me.
Everything has been tried! On one of the gun forums, I saw where someone had necked a 50 BMG to .17 cal., using a 25 gr. bullet. No data was available for that. This load: http://www.reloadersnest.com/detail.asp?CaliberID=100&LoadID=1147 -comes very close to "absolute". P.O. Ackley set out to determine how fast a rifled bore could drive a bullet, and developed the "Eargeschplittenloudenboomer" for his tests. That one used a .378 Weatherby case, necked to .22 cal. and fired a 50 gr. bullet to almost 5,300 fps. The one that takes the cake is the "Paris gun", deployed by the Kaiser in 1917. This was the first time mankind developed anything that was intended to fire into the stratosphere and come back down on an intended target. The projectiles had to be numbered in order of firing, because each one was slightly larger, to compensate for barrel wear. Those guys at Krupp were the ballistic engineers to end all ballistic research!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun You see they claim a MV of 5,400 fps, but that was from a barrel of 69 feet in length. The other velocity king was the main gun on the biggest Tiger tank. I'm not sure if it was 88 or 90 mm. The same gun was developed at first for anti-aircraft. The barrel tapered slightly on the inside, and velocity was said to be 6,000 fps. American armor was basically defenseless against it.
Yeah I remember hearing about the Eargeschplittenloudenboomer. If nothing else I easily remember the name. I've been toying around with some shotgun loads lately. I cut up a pork rib (just bone no meat) and loaded it in a 12 gauge. It penetrated about an inch of cardboard and came out unharmed. I've also got a friend who has a mold to cast lead slugs. I'm trying to talk him into casting some glass slugs for me to try out.
Agreed. I can't tolerate visual distraction while I'm charging powder and seating bullets. With my single stage method, I always charge the case, visually confirm the powder level, and then seat the bullet. Music is fine. During case trimming though (yuck!!) I would prefer the greatest distraction possible from that tedious chore! I prime as a single step, using an RCBS hand tool. I've found that I can listen to music OK with that, but if I try to watch a movie, I don't pay enough attention to proper alignment and seating pressure. I hate wrecking primers, because they come in packs of exactly 100, and my loading runs are always numbered in the 100's. I end up with an odd numbered box of primers anyway, but it irks me when it's due to my error.
Case trimming is a bit tedious. I do it in big batches. I have the RCBS power case trimmer and power prep center, still tedious but quicker. I have one of those bench mounted apc strip thingies for the primers, prime in big batches too. Pistol rounds I do with a progressive press and I'm not nearly so anal about case trimming etc as I am with rifle.
Wise counsel there. I never claimed to be a wise person though. Worst case scenario I get a double charge, but if that happens the case overflows. On the range I've had a couple misfires and one squib but I've been perceptive enough to know when that happens.
My "worst case" was a case separation. I want to believe that with .223/5.56 brass, as long as I don't anneal the necks, that will be the first place I see failure. Not always true. I had one that broke in half upon firing, about 3/8" above the web. The base was pulled out by the extractor, but the front portion of the case remained in the chamber. The action cycled and forced the next round into what remained of that broken case. It all came out when I pulled back on the charging handle, with no damage. Still, it made me think very long and hard. The only solution is to limit each .223/5.56 case to no more than about 5 loadings.
It's a good thing the remaining brass in the chamber doesn't allow the new cartridge to be chambered behind it. Since I use a bolt action I open the bolt slowly so I can retrieve my brass without it flying away. It lets me get a good look at each casing after I fire. When I got my only squib I thought it was a misfire so I kept it pointed down range for about a minute to make sure it wasn't going to be a hang fire then I ejected the round. When I saw there was no bullet I pulled the bolt out and looked through the breech. Sure enough I couldn't see light so I knew it was a squib.
I'm all for people reloading, but I'm too busy to do it myself. I also don't have the right place in my house to do it. I'll just pay extra at the shops or shows.
I am interested in reloading for that reason, and have bought factory reloads to save money, but I don't have the space to keep the equipment. I'm a college student renting, so I'll be a few years before I really bother with this. In the meantime I use ammoseek.com, and would suggest it to anybody.
Depends how you go, there are plenty of small compact single stage presses you can buy. Wilson makes a series of hand dies that you can use by hand, a small hammer, or an arbor press. Only when you get a multistage, like the Dillion 550, do you run into the issue of space.
I've always lived in small apartments, since I left the Navy. It isn't difficult to fit all of your loading gear in a large tool bag; esp. if you don't load larger rifle calibers. I think Wolverine meant to say "Lee" rather than Wilson, as the only hand presses I've ever seen come from Lee and Lyman. The Lee models are more attractive to me, because they take standard 7/8"x14 threaded dies. When I was using the Lee hand press to load 9mm, I would first charge the whole batch with an RCBS Little Dandy powder measure, and then seat and crimp bullets in another separate step. When I moved up to include .223, I mounted an RCBS Partner press to my PC desk, because resizing rifle cases with a hand press is more than this old man wants to mess with. Single stage is slow, but it enabled me to build a reserve that makes me "ammo drought proof".
No, actually Wilson Precision Tools. You can just your brute strength (the bullet seater isn't bad), or a small hammer, or an arbor press. The Lee, RCBS, and Lyman style single stage presses are different in the sense that the cartridge is held by the base. The Wilson products are centered around a chamber type die to hold everything in alignment. I too am in an apartment, and the Wilson tools were attractive because of the portability, and the consistency (at least in theory) on their dies.
Here's my crowded little desk top. To the left of the monitor (I'm left handed), you see the press and powder measure stand. Those just always stay mounted. I was a little concerned about vibration from the loading maybe causing issues with the hard drive, but it's been this way for the last 20,000 rounds or so, with no ill effect. With the powder measure and press arranged thusly, charging, checking powder level and seating bullets is a natural progression that is always done in the same way. You see that there's "stuff" all over the place. It wouldn't all fit in a tool bag now! This isn't really such a "little" desk top. I built it 15 years ago, in a different apartment. That's the G19, leaning on the powder stand, right where it belongs!
I "mine" the local dirt berms and cast, so my 9mm cost per rd is about 7c, but me and the wife shoot 40,000 rds of centerfire handgun per year, and as much more .22lr. I also load .45 and 223.
I mount my reloading tools to plywood bases, and then c clamp those bases to the table top, or whatever. Then I can remove them and store them when done.
Joe Are you measuring your headspace and FL sizing or is this range pick up brass? Not all brass is created equal of course but I get 35 FL sized loads out of 204R in a factory chamber, annealed when needed. That usually lasts me the life of a barrel and I use a primer uniformer for cleaning the pockets. Tends to remove a touch of brass every time. I toss them more for concern over the thinning web than anything else.
