What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today? (Read 49553 times)

Inspector

What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« on: March 28, 2021, 01:05:43 PM »
Thought it might be interesting to keep a single thread with our reloading adventures instead of starting a new one every time we want to write something. If it keeps going fine. If it dies, it dies.

I have two areas where I work on my guns, cases and reloading. I keep all of my case prep stuff out in my garage for dust reasons. I also clean my guns and cast lead boolits out in the garage for fume reasons. I do all my resizing, reloading and most of my gun repairs in my reloading room. I have two presses. I have a Lee 4 hole turret press and an RCBS Rockchucker single stage. I reload most of my pistol cartridges on the Lee and all my rifle cartridges on my Rockchucker. I reload for 8 different pistol cartridges and 10 different rifle cartridges. Most cartridges I reload for are common calibers but a few are specialty and obsolete cartridges. I also swage primer pockets and boolits on my Rockchucker. When it is warm outside I can work in the garage or the house. But when it is too cold out I leave all my case prep projects outside until it gets warm.

Today I sat down and cleaned primer pockets on 300 rounds of 9mm and 100 rounds of 7.62x25 Tokarev. I had previously sized and cleaned the cases and trimmed them if necessary. But we got a cold snap for 2-3 weeks so I left them in the garage until it warmed up today. I cleaned some dies that I had not touched for several years and were filthy. I emptied my ultrasonic cleaner of the dirty cleaning solution. That had been sitting since it got cold.

My brother and his family came and visited me a couple of months ago. He brought me a one pound coffee can of my father’s 9mm mystery reloads. My father taught me how to reload but he was not one to keep copious records and be detailed and careful when reloading. The can is full to the brim. And there was a slip of paper that said “125gr” that’s it. No date, no powder, no charge info. I suspect these were reloaded sometime in the mid 1980’s. Knowing my father he used Sierra 125gr 9mm FMJ seconds he bought from the Sierra factory when it was still located in SoCal 25 miles from his house. Also I know all he ever bought were CCI small pistol primers. As far as powder is concerned the weights varied greatly from 5.2gr-6.5gr. I took apart 16 rounds to study them. First, the COL was waaaaay too long. About 0.15” too long according to my Sierra manual. And while it was tough, I could not tell if there was a crimp. Fifteen out of 16 fit my gauge. And a couple of rounds the primer was not inserted all the way in. After taking them apart I noticed the powder was round flakes and medium gray in color but there was about 10% were dark gray to black flakes. Knowing my father he used mostly Herco and Bullseye powders. I have the new formulated Bullseye and it didn’t look like it at all. And I don’t remember what Herco looks like. I used Unique back then and it is possible he may have used some of my Unique. But it didn’t look like it at all. I decided to disassemble all of them, resize the cases with the primer in place, reset the primer farther into the case where applicable and reload them using 3.9gr of Bullseye. I already did this to 100 rounds for a proof of concept and they worked fine for practice ammo. Though they were were not terribly accurate at 10 yards. I started on the first 50 today. Disassembled them, resized them, set the primers back and loaded them up with Bullseye and seated and crimped the bullets. They are running through my dry tumbler right now to shine them up and get rid of the tarnish and dirt. This is going to take quite a while to get through the entire coffee can.
SCIENCE THAT CAN’T BE QUESTIONED IS PROPAGANDA!!!

aletheuo137

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #1 on: March 28, 2021, 01:14:35 PM »
I reloaded 12 gauge #6 shot. Getting ready to finish reloading 9mm 115 grain heads.

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stangzilla

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #2 on: March 28, 2021, 01:39:47 PM »
I reload mostly handgun calibers. 357, 44, 45acp, 9mm, and a little 223 and 308.
I like hodgdon and accurate powders. My favorites are 44mag and 357mag. Either moderate cowboy loads up to H110 heavy loads

Currently I'm sorting out all the crap I've collected and trying to use up the older stuff I have to make room to store the newer stuff. Sometimes I find things I forgot I still have.  :shaka:

aletheuo137

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #3 on: March 28, 2021, 01:46:14 PM »

Currently I'm sorting out all the crap I've collected and trying to use up the older stuff I have to make room to store the newer stuff. Sometimes I find things I forgot I still have.  :shaka:

I have that problem too!

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Inspector

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #4 on: March 28, 2021, 02:36:42 PM »
I reload mostly handgun calibers. 357, 44, 45acp, 9mm, and a little 223 and 308.
I like hodgdon and accurate powders. My favorites are 44mag and 357mag. Either moderate cowboy loads up to H110 heavy loads

Currently I'm sorting out all the crap I've collected and trying to use up the older stuff I have to make room to store the newer stuff. Sometimes I find things I forgot I still have.  :shaka:
I think we all have that problem. For some reason I thought I was low on 9mm cases. So I ordered 1k that I found at a decent price. When I went to put it away in my garage I found 1k each 223, 38 and 357 that I didn’t know I had. Oh, and I found another 2k 9mm cases I didn’t remember having. I would not have ordered that 1k cases if I had remembered the 2k I already had.  :rofl:
SCIENCE THAT CAN’T BE QUESTIONED IS PROPAGANDA!!!

stangzilla

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #5 on: March 28, 2021, 05:12:23 PM »
Better to have more than enough than not enough   :shaka:

Inspector

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #6 on: March 28, 2021, 05:36:30 PM »
I reload mostly handgun calibers. 357, 44, 45acp, 9mm, and a little 223 and 308.
I like hodgdon and accurate powders. My favorites are 44mag and 357mag. Either moderate cowboy loads up to H110 heavy loads

Currently I'm sorting out all the crap I've collected and trying to use up the older stuff I have to make room to store the newer stuff. Sometimes I find things I forgot I still have.  :shaka:
I forgot to ask how you like the Accurate powders? Never tried any. I used mostly DuPont/Hercules powders until they became Alliant for handgun. I still use them but I use Hodgdon powders more now. And I used IMR powders for rifle calibers mostly and now I use Hodgdon more. I still like the old favs from Alliant and IMR but certain Hodgdon powders just seems to fill my needs better.

I have this weird issue that most of my reloading manuals are old. So they only list IMR, Hercules/Dupont and Accurate powders. Before Hodgdon and others became mainstream. Thank goodness for the Internet.
SCIENCE THAT CAN’T BE QUESTIONED IS PROPAGANDA!!!

macsak

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #7 on: March 28, 2021, 07:18:51 PM »
i own no presses nor reloading components...

dogman

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #8 on: March 28, 2021, 07:42:47 PM »
The laundry.

oldfart

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #9 on: March 28, 2021, 11:47:35 PM »
I ran off a hundred rounds of 9mm_135 polymer coated truncated cone bullets.
4.5 grains of cfe pistol. This bullet is a work in progress. The velocity is perfect but accuracy was just ok.
It should be better.
What, Me Worry?

Inspector

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #10 on: March 29, 2021, 03:01:23 AM »
I ran off a hundred rounds of 9mm_135 polymer coated truncated cone bullets.
4.5 grains of cfe pistol. This bullet is a work in progress. The velocity is perfect but accuracy was just ok.
It should be better.
It’s operator not the bullet’s fault!  :rofl:
SCIENCE THAT CAN’T BE QUESTIONED IS PROPAGANDA!!!

oldfart

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #11 on: March 29, 2021, 03:17:50 AM »
It’s operator not the bullet’s fault!  :rofl:
==========
I won't argue with that.
It's hard to shoot straight when you live in paradise and distracted by palm trees, mai tais and skanky hoes.

You're so lucky to live in Arizona where all you got there is steers and queers.
What, Me Worry?

Inspector

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #12 on: March 29, 2021, 03:44:40 AM »
==========
I won't argue with that.
It's hard to shoot straight when you live in paradise and distracted by palm trees, mai tais and skanky hoes.

You're so lucky to live in Arizona where all you got there is steers and queers.
I love you, too OF!!!  :love: :love: :love:
SCIENCE THAT CAN’T BE QUESTIONED IS PROPAGANDA!!!

Inspector

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #13 on: March 29, 2021, 06:01:40 AM »
I got up a little early this morning to start work on a new for me cartridge which is obsolete and hard to find ammo for. I bought an Italian Carcano last year and it has taken all this time to find dies and components to reload for it. You would think the 6.5x52mm cartridge would be easy to find components for but it is not. The brass was pretty easy to find but the dies and bullets were not. Even though they are stated as 6.5mm or .264 they are actually designated as .268 in the reloading manuals. And so I found that only PPU makes bullets that are currently available for this cartridge along with the brass. When I ordered the bullets from Midway, they were very far behind in shipping. So I waited about 3 weeks for them to be shipped. Then after a week going thru USPS they stopped and a hold was placed on the package. After getting Midway involved it turned out the package broke open and the USPS worker saw bullets being shipped and immediately reported it as contents not allowed to be shipped via USPS. The Midway rep cleared it up and I finally got my bullets a month and a half after ordering them. The dies were even tougher to find since they have dried up and pretty much no one makes dies for them any more. Not even Lee. But I found a set after three days of searching through Google I found some small online store that had a brand new set of Hornady dies. Paid through the nose for them but I have them.

I had received the brass several months ago and I lubed, sized and then put them through my ultrasonic cleaner and laid them out to dry. I then placed them in my airtight container with desiccant in it. When I opened it up this morning, there was a lot of moisture in the container. Apparently they were not completely dry when I put them away. So I put them back out to dry in my garage. I will prime them and start reloading them this afternoon. I will use two loads. I will use a full power load of 28.0gr of H4895 for a 139gr bullet for about 2,100 fps. And I will also load a light load using the same bullet over 18-20gr of H4895 for about 1,600fps. I may even load up some using Trail Boss.
SCIENCE THAT CAN’T BE QUESTIONED IS PROPAGANDA!!!

oldfart

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #14 on: March 29, 2021, 06:50:26 AM »
Is the carcano a 91 with a 4x scope?
What, Me Worry?

Inspector

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #15 on: March 29, 2021, 06:58:36 AM »
Is the carcano a 91 with a 4x scope?
Nope. It’s the later carbine model with stock military irons that suck.
SCIENCE THAT CAN’T BE QUESTIONED IS PROPAGANDA!!!

oldfart

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #16 on: March 29, 2021, 07:14:07 AM »
Nope. It’s the later carbine model with stock military irons that suck.
.....
Wait a minute....are you saying your shooting sucks because of the iron sights?
What, Me Worry?

Inspector

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #17 on: March 29, 2021, 07:17:06 AM »
.....
Wait a minute....are you saying your shooting sucks because of the iron sights?
Nope. I’m saying my shooting suck s cuz my vision is bad.  :rofl:
SCIENCE THAT CAN’T BE QUESTIONED IS PROPAGANDA!!!

Inspector

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #18 on: March 29, 2021, 07:17:56 AM »
.....
Wait a minute....are you saying your shooting sucks because of the iron sights?
While I have not shot this rifle yet it is not known for its accuracy. And I’m not know for my accuracy either!  :rofl:
SCIENCE THAT CAN’T BE QUESTIONED IS PROPAGANDA!!!

oldfart

Re: What Did You Do in Your Reloading Room Today?
« Reply #19 on: March 29, 2021, 08:01:54 AM »
While I have not shot this rifle yet it is not known for its accuracy. And I’m not know for my accuracy either!  :rofl:
...
Oh ok...I get it.
So far you have blamed the:
1. Iron sights
2. The rifle itself
3. Your old eyeballs

And you haven't even shot the thing yet.

While you're at it, let's blame:
The sun
The wind
The primer
Brass
Bullet
Powder
primer
The water
Ànd the taco you ate for dinner.

What, Me Worry?