Pulling cast boolits

[Von Dingo]

HELP.

I have an inertia puller, but there are a lot of heavily crimped rounds to pull.
I've noticed some not so nice erosion starting and don't want to unload all those rounds the fun way.

The slugs are SWC pistol rounds.

[Houndog]

I use a pair of wire side cutters and an adapter sleeve for a tractor hitch pin that barely slides over the press ram. It ruins the boolet as far as reuse without remelting, but the rest of the components are fine.

[Wally]

Resize the case necks. I pulled hundreds of off shaped bullets with heavy crimps with no problem after I resized the case necks. I then placed in my press and used a pliers... This will not work for deep seated WC type bullets--nothing to grab on.. on those you must drill a small hole and use a sheet metal screw.

[trapper9260]

I use a kenetick bullet puller that you put the round in what looks like a hammer and it si made of plactic and hit it on a 2x4 end and the whole thing will come apart when you rap it on the 2x4 a few times depending on how much it is crimp or not. I have my for years and still dose the job and you save every thing . and be re use.

[Shiloh]

I pulled about 1200 pc. of 9mm several winters ago. Used a Hornady collet puller.

The commercial lead bullets went into the pot as they were destroyed. I resized the primed cases with the primer punch removed to save the primers, and loaded with 115 gr FMJ's

Shiloh

[Von Dingo]

Thank's all. Some good ideas in there. The crimp is heavy, and the hammer/inertia puller gets old after five or ten rounds. Re-melting the slugs won't be a problem I mind.

[williamwaco]

Resize the case necks. I pulled hundreds of off shaped bullets with heavy crimps with no problem after I resized the case necks. I then placed in my press and used a pliers... This will not work for deep seated WC type bullets--nothing to grab on.. on those you must drill a small hole and use a sheet metal screw.



This method works well for me. I don't think it would be a good idea to reuse a pulled cast bullet anyway. Especially if it was pulled through a heavy crimp.

[1Shirt]

Have used both inertia and collet pullers. For just one or two ctgs, the inertia works fine. Howeve, for a large number much prefer the RCBS collet puller that I have. Note however that collets get rather expensive if you are pulling multi cals.
1Shirt!:coffeecom

[Wally]

This method works well for me. I don't think it would be a good idea to reuse a pulled cast bullet anyway. Especially if it was pulled through a heavy crimp.

Correct---I remelt/recast them.

I had a lot of leading in my Ruger SS .357 Mag Blackhawk...I went with a Lyman 358156 SWC-GC bullet mold & boughta Freechex GC maker--- as I had quite a few .357 Mag's loaded with a regular 158 SWC cast bullet--I proceeded to pull them all and reload with the SWC-GC bullets. I reused the pulled bullets to cast the SWC-GC bullets with.

[454PB]

i use bullnose nippers. You can run the loaded round up to the point where the front of the boolit protrudes above the press, then grab it with the bullnose nippers and lower the ram. On some of the shorter cases, I have to use a shell holder extension.

When done properly, the boolits can even be reused if desired, but they will have marks on the nose from the nippers.

[Von Dingo]

I've heard it said the collet type pullers don't work on lead, am I to understand that is not the case?

[mold maker]

You may have limited success with collet pullers. The problem is lead is soft and with that shape boolit you have very little to grasp. With a heavy crimp, you'll most likely just pinch off lead.
It's a PIA to inertia pull them all, but it's the surest way. That's why we all have one. There are shell holding features, that make one kind more convenient, than others.
The alternative is to shoot them, and recover the lead.

[GaryN]

If you have a heavy crimp it is hard to pull them with the collet type puller. It depends on the alloy. The softer ones just deform and you can't get enough of a grip to pull them out. I even had trouble pulling out linotype bullets with a heavy crimp. I ended up shooting them into a bucket of sand with a target on it to reclaim the linotype. If your bullets are real hard and you have a lighter crimp you might get it to work.

[1Shirt]

Collets will work on cast rifle blts, however from experiance, the harder Bhn of the cast and the longer the nose, the higher the probability of sucess. Have used them with 22 thru 45-70. Don't work so well on short from the mouth round nose blts however.
1Shirt!:coffeecom