Did some much needed organizing and cleaning. Now I'm ready to finish some 38 special reloads.
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Did some much needed organizing and cleaning. Now I'm ready to finish some 38 special reloads.
Took out the extractor of my 9mm CZ and tried to fix it. Tomorrow I'll try it out, hopefully it will work. If it won't, I'll have to order a new one.
I bought a 6-cavity Lee 358-125-rf to use as a combo 9mm/38 bullet. I am new to reloading 9mm; I have drug my feet on that caliber but am wanting to shoot my 9mms more.
Anyway, it showed up today. I cleaned it, put a new set of Lee handles on it, and heat-cycled it on the kitchen stove, several times, then warmed up a pot of wheelweights. I started with a Lyman pot full and stopped when it was too low to dip out of; I refilled it with different alloy, cast some .45 bullets, then when it was nearly empty I filled it back up with wheelweights and a couple of isotope core ingots, and made more 9mm bullets.
I am flat-out impressed with the new Lee mold. I made a whole lot of bullets with it in a short amount of time and they turned out very pretty with few rejects. They dropped between .359 and .360 and weight around 132-133 grains.
Cast some 429244s and cleaned part of lead haul from the scrap yard.
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Several hundred rounds of 38 Special HBWCs. Fodder for this coming spring's shooting activities.
Loaded some 300 Savage try loads. Loaded my first 38-40 rounds today. :bigsmyl2: Figured out where I hid the brass from myself, sized & cleaned 20 pieces, lubed 20 boolits and eventually had 19 rounds loaded. (long story ;-) ) Didn't have the correct shell holder for my Lee Auto Prime but got it done anyway. Not a very productive day but very entertaining.
Made some gallery loads & shotshell loads for my 45 lc
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.450 round ball over 3 grains of unique.
OK results at about 10 feet
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I forgot to take photos of the shot loads.
But I got good results with 9 grains of unique. Card board wad fill to brim with reclaimed shot and second cardboard wand crammed in and crimped I. Place.
Nice shot pattern at about 10 feet deffently kill a coke can or other things.
95 lbs. of scrap COWW lead and plain became 50/50 + tin to 1.4% as a stack of 12 lb. ingots for storage. Then I did the fun stuff broke in my new NOE 225 - 70 gr. mold by cranking out a little over 1,100 of the little buggers. Just filled a small bread loaf pan.
That NOE mold cast real nice, hot they came out easy and looked pretty good. Had to run the lead at 700* or a little over to keep the mold temperature up. Wishing now that I had purchased one with more than 3 cavities. Same number of cast would have been 1,800 if I was using a 5 cavity. On the other hand that 3 cavity mold was pretty easy to handle as far as weight goes.
Cast about 600 .38/.357 158 gr RNFP, recrowned a barrel and taught a friend how to use a Dillon 550. The boolits all came out really shiny.
David
finished off the hopper full of bullseye, planning on casting a bunch of 380acp and coating in green so I have some test rounds for zip powder.
I finished up a batch of 45 ACP after sizing/decapping/PP swaging most of them before they went over the progressive. Somewhere near 700 rds total with CCI SP primers, 200 gr Lee SWCs and FREE powder. Loaded with some old Hi-Skor(pre 700X) at 4.7 grs. Powder came from a buddy who bought one of the old tin 8 lb size just for the can, 2# 12 oz of free is pretty hard to beat.
Now to swap over to the 223 dies & shell plate and go after a bunch of 223/5.56 cases that have been sitting for a few days.
Just got in one of the RCBS trimmer attachments that trims to length and does in/out chamfers in one step.
Well since you asked.... :D
Attachment 162187
Small bread loaf pan - 1,100+ cast with NOE 225-70 using home mixed Lyman #2 alloy at 700* +/- 10* bottom two have copper gas checks installed using a Lee push through sizer. Destined for powder coating post gas check & sizing.
Motorized my powder tricker, using stuff I had in my junk pile entirely, except for the 3v lithium battery and the holder for it. Has a USB charge port too!
Made up a piece of .38 SUPER brass from .223 brass and tested it with a powder coated Lee 358-105-SWC bullet. It would not chamber, so used the FCD to reduce the diameter of the round a bit until it would eventually chamber. It made for a strange looking round since the base was still the diameter of the .223 and the part where the bullet was loaded was noticeably wider. I had loaded it with a 9x19 Red Dot load. After firing it, the case was fire formed and looked more normal.