What did you do in the reloading room today?

[David2011]

Set up a toolhead to load boolits from a Lee 358-158 RF mold. I'm not a fan of the mold but like the boolits from it. The meplat is huge. The seating punch didn't fit so I thought, "No prob; open it up on the lathe." Find a 1/4 tool bit and grind it to reach inside the seating punch. Figure out the angle. Figure out the depth. Opened up as far as I dare the edge of the punch was now sharp and the meplat still didn't contact the flat center of the punch. It was still contacting the ogive. Shortened the rim of the punch until everything fit, polished and smoothed the edges. Tested it on the Dillon 550. No more marks and gouges on the ogive. Good start.

Get out the new RCBS Cowboy dies. Since the Dillon has its own expander that may defeat the purpose of using the Cowboy dies but they sure are purty. They're heat treated to a brown finish with brass lock rings and set screws. Installed and adjusted the sizing die and used the seat/crimp for crimp only. Loaded about 3 dozen rounds with 2.8 grains of Bullseye to try. I've shot lots of wadcutters using 2.3-2.8 grains of BE but this mold is new so I haven't shot any of its boolits yet. I'm still working on a cardboard canister of Bullseye with the plastic plug cap that I bought in about 1982. The price was $9.45. Primers were 69 cents/100. I never dreamed of buying a thousand at a time back then. The primers were consumed as soon as they were bought but the Bullseye still works the same as new.

David

[shoot-n-lead]

Loaded some 22 Hornet...then loaded some more 22 Hornet.

[Budzilla 19]

Sorted, remelted a whole 5 gallon bucket of wheel weights I bought for $35 at a local tire shop! Rough estimate so far is 65 lbs of ww lead after fluxing with sawdust and removing clips! Some more ww with clips are left to go so I may end up with about 90 lbs of ww lead and maybe 15+ lbs of stick on weights !! Not too shabby! Just got some foundry type in a trade, so off to lasc to figure up some recipes!
Update;87 lbs of WW ingots, plus 22 lbs of stickons!! Hmm, what to do with that pure? Lol

[allen16323]

Put more equipment in it and still need to finish the new bench to mount it too. I put a bought second hand but new L-n-L AP press (was bought 2 wekks ago) and put an automatic case feeder that I found on sale, and stacked 4 shell plates on top of it and 2 powder thru expanders. This reloading room is turning into a boat, you know a hole in the water you endlessly toss money into!!!! Think I will paint the sign or the door that will say "SS Lead Pot".

[Jack Stanley]

Finished casting over thirty pounds of 311291 bullets .

Jack

[DrDucati]

Cast a pile of .36 for 1864 police revolver repro

[tazman]

Loaded 350 rounds of 9mm on my Lee Classic cast turret.

[edctexas]

Cast 225 boolits today. 0.359 dia NOE LRN 125gr. Only 5 rejects out of the batch. Finally getting better and this. Mold kept cooling off so I had to take several breaks.

Ed C

[StuBach]

Powder coated a bunch of MP360-93 TCs and HPs to be ready for next reloading need.

[Don Purcell]

dragon, have the same set up for my Star also. Went to Lowe's Home Improvement and bought some plastic tube for plumbing and cut them off to @ 30" and fill them with bullets and have several setting and ready to go. As far as in the shop I slugged the barrel and cylinder throats on my Colt Single Action .44 Special. Barrel is .428 and cylinder throats go .433. Have an N.O.E. Keith hollow base ordered in the group buy which should help alleviate the discrepancy between the two.

[trixter]

After checking about 1000, 223 reloaded rounds with my case gauge, I found about 17 that would not go all the way in. I unloaded them with my inertia hammer and then ran the cases through the sizing die and only a few would fit in the gauge properly, so the rejects went the junk brass bucket, reloaded the 'ok' ones and then changed the press over to load 45ACP, so I will be ready after the next indoor range session. Then I put away all the loose stuff on the reloading table. I almost didn't recognize it.

[bedbugbilly]

I finally got the inside of the garage here in AZ painted, cleaned and organized so I'm able to do some reloading on a small basis on my old RCBS Jr2 that I have here. I mounted it on a piece of 2 X 6 with L shaped brackets on the underside to hook in to the guide bars on the woodworking vise on the end of my bench. When hooked in and the vise is tightened, it is nice and solid and works great. This past week, a box of 3,400 9mm casings arrived - casings from a Police range that I got from a member on here. I started de-priming them with the goal of getting them all done. It's nice sitting in a chair, de-priming and being able to look across in to the desert, hear all the birds, see the quail and squeakers and just enjoy the nice weather while punching primers. Only problem I have is that the more I de-prime, it seems like those that are left to do multiply! But, it passes the time and they'll be done and ready to load. That quantity will last me a looooong time!

[ravelode]

primary wash citric acid treatment then rinse on a colander full of mixed range brass I found Sunday, it's drying in the basement .
will be turning the Rimfire stuff into jewelry.

[robg]

Primed 50 308 cases ,then expanded them .sized 50.357 cases

[Outer Rondacker]

Helping a friend into reloading(45acp). One who wants to learn the correct way and take his time to understand what is going on. He has joined here. Let him sit down at the single stage and work up 118 rounds. I think he is hooked. For now I will be letting him come reload in my room until we can get him the basics. Sad but he his out of work at the moment do to a medical issue and time is what he has. I see a few looking to buys in my future. LOL

[Reverend Al]

Loaded 100 + rounds of .38-55 WCF for an upcoming range day with friends. They are just starting to get involved in Cowboy Action Shooting and want to try out my Lyman Ideal mini Sharps as a possible rifle for his wife to shoot in the long range rifle matches. (100 to 200 yards at our local CAS matches) Winchester cases and Winchester primers with 255 grain plain based bullets over 20.00 grains of IMR4198 and some Lyman #37583 145 grain "gallery" bullets over 5.0 grains of Unique to get her started with some "no recoil" practice loads. (Got those bullets from an old friend who cast them for me in his old Ideal mould and I sure wish I could find a copy of that mould for myself!)

[sparky45]

I like that case loading block!

What do you use to bore the blind holes? I was thinking of modifying some Forster bits for the right diameter and a flat bottom.

I used a machinist bit, 31/64" and it worked very well.

[sundog]

Over the last few weeks I've been casting a few runs from an older (cardboard box era) 2-cavity RCBS 38-162-SWC GC. Boy, howdy! What a nice mould! They seem to shoot as well, or maybe a little better near full house than Ly 35-156-SWC (one of my favorites in .357 mag pistola) in several lever carbines we've been playing with. And since the RCBS has 2 very nice loob grooves opposed the the Ly with only one, I'm tending to like the RCBS a little 'mo betta' in the carbines. Evenings (while idiot box is blaring) I've been running them through a Ly 450 and .360 die and Hornady checks. Powders have included 4227 and surplus '4759' (M1 carbine pull down), H108 and a few others. Gonna load and shoot some more real soon -- this weekend maybe. I think some N105 and N110 might be in order for testing. Kinda nice having a range behind the house.

Added: Loob is FWFL, brass is Starline, primers are whatever we have on hand - I think we've been using CCI SP lately. Alloy is straight COWW AC'd.

[Jal5]

Tested out a brand new Lee mold 358125 RF and ran it simultaneously with my old mold. Not terribly impressed with the boolits from the new one too rounded. But both molds rained boolits. That new one may need a couple of casting cycles to break it in.

[tazman]

Got in a lyman 358311 I purchased off eBay today. I heated up the Lee 4-20, got the mold up to heat, and had at it.
Things went really well. In about 90 minutes I had just over 500 boolits on the table. The mold was a 2 cavity and dropped easily and cleanly.
With my alloy the boolits were coming out at 165 grains and .3575-.358 diameter. Since I tumble lube, I don't even need to run them through sizer.
Tomorrow after they have dried I will load some and go to the range.