Thanks for all of the replies/( and votes if ya voted!)
Very interesting & informative for the most part!
I was trying to be brief in my OP, so as not to carry on too much & try to keep things simple. Some folks like it that way & others seem to prefer more detail. The short version of this post ends here, the more detailed is below the dotted line & you can choose to continue reading or just skip on.
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As I said, I do most of my culling/sorting after casting & before I store or lube. I do not usually do it "when" casting , as I am wearing thick leather gloves & it slows my "cadence" if I try to separate as I go. Sure, if I have the chance I will cull them out if they are on the edge of the pile when air cooling, but I am not going to dig thru a pile of boolits wearing gloves, or if water dropped, go thru them when wet. Of course I would dump the first castings as the mold heated up to where I want it, but I do not even consider those clumps of metal with crappy bases to even be worth keeping/mentioning, let alone call them boolits. I consider them no different than the cut off sprues. Any bad bases or wrinkles, etc., after the rhythm or cadence is going, go into the pile of boolits I have cast & I sort afterwards before I store or move to the next step.
Any that get missed before storage if that is where they are going, are found before lubing & sizing, (as well as seating if they somehow get damaged if I am tumble lubing), as they may have been missed or damaged when storing, but overall, most of the inspection is before they get stored since it is one step that I spend the time on so I do not have to do a lot of inspection & culling during other steps in making cartridges. Just the occasional one that was missed or damaged.
I haven't seen any reason to waste time/materials lubing defects before sizing, and since I use single stage presses or a turret one load at a time, in batches of a specific number, I do not have to worry about large lots of boolits being loaded that by chance have a defect of some sort. I load in small lots of 25-50 for testing, 50-100 at a time for plinking/target shooting for fun. I am not a "competition shooter" so other than testing loads, I do not have the need for getting too "picky" about the cast boolits I am using for plinking once I have sorted them earlier. The ones for testing/accuracy & such, are inspected more closely of course. [ < Not sure if I am explaining this well enough... ]
Of course, the boolits get inspected "as I go", but the main inspection is as I said, at one dedicated time before storing or lubing a small batch to be loaded & shot so I am not doing what I consider wasting time with the other steps & end up with a lot amount of a specified number & not have to go back & make up for any I missed inspecting before. By the time they are seated, if they( or the rest of the components) are not damaged for some usually rare reason in the cartridge loading process, they are going to get shot & I know that they are not going to be a reason for blame when I get a flyer. I can blame myself for that usually, no need to blame the boolit/bullet if I know they are loaded "up to my expectations"from the time they leave the press/bench to the time I shoot them.
Long ramble, but I was trying to be more specific, since some folks may need such detail. I left some out since I already made this a longer post than I expected to do.
BTW... For those who might be interested... The poll was an effort made to try to share info in a simple form. Not perfect, but at least an attempt to share information. I am not a professional at polls, so ya get an amatuer attempt at making one, but some folks like them none the less. It was done only to try to help folks out, not as an official and "end all" of info.
I might add that I can accept criticism for trying out using a poll, and fall short of others expectations, but a little "constructive criticism" goes a lot further than just criticism that comes across as a complaint. If ya have a better example of how to do it, please hold forth & explain just how it is done. I would love to learn more if ya have the time to instruct on just how to make a "Good" poll with all the right choices.
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Thanks again for the replies/votes!