Hello all. I am new to cast boolits and reloading in general. I’ve found this website to be very helpful in learning, so I figured I’ll make a post. I’ve been researching reloading for over 10 years and I recently got all of grandpas old single stage reloading equipment out that hasn’t been used in going on 30 years. Long story short, when he passed away it all got stored and it’s been in the back of my mind ever since , my dad always talks about it and getting it all out and starting but time really flies, but now it’s time. He hasn’t reloaded since he was a kid. It’s pretty cool going through all of this old stuff, brings back memories of it all set up in his garage. I’ve got all the old vintage powder containers and stuff displayed on my shelf. So needless to say, I want to load my first rounds as they would have been loaded back then. I think I am on the right track so I’d like to confirm with the pro’s. I plan to start with 124g 9mm. I loaded some dummy rounds with a boolit sized to .357 ran through the old lube a matic to .357 and I found that it does not fully seat in my aftermarket Glock kkm, XDS or Shield barrels, though from what I’ve read, 1 or 2 thou bigger than jacketed is desired, I ordered a .356 sizer and I’ll experiment more. My plan is as follows:
Make my lead alloy with the vintage scrap and create ingots
Test BHN with the LEE kit, aiming for around 15
Cast boolits with RCBS 124g rn air cool
Dial in sizing to fit my current barrel chambers and lube with the lsstuff BAC red lube
Pick a recipe to start with from my new Lyman cast boolit book to work up from
Clean brass/case lube/resize/decap
Verify case length?
Flare cases enough so the boolit does not resize while seating
Add powder,seat, pull apart to check boolit size again
Shoot, inspect, repeat