omgb
10-20-2011, 03:44 AM
About a decade ago, I purchased a butt load of Korean surplus 06. I got some from Cabelas, some from Sportsman Guide and some from another outfit...oh, I also had a good friend pass away and he left me 400 rounds of LC ball. I shot most of this over the last few years in my M1. Being frugal, I saved all of the brass. Now, with the surplus stuff pretty much off the market, I figured it was time to reload all of this stuff. So, the saga began.
1. Sort all of the berdan junk out of the mix with a flashlight.
2. Decap using a universal decapping die.
3. Tumble in batches of 100 using my Thumbler B and stainless steel media. This took a few days.
4. Ream out all of the crimps using a drill chucked tool from Lyman. This took some time too.
5. Resize all 1200 rounds using an RCBS SB die. Some of this was fired in my M1 before the arsenal rebuild and as a result, was rather generously out of size.
I discovered that the pump bottle spray lube from Hornady is pretty crappy for this use. The aerosol lube was much better. Best of all was just using RCBS lube on an RCBS pad. lots less case drag.
6. All of the cases were trimmed on a Dillon electric case trimmer. Man, this is the cat's meow for large batches. A real PITA to adjust but once set, it goes like a hot knife through warm butter.
Note: I got smart here. I mounted the sizing die in my Lock-N-Load press followed by the case trimmer. I loaded the cases in the case feeder and viola! time saved.
7. Now it was time to chamfer the case mouths. Back to the electric drill again and a new Lyman VLD attachment for the drill. It took a couple of hours but I got them all chamfered.
I'm waiting on 16 lbs of H4895. I just received 1500 of Hornady's little 150 grain FMJBTs. About 700 will go into the 06 cases over that H4895. Another 500 cases will be loaded with something as of yet undecided and a 180 grain .310 lead slug from my LBT mould.
This case prepping was a real PITA. fortunately, I'll only have to do it this time. All in all, the prep time came to about 8 actual hours of work.
1. Sort all of the berdan junk out of the mix with a flashlight.
2. Decap using a universal decapping die.
3. Tumble in batches of 100 using my Thumbler B and stainless steel media. This took a few days.
4. Ream out all of the crimps using a drill chucked tool from Lyman. This took some time too.
5. Resize all 1200 rounds using an RCBS SB die. Some of this was fired in my M1 before the arsenal rebuild and as a result, was rather generously out of size.
I discovered that the pump bottle spray lube from Hornady is pretty crappy for this use. The aerosol lube was much better. Best of all was just using RCBS lube on an RCBS pad. lots less case drag.
6. All of the cases were trimmed on a Dillon electric case trimmer. Man, this is the cat's meow for large batches. A real PITA to adjust but once set, it goes like a hot knife through warm butter.
Note: I got smart here. I mounted the sizing die in my Lock-N-Load press followed by the case trimmer. I loaded the cases in the case feeder and viola! time saved.
7. Now it was time to chamfer the case mouths. Back to the electric drill again and a new Lyman VLD attachment for the drill. It took a couple of hours but I got them all chamfered.
I'm waiting on 16 lbs of H4895. I just received 1500 of Hornady's little 150 grain FMJBTs. About 700 will go into the 06 cases over that H4895. Another 500 cases will be loaded with something as of yet undecided and a 180 grain .310 lead slug from my LBT mould.
This case prepping was a real PITA. fortunately, I'll only have to do it this time. All in all, the prep time came to about 8 actual hours of work.