Bullet Pulling, Impact vs Collet

[omgb]

Well, an old gentleman died and left his widow with a ton of reloading components to divest. I purchased a lot of it, 30K primers and loads of 32-20 brass. In the mix were three boxes of his 45-70 reloads. Following the old adage about not shooting unknown reloads, especially in my trapdoor carbine, I elected to pull them all. First I used an RCBS impact puller. Slow, messy and a real PITA. Since the bullets were all JBs, I got out my trusty RCBS collet pullet and had at it. A fraction of the effort, no mess and a huge savings in time and energy. Plus.......it was quiet! Now to pull down 10K rounds of surplus 7.62X54R ammo. We can't use the steel core bullets at any of the ranges here in SoCal so I'm gonna pull them. I'll save the powder and replace the slugs with cast bullets. Waste not, want not!

[littlejack]

That is gonna be a LOT of bullet pullin.

[Old School Big Bore]

With the collets, once you get a good routine worked out, it ain't too bad.
The pain is when you have a load that doesn't have enough boolit exposed for the collet to grab. When that happens, I have a hybrid routine where I crack them all in the inertia puller, one or two whacks to get a little boolit hangin' out, and then finish them with the collet.

[Leslie Sapp]

Check the diameter of those 7.62 x54R bullets. I need a few .312 j-words to load 7.7 Japanese with. I might take a few off your hands if you'll part with them.

[petroid]

The sealant on the surplus ammo makes it a real pain to pull the bullets. Try this. Set up a bullet seater die so that when you put in a loaded cartridge it pushes the bullet in just a few thou farther. This breaks the sealant and makes pulling the bullets a lot easier. I did a couple hundred this way with an impact puller. An added step but it saved a lot of time and effort in the long run

[petroid]

Check the diameter of those 7.62 x54R bullets. I need a few .312 j-words to load 7.7 Japanese with. I might take a few off your hands if you'll part with them.

All the surplus should be .311 unless its for a Finn and it will be .308. May work fine in your 7.7. Hornady makes a .312 174gr RNSP and a .312 150gr FB Spitzer. And check Grafs. They have an exclusive .312 150gr SST. I thought when I bought them they would be boat tails but they are flat base. Haven't got a chance to shoot any yet.