What did you do in the reloading room today?

#3,255
I sectioned one of those Hybrid 6.8 x 51 Fury cases to see how they locked the steel base on.

The steel section is hard as shit. Cuts like sintered metal. The lock starts to reveal itself as I cut.

Then formed up 100 to 308 & 75 to 6.5 Creedmoor.

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#3,260
Strbrd22 said:
Loaded up some small rifle primer 308 to do some testing with tomorrow.
View attachment 8517363
Click to expand...

Love the big tray!
In a moment of weakness I picked up the big 300 tray from Area 419. It huge and very nice but, if I did it again, I'd get two of these for less total cost as the 200 size would suffice for most of what I load. Easier to store, etc...
 
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#3,261
Finished off 75 rounds of 6 ARC I was loading. Hornady brass, 7-1/2 primer, 27.9gr of 2520 and a 108ELD. They don’t set any land speed records, but shoot damn good out of my APF AR. Now onto Dasher loads next for the bolt gun. 32.5gr of RL15 with a Berger 108BTT.
 
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#3,262
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#3,267
between yesterday and today..

washed/dried 9 buckets of brass
sorted the rest of the brass I have. 7 more buckets ready to wash/dry
10 buckets of 9mm ready to get final sorted (380 out)
processed 10k pieces of 223
played with my headstamp sorting machine some more, and getting closer to getting it running
picking up a Dillon 550 and a bunch of stuff tomorrow morning

all in all a productive weekend so far .. haha
 
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#3,283
Strbrd22 said:
Okay, lets do this! haha So, the FX120 that is uncovered has the autotrickler V1 attached to it. Back in 2018, A419 made the base for it because the OEM one was rather crudely 3D printed - the weight of the A419 base was a welcome upgrade.

Regarding your loaded question, currently, I only run H4350 in my ST because of the amount of H4350 I go through (260 rem, 6.5 man bun). For all other powder / calibers, I manually throw a charge with my Redding thrower and use my autotrickler. I may use the ST more in the future but it is a semi-recent acquisition (3 months or so). I like keeping it full of H4350 because I go through a lot of .264 rounds especially in the summer months.

I am right handed. Workflow after trimming / priming for my 338 is as follows assuming it isnt my first cartridge: Use the Redding thrower to give me a charge, place it on the scale (I purposefully adjust the initial throw so the charge is still trickling up rather quickly while I seat the bullet). Next, I take the charged brass and seat the bullet using the arbor press. By the time I am done putting the loaded round in the tray, the next charge is trickled up. I place the measured charge in the next piece of brass, throw another charge, and place the cup on the scale.... rinse and repeat. It should be noted that I do not throw all the charges (as one step) and then seat bullets. I hate having measured throws in brass without a hat on it. And, I find that just waiting for a charge is a tremendous waste of time....

For some calibers (5.56, 308, 500 SW, 300 blk, 8mm Mauser, 270 rem), I use the Zero for bullet seating but for precision rounds (338, 260, 6.5), I go inline seating w the arbor press as ive found seating pressure to be way more accurate / apparent / repeatable- the Zero is just ridiculously powerful.

I will include a pic of my setup to hopefully better explain but my workflow goes: Deprime on Zero, Tumble (Extreme Tumbler Rebel) - on a different workbench, Dry in a Frankford Arsenal dryer, Anneal in the AMP, Resize on 419, Mandrel on the 419, Trim on Henderson, Prime (RCBS Auto Primer to the left of that RCBS case prep center...cant see it in the pic), throw charges and seat bullet at same time (using Arbor or 419 depending on caliber).

It should also be noted that with my setup, I tried to separate the steps 'geographically' because I load with my buddy sometimes - case prep on the left bench, loading on the right bench. I also never load start to finish - I have about 15 of those sealable clear cereal containers you get from HomeGoods and just leave myself notes in them with where I left off / the next step. It has worked out really well so far.

All of that said, I am constantly reinventing my space for economy of motion. My advice would be get some T tracks from Rockler because having options to move equipment around is a game changer and your bench won't be swiss cheese by the time you figure out your flow.

Strbrd22 said:
Trimmed, primed, and loaded some 300 gr Berger hybrids View attachment 8513153
Click to expand...
What table top is this? Looking for a more sturdy option.
Click to expand...
 
#3,286
Yesterday I spent the afternoon drilling out a 6-48 scope base screw that broke off in the receiver of one of my rifles. 🙄

It snapped off flush.

I said I wasn't going to mess with it and just leave it with a gunsmith to handle... But, as usual, I couldn't leave well enough alone.

Started with a minor hiccup but I recovered and got it drilled out with damaging the threads in the receiver.

Actually pretty proud of myself. But not enough to ever want to do it again.

Mike
 
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#3,287
OkieMike said:
Yesterday I spent the afternoon drilling out a 6-48 scope base screw that broke off in the receiver of one of my rifles. 🙄

It snapped off flush.

I said I wasn't going to mess with it and just leave it with a gunsmith to handle... But, as usual, I couldn't leave well enough alone.

Started with a minor hiccup but I recovered and got it drilled out with damaging the threads in the receiver.

Actually pretty proud of myself. But not enough to ever want to do it again.

Mike
Click to expand...
Nice congratulations on your personal victory.

Did same and brought the ring half to a shop that does micro welding.

They welded a dick to the flush piece of screw and than backed it out.

$10 and no pride of self reliance that you earned.
 
#3,288
pmclaine said:
Nice congratulations on your personal victory.

Did same and brought the ring half to a shop that does micro welding.

They welded a dick to the flush piece of screw and than backed it out.

$10 and no pride of self reliance that you earned.
Click to expand...
I really should have taken it to someone. But I'm off work for the weekend and I figured there wasn't a gunsmith shop open. So I dove in.

I puddled some penetrating oil on it and let that soak in for 30 minutes or so... Not sure it helped but I didn't figure it would hurt.

I pilfered around in all my tools and found a drill bit set I had bought a few years ago... Little tiny carbide drills that are used on printed circuit boards.

Used those to get a hole roughly in the center. Then a carbide burr bit to make that a bit bigger. Then just progressively bigger drills till it grabbed hold and spun out the bottom.

I was as nervous as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs the whole time.

But it's done.

Mike
 
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#3,292
Put together a nice 30-40 Krag load. Hornady 180gr Round Nose, with H4350, Hornady brass, Fed 210M primer. Groups tightened up nicely at 2100fps. This old rifle is fun to take to the range. Nowadays many people don't even know what it is. :)
 
#3,293
Turned around some brass from the AR I had set up a few years ago for MR-ART. I haven't used the 550 as an actual 'progressive' ie using the powder thrower, etc. in... forever. This wasn't quite that - still using the two-toolhead approach, but with a powder measure rather than the AT4. Dusted off the APM, set it up for ~25.5 gn H335, dug out an old box of ~52gn BTHPs, and got everything dialed in and knocked out a box (95) for the next range trip.

I've got a dedicated tool head with a simple Redding 2 die set that I've been meaning to get set up for 'bulk' .223 Rem - I've got a metric a$$-load of components that I bought back when Obama got elected the first time that I've been meaning to load up for a rainy day...
 
#3,296
VSP968 said:
Finally decided to start wet tumbling brass with pins and Lemishine after resting forever.

Once fired and annealed/deprimed Lake City Long Range brass before and after :

View attachment 8579802

View attachment 8579805

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View attachment 8579808

Gonna do a bunch of 1994 M852 Lake City Match tomorrow.
Click to expand...

Wet-tumbling makes brass look brand-new for sure... it also destroys your low SDs. Use moderation, how clean and shiny it is matters about as much as how it tastes.
 
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