What did you do in the reloading room recently?

meh said:
I typically just use the flat seating stems with my Hornady dies for the bullets I load, but I decided to make some custom-molded seating stems out of the ones meant for round-nose bullets and such for 44 magnum Hornady XTP bullets, 44 magnum Hornady JTC-SIL bullets (long discontinued--a truncated-cone soft-point, of which I have 500 to load), and the 300 grain TCFP bullets I load in 45C. Might help give more consistent seating depth with the XTPs and line up the TC bullets better than the flat stem. Dunno. These roll freely on the desktop, so I think they're centered well enough. The bullets were lightly greased. Hopefully they will release. Fingers crossed on that!

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The 45C stem released beautifully. The jacketed 44s stuck harder and ended up taking the ogive contact area with them. Probably still useful.
 
To clean, I wet tumble with stainless pins. To get the pins out I was using a plastic POS media separator and was a pain to manually rotate the thing because of how flimsy it was. So, I rigged up an old Weber rotisserie motor with a stainless steel rotisserie basket I just bought on Amazon. The basket sits in the water a few inches and the pins fall out. I let it turn for awhile to make sure and then pick them out with the magnet. Works perfect!
 

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doxdsgn said:
Wish had your experience. Also had the plastic bracket holding the guide rod break. Bought a printed one from someone here on NES. Once fixed, still could not get it to prime reliably. Was so frustrated gave up trying and switched to using an RCBS bench primer. Can prime 350-400 cases/hr off press. Know the cases are ready to be processed the way the LNL was designed to work for the rest of the steps.

Typically only load the higher volume calibers (.223, 9mm, .45 acp) on LNL, otherwise just use a single stage.
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I will note that last weekend, the plastic piece broke. I'm blaming this thread. I just placed the other one and kept going (and printed another in reserve)
 
55 gr FMJBT
Midwest 418 (similar to H335) $23.75 vs $36.12 per lb.
CCI SRP
Col. 2.20
16" SA Saint 1/8 Upper

5 rds ea.

23 Gr. 2750 - 2781 Avg. 2777
23.5 Gr. 2759 - 2862 Avg. 2837
24 Gr. 2808 - 2875 Avg. 2842
24.5 Gr. 2895 - 2937 Avg. 2911
25 Gr. 2948 - 3002 Avg. 2977

No pressure or bolt signs at all but a tad dirtier than H335. I plan on loading test rounds for accuracy in the near future and will post results.
 
meh said:
I typically just use the flat seating stems with my Hornady dies for the bullets I load, but I decided to make some custom-molded seating stems out of the ones meant for round-nose bullets and such for 44 magnum Hornady XTP bullets, 44 magnum Hornady JTC-SIL bullets (long discontinued--a truncated-cone soft-point, of which I have 500 to load), and the 300 grain TCFP bullets I load in 45C. Might help give more consistent seating depth with the XTPs and line up the TC bullets better than the flat stem. Dunno. These roll freely on the desktop, so I think they're centered well enough. The bullets were lightly greased. Hopefully they will release. Fingers crossed on that!

View attachment 763357
Click to expand...
Those will last a lot longer than the printed ones I make - your grandchildren will hand them down.
 
pastera said:
Those will last a lot longer than the printed ones I make - your grandchildren will hand them down.
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The first time I did it to load Zero JHPs, and that one's held up beautifully. With an unsupported soft lead hollow point, there's the potential to get a lot of variation in seating depth with a standard flat-faced seating stem, and the standard one for round nose bullets dents the jacket because it doesn't have a lot of support.

The one for the JTC-SIL bullets I might restore after I'm done with it by soaking it in acetone or some such because I only have 500, and when they are gone, they're gone. I'm seriously thinking about exiting 44 magnum some years down the road once I've worked through my current stock of 2500 bullets. I like my 45 Colt guns more. Probably I should sell one of my two Ruger Carbines now, but who am I kidding. I can't be bothered. More likely I'll trade it back to Brian for something else. Maybe I should trade it in for one of the Marlin 39A's he's got.
 
meh said:
The first time I did it to load Zero JHPs, and that one's held up beautifully. With an unsupported soft lead hollow point, there's the potential to get a lot of variation in seating depth with a standard flat-faced seating stem, and the standard one for round nose bullets dents the jacket because it doesn't have a lot of support.

The one for the JTC-SIL bullets I might restore after I'm done with it by soaking it in acetone or some such because I only have 500, and when they are gone, they're gone. I'm seriously thinking about exiting 44 magnum some years down the road once I've worked through my current stock of 2500 bullets. I like my 45 Colt guns more. Probably I should sell one of my two Ruger Carbines now, but who am I kidding. I can't be bothered. More likely I'll trade it back to Brian for something else. Maybe I should trade it in for one of the Marlin 39A's he's got.
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ahh - you cast the tip
I model the bullet profile and 3d print them.
Why get rid of the guns - if your reloading the cost difference between 44 mad and 45 colt probably isnt much at all.
 
pastera said:
Why get rid of the guns
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Reloading cost is not a factor. It's more about space in the house (I'm beyond having filled the safe--I've got several here and there with trigger locks), stocking of caliber components, and an ingrained habit of using and wanting what I have where my hobbies are concerned. My favorite and best pistol-caliber guns are in 45C and 357M. Many of these I won't sell. If I do a little exercise and identify which third of my guns I would keep if I had to sell two-thirds, none of the 44M's makes the cut. The S&W model 69 comes close.
 
Found out MAXXTech 45 acp brass walls are too thick for a .452 cast bullet and they wont fully chamber. Loaded up 300 rounds with 7.4gr TrueBlue behind a 215gr LC SWC, mixed headstamp. Had to pull down 13 that were MAXXTech. Dont have a case gauge for 45acp but use the barrel. Glad i checked before storing away for a later range trip.
 
Artie said:
Found out MAXXTech 45 acp brass walls are too thick for a .452 cast bullet and they wont fully chamber. Loaded up 300 rounds with 7.4gr TrueBlue behind a 215gr LC SWC, mixed headstamp. Had to pull down 13 that were MAXXTech. Dont have a case gauge for 45acp but use the barrel. Glad i checked before storing away for a later range trip.
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Thow that MaxxTech brass in the trash where it belongs.
 
I found a large Craftsman Philips screwdriver with the PERFECT shaft dimension to fit the mouth of my fired, Berdan primed .308 brass. I tried it on a few pieces and was amazed that it fit so well.

I'm making a hardwood block to hold a Lee #2 shell holder and going to start hydraulically depriming about 3000 rounds of beautiful Berdan primed brass I have. Yes, it's tedious as hell, but worth it to me.
This brass was just way too nice to scrap so I cleaned it in a vibratory bowl and put it aside years ago.

I bought 10K of the correct size Berdan primers a long time ago and have used some of them since then by manually depriming some of the brass using a homemade tool and also one of those "useless" RCBS tools.......which broke on about the 20th piece of military crimped brass.

I can honestly say, hydraulic depriming is the only way to go to get any volume, even if it's one at a time, still faster and more reliable than the RCBS tool or a masonry nail and hammer.
So, the next few hot weather days here will be spent depriming some of my Berdan .308 brass then having a friend wet tumble them for a short time.
Then going to reprime them and finish loading them in a few months.
 
Uzi2 said:
I found a large Craftsman Philips screwdriver with the PERFECT shaft dimension to fit the mouth of my fired, Berdan primed .308 brass. I tried it on a few pieces and was amazed that it fit so well.

I'm making a hardwood block to hold a Lee #2 shell holder and going to start hydraulically depriming about 3000 rounds of beautiful Berdan primed brass I have. Yes, it's tedious as hell, but worth it to me.
This brass was just way too nice to scrap so I cleaned it in a vibratory bowl and put it aside years ago.

I bought 10K of the correct size Berdan primers a long time ago and have used some of them since then by manually depriming some of the brass using a homemade tool and also one of those "useless" RCBS tools.......which broke on about the 20th piece of military crimped brass.

I can honestly say, hydraulic depriming is the only way to go to get any volume, even if it's one at a time, still faster and more reliable than the RCBS tool or a masonry nail and hammer.
So, the next few hot weather days here will be spent depriming some of my Berdan .308 brass then having a friend wet tumble them for a short time.
Then going to reprime them and finish loading them in a few months.
Click to expand...
That’s dedication. Nice work.
 
Jim Poulette said:
Funny, even with a full Hornady Lock-N-Load AP set-up sitting there - the little Lee Challenger on the other end of the bench is still my go-to press.

When I first took the re-loading course the instructor told everyone "you'll come to love a single stage press". He was right. :cool:

View attachment 769049
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I agree, the Challenger is a great single stage press. I've got three of them and haven't used my Dillon 550 in years.
 

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