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Old August 15, 2014, 03:59 AM   #1
cryogenic419
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New Giraud trimmer

He was showing this off at Camp Perry, seemed every bit as accurate and repeatable as his big trimmer unit.

http://www.giraudtool.com/Tri%20Way%20Trimmer.htm
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Old August 15, 2014, 01:12 PM   #2
schmellba99
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This intrigues me greatly. Especially since it chamfers.....

You may well be my designated hero for the day by calling this to my attention!
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Old August 15, 2014, 01:36 PM   #3
RC20
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I do like it, a bit more cost and quite the space age looking setup vs this one

http://www.littlecrowgunworks.com/wft%202.html

I have their WFT and other than not chamfering fully its very good.
On the other hand it also is not much trouble as I clean the primer pockets each time so a quick de-burr is easy enough to do on the prep station

I got the WFT from my brother for a good price as he had picked up the Giraud.
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Old August 15, 2014, 04:34 PM   #4
Bart B.
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I suggest testing any trim & chamfer tool after setting it up. Size then use it to trim 10 cases. Seat bullets into them.

Using a magnifying glass or loupe, examine the bullet jackets right in front of the case mouth. Is there any tiny peeling of the jacket showing?

Pull the bullets then check them for jacket being peeled off.

If the jackets have any peeling, they're unbalanced. I'd send the trimmer back asking them to fix it or give a refund.

Last edited by Bart B.; August 15, 2014 at 05:24 PM.
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Old August 15, 2014, 04:53 PM   #5
RC20
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Bart B:

I see it got took wrong.

The Little Crow WFT does not have the chamfering feature the Giraud does.

Their take is it will come off in the tumbler. I just do a light chamfer and debrurr on the case prep stations.

The de-burrs/ chamfer is a feature of the Giraud big trimmer and they carried it onto the drill trimmer.

The lack of it on the WFT I don't find it a problem but it’s a nice feature and has value
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Old August 15, 2014, 05:25 PM   #6
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RC20, I was talking about any tool. I reworded my earlier post. But thanks for getting my attention.
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Old August 22, 2014, 02:55 PM   #7
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I bought one and it came in the other day. Haven't really used it yet, outside of some playing around with a few pieces of brass and hand turning them.

But I will say this - the quality and craftsmanship are abolute top notch, and the hand turning I did produced some nicely trimmed, chamfered and deburred brass. I haven't adjusted anything for OAL or that yet, but it is defintely a nice tool to have.

Especially when you have about 3 or 4 thousand .223 brass for your AR that have sat dormant for months mostly because you despise the trim and chamfer aspect of reloading for rifle.
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Old August 23, 2014, 07:43 PM   #8
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My brother got the motorized one, he did up a few thousand rounds of 223 and then switched it to 30-06 which is the more common regular used.

I got the Little Crow from him and delighted with it (would be happy with the Giraud as well but I got what I need though the de-burr is a nice feature)

Nice even and constant trim back (you do need to twist the case to get it uniform)

great tools and beat the weird collet type all to heck which don't work worth a hoot anyway.

The cases always some out around the minimum which is perfect.

Both are worth every penny. Motorized maybe only if you have a lot of reserve brass you can run big batches and stash. Nice day in day out for ease of use but not worth the money to me.
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Old August 24, 2014, 09:31 AM   #9
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Quote:
But I will say this - the quality and craftsmanship are abolute top notch
God Bless this gentleman and his tools. Giraud's stuff is the kind of American ingenuity and product that people want to see and think of when considering the capabilities of the American spirit. He is a fine example of the "biuld a better mousetrap" saying and I hope he has built a fine life for himself & his family.

I can only imagine that the folks in the High Power circuit in and around Perry must love this guy.
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Old August 25, 2014, 05:35 AM   #10
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Yes we highpower folks love him and his products.

It really is good to see American ingenuity is alive and well. Its guys like him that got us to the moon and beyond. Its awesome because he is a shooter who just happens to be an engineer. He saw a better way to do things involving one of his hobbies and had the knowledge to actually make it happen. I'd actually love to see his reloading setup, have this feeling he's got an amazing setup. I also like the fact he's using American parts when building his stuff. I've got the trimmer and the annealer and they are both built like tanks, I can see these things lasting longer than me.

Now if he would just figure out a way to trim pistol brass that was equal to the rifle brass. Would be nice to have everything completely uniform even though pistol isn't as critical.
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Old August 25, 2014, 08:18 AM   #11
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The problem with pistol rounds is a lot of them shorten with each reloading cycle and can't afford to have that loss accelerated. I measured half a thousandth lost per load cycle in .45 Auto target loads. They don't reach high enough pressure to stick to the chamber for stretching. They just back up and get blown out fatter and shorter to fit the taper in the chamber. Resizing doesn't recover the length completely.

To Bart's point, I've found shaved copper on commercially loaded ammunition before, so just tumbling (which the commercial loaders do) may or may not be enough to solve the shaving issue. You also have to consider that fired and resized case necks, unless you re-anneal them, are likely to be harder than the new brass used by a commercial ammunition manufacturer is, and more prone to shaving.

I've experimented with burnishing chamfered case mouths in various ways and that will stop the scraping. One of the best tools for this, and I'm surprised he didn't mention it, was suggested by Bart, and that is an E-Z Out type screw extractor, with its tapered and reversed thread. I had been using hard wood dowels sharpened like a pencil and turned in my drill press for this, but the wood wears down fast. Running a case mouth on and off a carbide expander button a couple or three times also works, but risks pulling the neck off-axis and works the neck brass a fair amount. The E-Z Out I have is an old, cheap Chinese-made one, and I just spun it while I worked the surface over with a Dremel tool cloth wheel loaded with some Dico stainless steel buffing compound (ACE hardwares had this blue compound in sticks last time I looked, and Veral Smith commented some time ago that it works exceptionally well on hardened carbon steel, which it does). That polished the rough oxide finish off and gave a mirror finish to the thread crests. Now I just spin it in the drill press at the lowest speed and press trimmed and chamfered cases up against it by hand.

I first got onto the need for burnishing years ago when I used an inertial bullet puller to extract a moly-coated bullet from a case that had been trimmed and chamfered before loading. The sides of the bullet had no trace of moly on them and I'm sure a little copper was scraped in with the moly ring at the top of the case mouth. I found burnished cases could be loaded and extracted without disturbing the coating.
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Old August 25, 2014, 03:17 PM   #12
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cryogenic419 - Thank You for posting this!

I need one of these and will probably order it this afternoon.

Been using an old Forster trimmer (with the Forster carbide trim/deburr cutter) for years and it works great, but it is slow.

Doug Giraud makes excellent equipment. I have one of his scope stands that my wife got me for my birthday more than 10 years ago. It is really great, that's all there is to say.
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Old August 26, 2014, 05:29 AM   #13
cryogenic419
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That's the thing when it comes to trimming brass....speed. If I only fired 100 shots a year it wouldn't even be an issue I have a RCBS trimmer with the motor and the motorized case prep center. It would take all day to do 2 hundred cases. I can do it now in under half hour without the hand cramps and it seems more uniform. Its a lifesaver when dealing with once fired military brass as all the other steps I have to do take up a lot of time. Decap, remove primer crimp, uniform pocket...All I know is when I first got into highpower I spent more time prepping brass than anything, I actually dreaded it. Felt like I was spending all of my free time doing just that and always felt rushed when it came time to actually load the ammo. Got the trimmer and haven't looked back.

Once I got the annealing bug and learned how to do that and saw my free time disappear and decided to get a machine to automate that it was a pretty easy choice.
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Old August 26, 2014, 09:48 AM   #14
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So glad I saw this tool. Ordered it, received it in less than a week.
First of all, I'm not an engineer or millwright, but I recognize quality work, and this is a fine example of what a skilled American craftsman can do when he puts years of expertise and skill to work on a niche product.

The machining, finish, and balance of the trimmer is dead-nuts on. But the best part is the fact that it consolidates what previously required three separate steps into one. Actually, four steps counting de-burring, which is accomplished by twisting the case 180 degrees after cutting is finished.

I whipped through 50 .223 cases in about five minutes, and each one came out within a thousandth of each other in length, with perfect chamfer inside and out. What a time saver, and my wrists thank you, Doug Giraud!
Even the nifty plastic case the trimmer arrived in is a classy touch.
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