Brand New To Reloading, My Friend That Is In To Reloading Has Me Paranoid? What To Buy And Do?

[BJung]

Tumble and clean your brass so you don't scratch your dies. I shoot outdoors and pick up dirty cases.

Resize with carbide dies. In the old days you had to lube your pistol cases and the sticky stuff picked up dirt and took more time. Yes, there's Hornady One-Shot but I don't use it with my carbide dies. I just resize. I decap when I resize because I don't want the walnut shells stuck in my flash hole. The cheapest tumber I've found is at Harbor Freight with one of their coupons. I buy crushed walnut shells at the Feed Store. I save the dirty crushed walnut shells sometimes to soak up spilled oil from a bad oil change before tossing it.

I don't clean my primer pockets unless its for my rifles. If the flashole is clear, the flame will go through.

Buy a Lee Factory Crimp die and use it. I use to call it the "fix-it" die because the cases would bulge for some bullet/case combinations every so often and your reloaded cartridge wouldn't chamber. What a hassle. The Lee factory crimp dies resizes the whole cartridge case diameter.

If you're going to reload a high-power rifle cartridge, start with a single stage press. I never heard of anyone that took accurate rifle reloading seriously using anything else. You have to take your time and make consistent/accurate loads. No mistakes. I think a progressive is fine. The Hornady Lock-and-Load is a good alternative.

Take your time and focus on your reloading. Don't get distracted.. I've picked up discarded reloads at the range, pulled them apart, and found some with no powder or very little or variances in the load. You can't afford a squib load with a bullet stuck in your barrel. Yes, you can find a wooden dowel to hammer it out but what a hassle. And, hopefully you're not shooting fast. So, before you seat your bullets, look into every case to make sure there's powder in it! I always do this.

Besides that, start simple since you're a beginner. Clean the cases, resize, prime, charge the cases with powder, seat the bullet ( start with a factory size to set your dies to ), resize and crimp, and shoot.

Oh, and if your worried about case length, just find cardstock and make a go/no-go gauge for the longest acceptable length. I personally have never resized pistol casings. You will be picking up so many at the range left by other shooters, you won't have to worry about it.

[T. O'Heir]

Go buy a copy of The ABC's of Reloading. About $30 on Amazon or your local gun shop. It's a beginner's How to.
"...Pistol cases don't need to be lubed, ever..." That depends entirely on what sizer die you have. Not all of 'em are carbide.
"...not cleaning primer pockets is DANGEROUS..." Um, no. The pockets will get cleaned enough when you tumble anyway.
"...some people NEVER have trimmed their 45ACP and similar pistol calibers..." Isn't necessary. Pistol cases, either rimmed or rimless, rarely stretch, so trimming just isn't required.
Bottle necked rifle cases only get trimmed when they get longer than the Max Case length given in your manual. Trimming is only done when necessary. It is not something that's done every time.

[adn258]

Thank you all so much for the help! I think I'm going to get the Lee Class Turret Press with the 4 holes for 4 dies. That press seems like a good middle ground for paying attention to 1 round at a time, but not taking it too far.

Obviously ammo prices and components right now are INSANELY expensive and hard to come by. The price on the Lee though seems quite decent too, and it sounds like I could load 10s of thousands of rounds before it breaks?

[jetinteriorguy]

Originally Posted by adn258

Thank you all so much for the help! I think I'm going to get the Lee Class Turret Press with the 4 holes for 4 dies. That press seems like a good middle ground for paying attention to 1 round at a time, but not taking it too far.

Obviously ammo prices and components right now are INSANELY expensive and hard to come by. The price on the Lee though seems quite decent too, and it sounds like I could load 10s of thousands of rounds before it breaks?

You’ll never regret getting the Lee Classic Cast turret. Starting out by deleting the advance function is fine, but I recommend leaving it in. By automatically advancing each stage you eliminate the possibility of dropping a double charge from your powder drop. It’s not a complicated mechanism and is a very simple process to use safely. You always know what stage your in, all you have to do is look at which die is positioned above the ram and your good in case of interruption or any confusion. Here is my setup, stage one size and deprime on the up stroke and prime on the down stroke, stage two bell case mouth and drop powder, stage three seat bullet, and stage four remove bell from case mouth or crimp depending on what your loading. On my .38sp wadcutter target loads I just remove the bell, all other loads are crimped to varying degrees depending on requirements.

[Rangerrich99]

Originally Posted by adn258

Thank you all so much for the help! I think I'm going to get the Lee Class Turret Press with the 4 holes for 4 dies. That press seems like a good middle ground for paying attention to 1 round at a time, but not taking it too far.

Obviously ammo prices and components right now are INSANELY expensive and hard to come by. The price on the Lee though seems quite decent too, and it sounds like I could load 10s of thousands of rounds before it breaks?

Buddy, you could probably load 100,000s of rounds on that thing. Maybe millions. More rounds than you'll ever reload in your lifetime.