Reloading General (Cont)

Every shekel.

do i need all the additional shit or is the basic bitch version good enough?

I'm gonna start reloading and I'm starting with 9x25 Dillon.

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People laugh at the 50bmg thing but my 230gr cast 45auto load costs 3.90/box, decent quality .22lr here is 4-6 bucks per box (canada btw, 45 hardball is $35/50 at my lgs)

Gonna hand-load 12ga slugs with green tracers using natural materials.

What materials?

Just mortar and pestle some fire flies

I like to cast
Lee molds work pretty dang good

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Okay so I am really new to reloading and want to get into it. Any recommendations on what tools/ammo I should start with? Also are all 30 caliber/ 7.62 rifle projectiles interchangeable? For example, loading a 30-06 projectile on a 308 case

>Tools
What volume will you reload? What is your ammo’s intended purpose?
>Ammo to start with
What centerfire caliber do you shoot the most or spend the most money on?
>Are all 30 caps interchangeable
Kinda
You need to know your true bore size.
Then you need to make sure your twist rate can stabilize what you want to shoot.
Some isn’t, like how Russian 7.62 is bigger than American 7.62 due to how each region measures their votes across the rifling.

308, primarily Target and a bit of hunting though I'd like to see if I could handload some wierd 308 because I hear 30-06 incendiary and AP is still leaglly available

Dad? Is that you?

Where are you getting lead? I keep hearing it's become more and more difficult to get scrap lead. Do you have to go on eBay?

Also, unrelated, but--have you ever used or considered a bullet material other than lead alloy, to cast? Back in the 70s, back before Lehigh Defense and all the other makers of superlight bullets that supposedly increase temporary cavitation, Massad Ayoob was writing gun magazine articles about experimenting with using the then-new lead-free pewter casting alloys to make superlight bullets. For example he was using molds that were supposed to make a 200gr target SWC in .45, and using the pewter they came out around 140gr. He was able to push them fast, 1350+ feet per second. The pewter bullets didn't deform much in plasticene clay, duct-sealing putty, or wet newspapers, but they splashed impressively big holes, especially in the duct sealing putty. This was before ballistic gelatin was commonplace, mind you.

This was also before you could go to your local gun store and buy hollowpoint ammo off the rack, and people were interested in something that might be better than heavy-and-slow roundnose duty ammo that existed at the time.

Now I remember those old articles and I think about centerfire rifle cartridges, now that the Usual Suspects are pushing lead-free ammo. Diddling around in Quickload suggests that a roundnose bullet weighing 150gr if made from lead might come out around 105gr from pewter, and a .30-30 with a 20" barrel might get it up to around 2700 f.p.s. with the right propellant and stay under SAAMI max pressure limits. But I do not know whether pewter bullets would expand at those velocities, or whether they'd need to be cast as hollowpoints.

So I wanted to post some irl results from some handloads. This is with a 77TMK handload shot at 25 yards. Buddy of mine hit just behind the shoulder of the ground hog. Went in and just did massive damage. Just haven't seen many images with these loads and thought ide share.

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That's impressive. Those tipped MatchKings just shatter on impact, don't they? How big was the exit wound, or is that it?

At least for groundhogs, I might try something a little lighter, that'd be traveling faster and fragment more completely, dumping more energy into the animal and reducing the danger of pass-through or ricochet. Those 45gr hollowpoints in the Winchester White Box ammo supposedly work pretty well. 40 grain Nosler Ballistic Tips and Hornady 40gr VMAX would be where I'd start. I think Sierra still makes the old Varminter JHP in a .40 grain .224" diameter, and Speer makes a bunch of different superlight .224" diameter bullets designed for this kind of thing too.

Can anyone point me to a legit download for quickload 3.9 I don't want to pay for it.

There isn't one, just use 3.8.
Biggest difference is added pictures of cartridges anyway.

Do you know where I can get a legit copy of 3.8?

I really made them to be a round that would reach out to 400-500 yards and hopefully still fragment. There was no exit wound which was strange to me especially at 25 yards. He told me it looked like it went in, hit bone, and just liquified the organs. I chronoed it around 2650 in that particular rifle.

This one was shot at 5 yards outside of his house the next day with my 77MK load. Clear entrance and exit but not as much damage.

It looks like the TMK hits and just explodes but the MK'S penetrate a little more before dumping their energy.

I'm hoping one of us gets a deer so we can see what it looks like on a larger animal.

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Ah, gotcha.

The Tipped MatchKings basically disintegrate on impact with anything solid. The plastic point filler gets shoved back and splits the jacket, initiating expansion. The regular hollowpoint MatchKings generally seem to yaw and fragment--they go in a few inches, turn sideways, and break into (usually) two large and several small pieces.

Tipped MatchKings, at least in .224", seem to be so fragile and dump energy so rapidly that they don't always get to 12" in ballistic gelatin, though the 77gr ones get close to it most of the time, maybe because they're heavier. The regular MatchKings go in several inches, and the first several inches of the wound track are usually not impressive, then they turn sideways and break up. Things are more impressive after that. At least in blocks of gel. The thing about regular MatchKings is that they are inconsistent and unpredictable in when they're going to yaw and fragment.

The "experts" tell us that MKs are better than TMKs because better penetration but, at least for whitetail deer/self defense, a controlled expansion bullet--maybe a heavy softpoint with a relatively heavy jacket that still holds together and penetrates well, maybe one of the bonded softpoints, maybe a solid copper hollowpoint--is better because its performance will be more consistent and predictable.

Ordered my Lee single stage press kit. Got dies for 223/556, 307, 357 sig, 9mm, 40 s&w, and 10mm auto. Got a fuck ton of brass to load. Is it safe to just clean the casings by hand or do I need a tumbler? Best site for supplies? I was gonna order bullets from wideners and primers and powder from Brownells.

Most everyone agrees you will need some means to clean the brass. Most people use a tumbler. An ultrasonic cleaner can also work, depending on the volume of brass you need to work with.

At a bare minimum you need to remove foreign matter from the outside of the cases before resizing them. Bottlenecked cases = steel dies that can be damaged by crud on the exterior of cases. Straightwalled brass cases can be resized with a carbide die, and the carbide ring in that kind of die is pretty forgiving about dirt.

Never mind I got it figured out. To the user helping me with quickload last time i was able to figure out the dimensions of the hollow base of the 65gr LeHigh XDs to make the bullet seating depth and cartridge COL correct. I ran it with Unique

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I also had it spit out a list of powder data with the updated dimensions and i was wondering if your previous recommendation of starting with unique would still be the right choice also I realized I no longer care so much about completely burning all the powder and wish to prioritize velocity.

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Interested in sizing 300 blk cases from 223 brass. Been watching videos but haven't bought a press yet.
Not asking questions, just letting you guys know I'm lurking

I neck up 223 to make 7mm TCU brass. It is fairly easy. I use a 243 to neck up to 6mm and then a 7mm die to finish. Just have to becareful you don't hit the bottom of the case or you will bend your rod. Sometimes necks split but 223 is cheap. Annealing is supposed to help.