Yesterday I powder coated and resized about 600 9mm boolits.

Over the weekend I processed and cleaned about 2500 40sw cases and loaded 600 180grn berrrys plated bullets over 4.6 grains of universal. I also loaded a test batch of 180grn federal HSTs over 5.0 grains of universal

Done

Scored 250 lbs of lead.

About 60 lbs of lead flashing and pipe, sinkers'.



About 150 lbs of WW, when I melted it down, this time I was really careful to not get it to hot. was able to skim the Zinc off the top



.

Used m new bench for the first time. Going to be making some changes tomorrow.

Opened a box of over 1k 38/357 tips. Waiting on some 69gn 223 rounds.

I hate waiting.

It is a good day... I received a bit of unassigned cash, so, I ordered 6# of 4895, 1k each of CCI 200&300 primers, from Powder Valley. I also ordered 500 147 gr .308 bullets from Wideners.

Built a powder trickler. PVC end cap, 2x4, aluminum shaft, screws, some .40 cases and some grip tape.

I got my new Hornady .223 dies on Monday but I didn't get to do much with them until today.  I'd already cleaned them well, and used my home-brew spray case lube on them for protection.

I measured the differences between my RCBS sizing die and the new Hornady sizing die.  My Forster FIELD headspace gage extends out of the RCBS die by 13/64", but the gage sticks out of the Hornady die by 15/64, a full 1/32" difference.  THAT'S why the RCBS die didn't work properly in my Lock n Load AP press!  Ain't science wonderful?

Today I scored 180 #s of dead soft lead and 300 #s of WWs, all for free.  Just finished unloaded it into my reloading room/ garage/ shop.   Time for a nice cold beer and relax!

Mail lady brought my 100 Rem. 230gr. Golden Saber bullets and my 100 pcs. of nickel plated .45acp brass this afternoon
Took them straight away to my shop and realized I kept the door open......

Free range Rhode Island Red rooster got in earlier in the day and had crapped all over my bench. Man, that stuff sets up like concrete

I smell like bleach now

FRIED SHCIKING for dinner.      

Aint free lead the best. I gotta get out and melt that soft lead down. Where I got mine, there is more WW lead left, if the other guy doesn't come get it soon, it's mine.

I'm just finishing setting up my Hornady Ammo Plant.  Got everything hooked up and working including the Deluxe Control Panel.  Working out some bugs with the bullet feeder die. The timing on the press was off just a little bit and I found the adjustment and think I've got it working very well now. I haven't reloaded since 2002. I found Two 1lb jars of Unique and 1lb of Tightgroup from the old days. All were still sealed and were never opened. Also found 2000 CCI 300 large pistol primers, the price tag says $15.95 per 1000. Those were the days!!!!!!! I'll be loading 45ACP and 45 Colt to start with. Bought a New Blackhawk 45ACP/45 Colt convertible revolver about 3 weeks ago. Found some of my old cowboy 45 Colt rounds. So will hit the range next week and see how them do after nearly 17 years of being stored away!  Once I get my free bullets form Hornady I'll be loading some 308 for my LR308.

Free lead is the bees knees.   I've never paid for lead or tin.

I have near 1,200 pounds of free lead from various sources.   And I still pick up wheel weights when I go on walks with the wife.

Scored 183 pounds of "lead came" from stained glass windows. Stuff is pretty soft and should make some awesome .45 bullets :D

Chicken n dumplin's this weekend

Ordered 100 Hornady .224 FMJ bullets

Ordered a complete PSA AR15 lower and trying to decide on what caliber
The 25.-45 Sharps is intriguing but will put the build waaay over budget
May go ahead and get a die set ($75 ) for it....may

i love it. nice work.

I have decided to reduce some of what I reload. Have been downsizing for a while now. Focusing both whats in the safe as well as what I want to stock up on.

So sorted thru 3 homer buckets of brass I had in the garage. Kinda forgot about it.

Ended up with 30#'s of .40 S&W and bout 50#'s of LC 5.56 brass. The rest of the 10-15 pounds were all damaged rounds.

Pretty sure I'm getting rid of my 40's and sticking with 9 full time.

At least this put my 5.56 total's over 20k in brass. Only about half are prepped for reloading though. So much trimming.

.451" 230gr Remington Golden Saber / 8.6gr AA#5 (869 avg. fps)  / CCI 300 LP / 1.235" oal / Starline Nickel Plated brass
Colt Series 80 .45 ACP all on a nice clean bench

Tonight I ventured into the world of powdercoating.  I'd been holding off, not wanting to invest in a spray system, but after seeing you guys and the guys over at Cast Boolits using the Tumble method, I couldn't stay away any longer.

I dumped some Crosman airsoft BB's and Harbor Freight red PC into my Polypropylene bowl and shook to coat the BB's.



Dumped in some 124 grain 9mm's and shook them up.  Heated up my new el cheapo toaster oven to find what setting yielded an actual temp of 400 degrees F.  After preheating and adjusting the temperature setting, I picked through my bowl and grabbed the bullets one at a time using these pliers wrapped in masking tape.

I set them up on my oven tray and popped them in for 20 minutes.  Here they are baking away.


After the timer went off I pulled them out to cool and inspected my handiwork.  I didn't get 100% coverage, and found that I frequently rubbed off the PC with my tape-wrapped pliers.  Next time, I will shake the bullets longer to ensure optimal coverage, and I will also coat my pliers more heavily in PC beforehand to try and reduce the bare spots.  I'm not concerned about functionality on these first ones, since the base and lube grooves are all covered well enough.  Here are a few samples after cooling.


And of course I had to perform the requisite smash test.  There was no flaking or loss of material whatsoever.


Overall, I'm happy with my first attempt.  I've got some ideas for improvement for next time, but the process seems extraordinarily easy.  I sized the bullets to .358" and they are ready for loading.

Thanks to dryflash and others on this site for providing instruction and inspiration to get this moving.

Thanks. I was picking the bullets up by the nose but I need to get some finer-tipped pliers to minimize surface contact.

Today I continued resizing my mountain of brass. So far have found two Berdan primed .223 cases and three .308 cases. Luckily I caught them before snapping the stem.

Finished decapping and swaging the last of the 3000 OFB LC, god I hate berdan primers mixed in. Found about 50 of them.

Picked up 457 lbs of WW, there was also some flashing, sinkers and other various forms of lead mixed in. Not too bad for 50.00.

Got a bucket load of pure lead cast into ingots. About a half bucket of WW's cast into ingots.

Got 3 and a 1/2 buckets of WW's to go tomorrow.

Just finished tearing the 1050 down for cleaning, maintenance, reset it up in .45. do some de capping and swaging, then I think Ill load up some Hornady 230gr XTP's. Gotta look into it, Unique, power pistol, true blue, tite group, ohhhhh the possibilities.

Terribly board and no reloading to be done.

I never had and never touched a powder trickler but always wanted one but couldn't spend the ludicrous amount of money on one for what they do.

So I ended up with this from a scrap piece of T7075 Aluminum round stock and a Dillon primer tube.





Base hollowed out for lead pour.


Base filled with lead.

Nice.

38 pounds of wheel weights, 10 pounds of mystery lead (not full soft) and 15 pounds of range scrap all mixed together.    

Deprimed about 1/3 of a 5 gallon bucket of .223 brass.   Getting ready for my first foray into wet tumbling.

Started trimming brass on my homebuilt trimmer. Wife came downstairs and bitched about the noise.

Deprimed about 250 .45 cases, and tossed them into the wet tumbler.

Got all My .45 brass in one spot, had to sort out about 500 as there was some SP mixed in.

I have been out on business for a few weeks and was going to load some last night. I went to my trusty 550 and found a large black widow living on it. It crawled away before I could kill it, so I guess I am never using that press again.

I cast a bunch of bullets instead.

First batch of wet tumbling done in the FA tumbler.  Now into the Ronco Brass Dehydrator!

Done

Washing brass

Sold my Lee LoadMaster.   Shipped it sat morning.

I still have a turret and a pro1000 presses I use way more.

Unrelated but I need to empty my closet of stuff collected over 30 years, stuff I'll never use or projects(scale models mostly) I will never complete.

All my ebay money is going into a Ruger Precision Rifle fund.

Primed 50 .300 BLK cases for a ladder of 147 gr plinkers using Lil'Gun.

I deprimed and cleaned some 6.5 creed brass from a match yesterday. Not sure if I will do anything further today, debating on getting a neck sizing die. Running a gas gun I am not sure how much it will help.

Last Wednesday I did some ladder testing. I had a camera setup in front of the target at 300 yards. Little did I know the camera had a memory error about 10 seconds after I drove away from it. My first three shots I cannot place with the other 5 shots. At 300 yards one of the first 3 shots is almost touching my 4th shot. Really wish I knew which one it is. I will redo my ladder test hopefully this week in time for the final match of the year. Found out my camera and or memory card wont record in 1080p without a error after about 20-30 seconds.

Today I did my first load writeup. I Loaded and shot these months ago but I finally got around to sharing my findings.

One of my favorite calibers to shoot is the 9x18mm makarov. I own a CZ82 and a P83 in this
caliber. I recently stumbled across some CFE Pistol and was curious if it might make a good powder for reloading the makarov cartridge. Hodgdon doesn't offer  data for this powder in 9x18 but they do have .380 data. Hodgdon shows a max load of 4.2gr CFE Pistol under a 95gr FMJ at 0.970. The old rule for loading 9x18mm has been .380 + 10% = a Max load of 4.6gr. I decided to start loading and see what happened. My first load session was a 95gr berry's plated 0.363 bullet over 3.8, 4.0 and 4.2gr  CFE Pistol. I shot these with no issues and decided on a second series using 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5gr CFE Pistol. Below is the data I collected.

95gr Berry's plated 0.363 @ 0.980
Trimmed 9x19mm cases
CFE Pistol
Win SP primers
Shot from CZ 82
Shooting Chrony F-1 at 10ft
Temp ~70F
Graph:

red dots are averages at each charge
Line is linear fit of the averages with equation.


Data:

gr   #   Ave    SD
3.8 5   771.9 59.3
4.0 5   871.5 31.4
4.2 10 924.5 32.1
4.3 9   927.7 42.3
4.4 10 963.1 36.5
4.5 10 988.4 34.3

Conclusion:

The lighter charges of 3.8 and 4.0gr left unburnt powder in the action. Charges of 4.2 and 4.3 seems to work well and give reasonable velocities and performance. When I stepped up to 4.4 and 4.5 gr, I noticed much more recoil. It wasn't the snappiness that 9x18 is know for either. This recoil was kinda just a heavy push. The slide was recoiling hard and tossing cases FAR. I think that continued shooting at this load level would be rough on the gun. Even with the harsh recoil, velocities where not impressive. I decided that 4.5gr was far enough. Despite large spreads in velocity and unburnt powder, all loads shot accurately.
My opinion of CFE Pistol is it is not a very appropriate powder for use in 9x18mm. It is too slow and doesn't produce the velocities that a faster powder can. I would put the max load at 4.3 gr with my suggested load of 4.2 but I would look for a faster powder before I resorted to CFE Pistol in this application.

Improvement:

I would like to do my next work ups in one shooting session to reduce the chance of temperature changes influencing my results. I have since started to record actual temperatures each time I use the chrono.
My charges are accurate to +/- 0.05gr at best. My 4.2gr charge was running on the heavy side when I was loading, the increased velocity can be seen in the graph. I have been using a cheap digital scale to set my Hornady powder measure with pistol drum. I believe my digital scale is introducing some error.

Going from here:

What can I do to improve these write ups? What calibers and powders would you like to see next. I have data for a write up using a 93gr LRN 0.365 over Red Dot in 9x18mm which I will be posting next.
I am willing to do write ups using 9x18mm, 45ACP, and maybe even 7.62x38mm Nagant. I have Red Dot, Unique, Power Pistol, Titegroup, W230, Universal, and CFE Pistol.

Yesterday I reloaded some 9mm.  Just got done sorting brass from today's USPSA match whIle watching the Detroit Lions dump it up.

Tumbled some .223 and 9mm brass that my son and I shot yesterday.  Powder coated and sized around 200 9mm bullets.

Converted 512 5.56 and .223 brass into .300 BO. The LC and WCC I'm keeping while the .223 converts will go to a friend. Also scored while at a spot 15 more range .300 BO cases

Got the tumbler going with .357 and 9x19, plan on keeping the .357 and giving the 9x19 to a member that's moving to CA due to a job.

I watched a college football game I recorded yesterday while I de-primed a 30 cal ammo can of .223 brass with my Harvey de-priming tool. I would guess about 550 cases judging by the 1810 grains of spent primers.

I created a bunch of fired brass!!!??

With my pistol competition season now over I settled in and started working on my off season .308 ammo. Deprimed 320 once fired Hornady match cases and another 100 LC84 cases.

Will work on swaging the LC brass next then wet tumble all of it.

Over the last couple days I deprimed and wet tumbled some 308 and 30-06 brass. Yesterday created some once fired brass at the range getting ready for deer season. Came home and organized the brass I already had cleaned, sized it, and put it in boxed to be primed and loaded at some point.