I didn’t start out wanting to load this much. In fact, I can’t remember exactly how it started. But the basic idea was that buying components in bulk, if you can afford the high up-front cost, is worth it in the long run because of increased cost savings. Precision Delta gives discounts for bulk purchases so hey… why not order 10,000 bullets? I’ll get the discount and I’ll eventually go through all the bullets. They don’t have an expiration date, they won’t go bad, so what’s the harm in ordering a lot?

Back when I started I knew I had to load at least 5000. Why? In October, Tom Givens is coming back to the area and that class will need maybe 2000 rounds. As well, I was going to attend the Rogers Shooting School, but due to various factors I had to back out. 😦  Originally I thought we’d drive thus I could bring my own ammo, so why not load up 2500 rounds for that? But then decision was made to fly, then I had to back out. Nevertheless, the (back then) thought of needing about 5000 rounds just for training pushed me to start a dedicated daily reloading regimen. But of course, if I reload 5000 then use 5000, that doesn’t leave me with anything for my own practice! So I really needed to load more than 5000. So I figured, I have 10,000 bullets, might as well load them all.

And so, I have. Finally, I have finished. 🙂

Another motivator is wanting to have enough on hand so I don’t have to deal with the press. Sure, the Hornady Lock-n-Load press’ bushing system is geared towards quick caliber changes. But then, you need to buy parts for every caliber, like a new powder drop for each caliber. I’m trying to realize cost-savings, so spending more money doesn’t meet that end. I figure as long as the press is set up for caliber X, might as well load caliber X until I can load no more. That way when I wish to work on caliber Y, I’ll still have enough rounds of X to get me through. At this point, I reckon I’ve got enough 9 on hand to see me through.

Going through that many components I learned a few things:

• I do like my Hornady Lock-n-Load Auto Progressive (AP) press.
  • I changed my mind: I do not want a case feeder. The ability to inspect each piece of brass is vital. Kept me from loading .380 Auto or other non-9mm Luger cases. Sometimes the case was clogged with debris (it’s used brass and might have been clogged with dirt, grass, small rocks, etc.). Damaged cases or case in an otherwise questionable condition. Inspection is good to do.
    • Note: I’ve used some commercial reloaded ammo in my XD. I’ve had a few rounds be .380 Auto cases and let’s just say it gives you an opportunity to work on your reload and malfunction drills. Not a bad thing, but in general I’d rather ensure everything’s proper.
  • I would like a bullet feeder. It’d just help things go a bit smoother. One less thing for my left hand to do, which instead could keep my hand and eyes focused on case inspection.
  • I’m thinking about readjusting the height at which my press is mounted at. The bench is a tall bench, one I can work at while standing up. But when I work the press, the bottom of the pull forces me to bend a few inches to my right. I’ve coped with it over thousands of pulls, but having it be “just the right height” could be nice. Thing is, if I make the press higher, then it’s a different viewing angle of the top of the press to see things like the powder cop and other such things. Plus the taller the press is, the harder it will be for shorter people (e.g. my kids) to use the press. So, it’s all a trade-off and I’ll just have to play around.
  • One thing that does bug me about the press is things coming loose.
    • The pull lever? It comes loose, but you can manage it fine.
    • Sometimes the bushing that held the powder drop would loosen up. Not a huge problem, but it’s curious that it does (no other bushings ever loosened up).
    • The one that bugs me the most? The bolt that holds down the shell plate comes loose all the time. I follow instructions to tighten it, but eventually things wiggle loose. I have thought about getting a lock washer to put in there (bolt head, lock washer, flat washer, shell plate) and barely tighten it, just enough to keep the bolt from coming loose. I just keep forgetting to get one every time I go to the hardware store. However, there are times when it’s necessary to loosen the shell plate to get something out and it’s nice to be able to just do it with a twist of the fingers and not have to haul out tools. We’ll see.
• Brass observations, since I’m loading uses cases of mixed headstamps.
  • Sellier & Bellot brass is some of the hardest to deal with. Either hard to decap the brass or hard to seat primers. I had more primer-related problems with this brass than any other.
  • It’s interesting to see how some manufacturers change their headstamps (e.g. S&B), but some never change (e.g. Winchester, Federal).
  • Winchester, Federal, and Remington are certainly the most popular, with Winchester #1. But I had all sorts of cases, from Speer, CCI, PMC, NNY and PPU, PMC, Blazer, CMC, S&B, Starline, a fair number of NATO headstamps, and then a mix of other stuff… even a few .335 Super
  • In the thousands of cases I went through, I only had 2 Cor-Bon’s.
  • I had a lot of other smiliarly sized brass, like 9×17, 9×18, .380 Auto, a few .32 Auto’s. The most interesting one? had one 7.62×25.
• Titegroup powder flows and meters nice and uniform in the LnL’s powder drop. Never had to adjust the meter once I got it set, and I did spot check the drop from time to time.
• Keeping a clean and tidy bench and keeping your equipment in running order is a good thing.
• A can of compressed air is useful for cleaning stuff out of tight places (Karl gave me that tip).
• Primers
  • On the whole, Federal’s small pistol primers seat very nicely. Went through 5000 of them and never had a hiccup. Good “feel” when you’re seating them.
  • The Remington small pistol primers seat pretty well. Went through 5000 of them (tho not all on this batch of 9). Not as smooth as Federal when it comes to seating, but no real problems.
  • Wolf’s (non-corrosive) small pistol primers are a little harder to seat, but once I got used to their feel it went alright. Went through a couple thousand of them. The Wolf and S&B brass many times didn’t agree.
  • I used a few Winchester primers and they seat very nicely.
  • Note that statistically I didn’t see a whole lot of difference between these three primers.
    • If I’m given a choice (and these days we don’t always have that luxury), in the future I may use Federal because they seat so well. I’m not seeing much difference in performance, so might as well choose based upon other criteria. I must admit that the more and more I use Federal products, the more pleased I am with them above all others.
• Bullets
  • Having loaded 10,000 Precision Delta bullets, I can say I’m pretty happy with them. Out of 10,000 I only noted 2 bullets I had problems with (something didn’t come together in the manufacturing process). Not a bad ratio. And they shoot fine and do the job so…. hey, consistent across a fair-sized batch, and about the least expensive price I can find for bullets. What’s not to like? I’ll probably stick with Precision Delta bullets in the future.
  • Since the lot of 10,000 wasn’t precisely 10K (had about 80 more), I loaded up the remainder. Since I had a few primers left in the tube and I have some stray Berry’s bullets, I used up the last 20 or so primers with Berry’s bullets. No issues of note in loading them.
• Once I get into a groove, I want to just keep going. 100 a day wasn’t good, so I moved to 200. Many times as I’d near completing the 200 I’d feel I wanted to keep going. The only reason I stopped? I had to get to the day job. Some days I couldn’t load so I’d try to make up for it by doing 400 the next day. But, never load more than you can handle. You must be focused on the task. It’s a lot of lever pulling and you can get into a “mindless groove”, so you have to be aware of that fact and stop yourself if you’re losing focus. You don’t need anything to go wrong. It could mean your gun blowing up, it could mean your life.
• An electronic scale would be nice. I’ve got a beam scale and that’s OK, but having an electronic scale is faster. Plus having a large flat surface for the scale you can weigh more things than the little beam “bucket” lets you weigh.
• One reason people reload is for cost savings. I haven’t run the hard numbers on it all, but I feel pretty safe in saying that I’m now “in the black” in terms of recouping my investment on all the equipment. I figure any reloading from here on out is money savings.

So, I’ve got enough 9 now to last me a while. I can set the press up for something else now.

So what next?

I’m almost out of Titegroup powder and really don’t want to buy more pistol powder only to have it sit around in storage… I’ve got enough 9 ammo to go through before I’ll have to reload that caliber again. 😉  While I still have some 9 components (bullets and brass) I’m going to shift gears and use the rest of the Titegroup to stock up on some .38 Special (since that recipe also uses Titegroup).

Once I’m done with .38 Special… on to rifle!

This morning I read on The Firearm Blog that Hornady Superformance and LEVERevolution powders are coming in 2011.

The ammunition brought to market is interesting because it brings 100-200 fps more but still within SAAMI pressure specs. TFB has some hard data and graphs.

So what I wonder is…

Barnes Bullets like velocity. Generally speaking, the faster you can push ’em, the more performance you’ll get out of them. So if these new powders can get 100-200 fps more, what tangible gains could we see in driving those Barnes bullets?

Now, the 6.8 SPC was designed to be used out of rifles with shorter barrels (e.g. 14.5″, 16″, even Bill Wilson typically uses an 11″ to take feral hogs). These powders are about efficient burn:

They achieve this by developing a set of new powders and blending these powders specifically for each cartridge so that all the powders burns completely inside the barrel. This allows maximum power transferred to the cartridge but also lower muzzle blast, thereby reducing recoil.

So these powders in short-barreled rifles… could use of these powders “negate” the velocity loss you see by taking a couple of inches off your barrel?

Then, Barnes Bullets that like velocity, easier to handle SBR’s, powder that gives you more velocity (and less muzzle blast and less recoil and more efficient burn) well…. could this be a fantastic combination?

I’m really curious.

I’ve been keeping up my daily ritual of reloading every morning. I did bump it up to 200 rounds a day, and that’s made a big difference. Doesn’t take much more time out of my day, but is making everything go well… twice as fast as before. I’m out there almost every morning, and at this rate I reckon I’ll be done reloading all my 9mm components by end of August or so. Then a brief stint to get all the .38 Special I have loaded up. And then… rifle loading.

Let’s go back to February 2010 and look at my long term reloading plans. I am sticking with the goal to get a lot of 9 loaded up.

The thing that’s different? Back then 6.8 SPC wasn’t in the picture, but it is now. Now that I have it, I’m not sure I’ll bother with .223 because I was wanting .223 for hunting and well… 6.8 is filling that role. However, loading for 6.8 is a LOT more expensive. And I must admit, after all the failure and problems I had before with rifle reloading, I’m a little gunshy and unsure where to go. I think the biggest thing that got me not just the frustration factor but the cost involved — those Barnes Bullets aren’t cheap.

Was it the single-stage press and inconsistency there? Was it the recipe? Was it the way the bullets were being seated or crimped? Was it just me? I don’t know. Too many factors to consider. And now, I’m going to load on the progressive press. foo.c’s zombie loads were done on his Lock-n-Load progressive press and they came out excellent, so I’m hoping for greater consistency due to that factor.

Still…. I’m not sure what I should do. Should I start loading some .223 plinking loads? I’ve got a bunch of brass and bullets (.223 55grain FMJ’s) and usable powder (e.g. Ramshot TAC). Loading them could help me shake out any process issues (resize, deprime… might even set up the single-stage to do that; brass prep (trim, clean/ream primer pockets, etc.); prime, powder, bullet; skip the crimp for now). Plus help me gain confidence in loading, after the prior fiasco. I’d have to shoot these with irons, but if I could get a group doing 0.5″ at 50 yards, that’d be bueno.

I may do that. Then after that, do some 6.8 plinking loads, because it’ll be a little cheaper and I want plinking loads anyways. Then finally move to those Barnes 95 grain TTSX bullets and make a hunting load.

Probably what I’ll do. I’m really excited about it and kinda want to get done with the handgun loads so I can get to experimenting. 🙂

The first time I tried my hand at reloading on a progressive press, the press had a case-feeder. That was very nice because it was one less thing to have to fiddle with and worry about.

Then I spent time working with a single-stage press, and maybe because it took me to the other extreme of handloading speed, I really wanted to get a case-feeder when I bought my Hornady Lock-n-Load AP.

foo.c talked me out of getting a case-feeder. Coupled with the fact they’re kinda expensive, I just left it alone but always kept it in the back of my mind to get one.

The past couple weeks of reloading every day have started to change my mind. You see, all of the brass I reload is used. A decent portion of the brass is harvested off dirt ranges, thus all manner of crud can hide in the cases and you can have a range of case issues. I had 2 cases in the past couple weeks that got as far as the powder cop die, which registered high, and then upon examination was caused by a little bit of debris in the case. As well, I find 9mm NATO cases now and again and due to their primer crimp they can be really annoying to decap. So while before I did examine cases before putting them in the press, I really examine them now. If it’s NATO, whereas before I didn’t notice nor care and just reloaded it, now I put it aside. If it’s got debris, I put it aside and clean it out later. If there’s something else wrong, set it aside or toss it into the scrap bin. And as long as I’m at it, if I hit a nickel case I set that aside too.

Thing is, there’s no way I could do this if I had a case feeder. I’d have to do all the sorting and inspection beforehand, and frankly brass processing is one of the more boring tasks that I really hate dealing with. 🙂

Will I get a case feeder someday? Perhaps. I mean, those fully-automated Dillons are really cool. 🙂  But for now, this is just fine.

Check it out:

This is Dawson Precision’s reloading room. There are 7 presses in there, I believe all Dillon 1050’s. Four of them are fully automated.

Excuse me while I wipe the drool from my chin. 😉

After writing the previous entry about the reload recipe primer change, I figured what the heck…. went ahead and made that my 100 rounds for today.

Just got back in from loading them. A few observations:

• I’m still having bad luck with the Berry’s bullets. I had 4 of 20 get “squished/shaved” during the seating stage. I’m truly suspecting that I got a couple of bad lots, that this is not indicative of Berry’s quality in general. But it’s still frustrating.
• Using the Remington primers as a “standard”, I found that on the whole the Federal primers were very easy to seat and the Wolf were generally harder to seat. Winchester about the same (maybe a hair harder to seat, but not as much as Wolf).
• A powder cop die is a wonderful thing. This is the second time it’s saved me… I missed seeing a tiny twig in the case when I first put the case in. The powder cop die registered way high and lo, there was the little twig. It’s very easy to get lulled into ignoring the powder cop because 999 out of 1000 it registers just fine.

Plus, Daughter came out to help me. She helped me clean and sort a bunch of brass. Helps me inspect each round after it’s completed. She pulled the bullets on those failed Berry’s loads. And she likes to pull the press lever, but it’s still difficult for her to seat the primers. 🙂   She’s been coming out the past some mornings to help me or just hang out, and I really love that time together.

I hope to get to the range soon to try these out.

I have my basic 9mm plinking reload recipe. I collected some performance data on it.

I varied the bullets used. Same style of bullets (i.e. all 115 grain, all some sort of round-nose jacketed), but variances like Hornady’s version, Berry’s version, Speer’s version, Precision Delta’s version, etc..  More or less, things performed about the same, as expected, but I only tested velocity. Any accuracy work I’ve done as just been shooting them, and to date they’ve gone where I expected them to go.

I’m about to vary another factor: the primer.

I’m coming to the end of my stock of Remington 1.5 Small Pistol Primers. Other primers I have are Federal and Wolf, and a few Winchester. I expect the basic recipe will work about the same, but hey… why not work to get some hard data on it? So, that’s what I’m going to set about doing.

Here’s what I’m going to reload:

• The base recipe
• Base + using Precision Delta bullets
• Base + PD bullets + Winchester primer
• Base + PD bullets + Federal primer
• Base + PD bullets + Wolf primer

I’ll reload 20 rounds of each iteration. I plan to shoot 10 through my XD-9 4″ and 10 through my XD-9 5″. Reason for that is the previous set of performance data did a little through both guns, so to aid comparison I ought to continue doing both. I also shot some Federal American Eagle 124 grain factory loads for comparison as that was all I had at the time, but I’d like to get another factory load that’s a little closer, say Winchester White Box; something that’s 115 grain and a target load.

When I shoot these, I’d like to set it up to shoot off the bench over the chrono and into a target. That way I can be steady, get velocity, and get accuracy readings. But I’m not 100% sure I’ll be able to set this up at the range. If I can’t do that, it may have to be 5 over the chrono and 5 into the target. We’ll see. I’ll hope for the best.

It may take me a bit to get these loaded then get to the range to gather the data… a matter of scheduling. But I do want to do this to see how the primer change will affect things.

Updated: data now posted.