Finally bit the bullet

Lawnboi

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Well after over a year of scouring the net including this site for information on reloading, I finall put together some equipment and am off to the races. Going to post in this thread for the next few weeks as I attempt to build a few loads. Any input is greatly appreciated. I’m hoping to get my ES/SD down, and have a little more consistency than factory ammo. I went a little beyond buying a starter set, as I wanted gear I wasn’t going to grow out of quickly. That said I still have a long list of stuff I think I’ll need.

For starters, I’m going to reload some 223. Iv got 600 pieces of once fired hornady brass, and 200 Lapua never fired. Going to start with the hornady, since I won’t mind messing up one or two, or a hundred.

Alright here we go. Brass prep time. I started by counting out around 200 pieces of brass, cracked open the box on a hornady dry tumbler that UPS delivered this morning, and threw in some rice and let it go for an hour. 6337E777-7FF4-4655-A441-0A0C7B8F83E0.jpeg
Rice seemed to do its job, came out pretty clean. Iv read the debates on wet vs dry, and squeaky clean brass vs somewhat dirty. Figured I’d eventually need a dry tumbler so why not start there. Went with rice for starters to attempt to keep dust down, seems to be working so far.

Next up it was sizing. This hornady brass was all over the place for size and neck thickness. I took the shortest brass, using a hornady headspace comparator, and mitutoyo calipers and set myself up for a small bump on most brass. Initial measurements yielded +\- .004, took the bottom one that chambered easily at 1.4580 and attempted to replicate. For reference my modified hornady case for my comparator is 1.4570. Neck thicknesses were all over as well, didn’t help most were dented. My tikka must be spitting them out pretty hard. Little math and I landed on a .246 bushing in my die. I purchased an LE Wilson set with their full length bushing sizer, set it up to bump to my shortest brass, and began sizing. I initially wanted Redding competition shell holders to play with adjustment that way, but they are sold out everywhere so
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For lubricant I ran imperial sizing wax on the body, and dipped the case mouth in imperial dry neck lube. Nothing got stuck but I dented a few, learned quick that a little of that wax goes a long way. Anyways I didn’t worry much about the dented mouths for starters, as I planned to run my brass through an expander mandrel to push any imperfections to the outside of the case. 1C3D0B51-56C5-4A63-969D-39904E684043.jpeg
I continued to size the 200 I had, checking periodically, everything was remaining what I thought was pretty consistent. So I sized them all.
Following sizing I deburred flash holes, probably totally unnecessary for what I’m trying to accomplish but threw it in there. Also cleaned up primer pockets with a lee cleaner chucked up on a drill. Worked well, pickets came out looking okay.
After sizing and cleaning I threw the brass back in the tumbler to get the wax off, 20 minutes and I took it out.

Next I set up my press with a Sinclair expander mandrel to smooth out my necks, and hopefully set a nice consistent neck tension. I have a turning mandrel somewhere in USPS land coming that I was also going to play with, but for now I’m just using the expander hoping it will give me enough tension. DBD99041-3268-4A8E-81AB-3B11B659854E.jpeg
I ran all the brass threw the mandrel, lubing with imperial dry lube periodically. Very little resistance on the mandrel told me that I probably did the right stuff picking my bushing. Pressure needed to expand was all over the board. Some cases took almost nothing, some a bunch, I’m guessing it’s just from hornady neck thicknesses being all over the place.

Once expanded it was time to trim. I grabbed a Giraud tri way for this, trim/chamfer/debur all in one step. I left it set to it’s factory setting at 1.7435” and started trimming. Some sore fingers later and I had everything trimmed up. Checking periodically the trimmer was doing a great job, my cases were all 1.743-1.744”.
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Called it a night, brass should be ready for primers, powder and bullets.
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Anything I’m missing so far?
 
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Lawnboi

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Fill that tumbler up to about an inch below the top.

Funny story, I was going to buy more rice but it was cleaned out still at the local grocery store from Covid crap

I was impressed with how well it cleaned the brass. Didn’t make it all shiny, but cleaned it up well.
 
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Lawnboi

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First problem. It appears this hornady brass is all crimped. All of it. So I’m either going to play with a pocket reamer to see if that works or just use the Lapua brass.

Had a swear fest putting in a few primers and getting it stuck on my shell holder.
I was able to seat 50 that went smoothly, but ended up tossing 15 cases with pop sided primers. I was shaving brass off the primer lip on some.

Im not sure if I crushed the primers on the ones that look good, may just start over with Lapua brass now that I know I’m not going to wreck a bunch. That or I need to buy more tools7BDEA8F3-635B-4975-9882-5BB883464ABD.jpeg

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Edit, I’m going to toss what I have primed, work on getting a pocket swager or reamer, and in the mean time setup to load 75eldm in Lapua brass. Iv got 300 bthp I want to load up in the hornady but I’ll skip it if it’s going to take me much to get the pockets cleaned up.
 
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I tried removing the crimped pocket with standard chamfer tool and it works just hard to be consistent. Bought the Hornady which is reasonable price and adjustable and it worked well.
 
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Lawnboi

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You need a primer pocket crimp remover for that
View attachment 186687

Just found this at the local fleet farm and grabbed it.

I think I’m going to work up a load with the hornady 75bthp in the hornady brass, and work up a load with 75eldm with the Lapua, then go from there.

Would like to by the end of summer to have either a 75eldm or 77tmk load for coyotes this fall/winter.
 
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Lawnboi

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All cleaned up. That’s a pain in the ass to do by hand, now I know why guys spend big bucks on stuff to swage cases. This is 150 or so cases. Only another 400 to go
 
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Lawnboi

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Primed, filled with powder and loaded .020 off the lands. Ready to go see what the gun likes. Case lengths to the ogive were +\- .002. I didn’t bother weight sorting the brass either. Seating force was pretty similar throughout, slight powder crunch at the end if I didn’t tap the case to settle the powder.
 
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I use my air compressor to dry my brass sometimes I put them in oven low temp just to warm & dry them quick if I’m impatient. I use a Harbor Freight rock tumbler with stainless steel pins Dawn soap & lemi shine.

When I stainless tumbled and wanted to dry brass quick I would put a towel inside a glass baking dish, dump the brass on the towel, and use a hairdryer to blow them dry.
 
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Lawnboi

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200 more cases sized, cleaned and removed crimps.

If my 6.5 hornady cases are crimped I’m getting rid of them and going straight to Lapua. Removing the crimp sucks.

Hopefully Wednesday or Friday I can get out and shoot what I have loaded if it’s not raining. I’m hoping I have something that will give me 1 moa and some decent velocity in there so I can load up the rest of the 300 75 bthp bullets Iv got for the wife to plink with.
 
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Lawnboi

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Nice "starter" set! I've never used an arbor press, looks pretty slick.

The arbor press just made a lot of sense to me. Works pretty slick. Im going to grab the same Wilson die set for 6.5 creedmoor for my prs and hunting rifle.

Hopefully Redding gets some competition shell holders back in stock, will make it easy to switch between different bumps for different guns in the same caliber
 
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200 more cases sized, cleaned and removed crimps.

If my 6.5 hornady cases are crimped I’m getting rid of them and going straight to Lapua. Removing the crimp sucks.

Hopefully Wednesday or Friday I can get out and shoot what I have loaded if it’s not raining. I’m hoping I have something that will give me 1 moa and some decent velocity in there so I can load up the rest of the 300 75 bthp bullets Iv got for the wife to plink with.

The 6.5 cases most likely aren’t crimped. It’s pretty common on 5.56/223 though.
Looks like you’re well on your way to some good ammo and good choice of equipment.
 
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Lawnboi

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My other mandrels came. Today I expanded, and trimmed an additional 200 hornady cases. I used the Sinclair expander last time which led to tensions averaging .0015. The turning mandrel is .2220”, so today I used that one. Amazing the variance in the hornady necks. Some cases the mandrel passed through with little to no pressure and some took a little push. I’m hoping this gives me the .002 neck tension I want for this gun being magazine fed. Even at .0015 neck tension, I can’t budge the bullets in my 3 dummy rounds
 
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Lawnboi

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Got out this morning to shoot what I had.
60 degrees and sunny. 100 yards, let the rifle cool between groups. I know a couple of the ones way out there were me but I counted them anyways.
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Smallest group was .6 and also happened to have single digit SD but was slow at 2650fps.

Biggest group ran 1.4”. 2640 at 22 grains, 2830 at 24 grains. SD’s remained pretty consistent at 15, ES the same around 38.
I had no pressure signs at 24 grains. Primer was a nut hair flatter at 24 than 22 but not noticeable flat like I’m getting up there in pressure.

I loaded up 25 more, another 5 from my best group at 22.4. 5 at 23.6 to see what that does again.

24, 24.2, 24.4

I was happy with the accuracy from a few of the loads, but they were on the slow side.

I did notice my bullets are being engraved a bit by seating the bullet, my drill chuck is bent or something causing it not to circle straight, so I’ll need a new drill, seems like one side of all my cases is a little less chamfered.
 
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Lawnboi

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Got out and shot again up to 24.4 grains. Had a slight ejector mark at 24.4 on a few cases. Velocity was higher over 24, at 2870 but ES and SD.
Out of 75 rounds fired cover 2.4 grains of powder the largest group I had was 1.4”. Being 60 degrees in the shade I think I’ll stay away from anything higher, most of this ammo will be shot in some heat, and probably sun.

Im going to load up a hand ful at 23.6 grains. This gave me decent velocity at 2760, decent SD and ES. Not going to pursue lower SD and ES numbers for this load as they will only be getting shot to 560 yards, and mainly for plinking. I suspect a lot of the problem is the brass coming from various lots of hornady and being all over the place on dimensions.

Thinking of trying them seated .030 and .035 and seeing if it does anything, I know the 75hpbt is designed for AR mags

I guess I’ll find out if it’s the brass once I load up some Lapua
 
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Lawnboi

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My first developed load. Using the turning mandrel, and having a more uniform chamfer on the cases definitely made seating pressures more even. Hopefully that leads to some lower SD, 15 rounds of this powder charge yeilded 13 for an SD.

Measuring 10 random loaded cases all were within 1 grain. Must be doing something right.

I’ll see how this 50 goes at some extended ranges. If all goes well I’ll just load up another 180 and have some plinking ammo for the wife. Otherwise I’ll have to do some playing with seating depth to see if that helps.
 

tdhanses

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Great choices on equipment! Just keep tinkering, I like to load 10rds per load and move in .5gr increment. Don’t worry about velocity so much but find a low ES/SD.

Don't be afraid to also test seating increments from .01 -.1 off.
 
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