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Little bit of everything

>>65052254
Good answer

Is reloading worth it for 12 gauge, .223 and 6.5 creedmoor? If I just buy a book and try it at home with a reloading starter kit, how likely am I to blow myself or my gun up?

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>>65052321
Not sure on 12ga. The others you might save a little. If you're making hunting or high end target rounds you will. Follow the manual & you'll be safe.

>>65052321
>how likely am I to blow myself or my gun up?
Just stay with the specs of the loads in your book, start out at the lowest they say and work your way up if you need higher velocity.
And never be afraid to ask questions.

>>65052372
>.260 Rem
Uhh hello Based Department?

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>>65052254

>>65051959
I really should message the guy on ebay who made my .38/357 gas check die cutter.
stupid thing broke after like 20ish checks cut from .012 thou copper sheet, but I can probably ask my dad to cut one out of tool steel and get it heat treated (when he has time (rare).
the original producer left too small a web on the cutting stem of the die and the main body and it's back bore to release the formed copper cups. I don't want to be like hey I finally used your product after a few months but you cost me 125$ for 24 Gas checks, i'm not the confrontational sort.

>>65053648
I'd try to get a refund or replacement

I'm loading shotshells for my Snider Enfield. Lemme know if anyone wants me to do a video on it, I've been thinking about sharing my knowledge.

To test:
>2 batches, 45rds total of .357
>4 batches, 80rds total of 9x19mm
>3 batches, 120rds of .45 Auto
>3 batches, 39rds of .45 Super
I need to stop making new loads and actually shoot them.

Anyone have tried load data for 250gr .45 Auto?

>>65052412
Definitely fun to shoot.

>>65051959
I just loaded up two ten round test batches for my .30-06.

Both are virgin starline brass, 56.0gr IMR4350 and Ginex LRPs. One batch is loaded with Speer 165gr hot cors and one is loaded with Speer 165gr BTSP. Hopefully one of them gives me a half decent 10rd group. I just want a good cheap hunting load that I can crank out in some volume.

>>65057126
>cheap hunting load that I can crank out in some volume
Based.

>>65051959
Loading 44 Mag with Pyrodex P using a Lee Precision hand loader.

>>65057561
>Pyrodex P
Is it smokeless? What fun is that?

>>65057625
"Substitute blackpowder" is the official term; still produces a big cloud of smoke when it goes off so a lot of fun to be had.

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>>65052254
Can concur

>>65052321
What the others said. Also, keep in mind precision loading setups are normally single stage and volume are multi-stage and that you will enter a nerd zone focusing on projectiles, powder, and cases. If all you want to do with a good single stage is 300 rounds of optimized 6.5 creedmoor for the year I don't think you'd break even, you'll probably have 10% better accuracy than trying 10 different factory loads, and averaged out handwork will probably be 2 minutes cartridge assuming youre 100% dead focused. Optimized means choosing a bullet and making it shoot accurately on a temp stable powder with a good velocity.
>bullets
If you care about range and terminal performance it can be a significant step up. Something like a 142 grain ABLR is cream of the crop but make sure whatever bullets you choose aren't too long for your magazine.
>shotgun
If hunting and wanting to use optimized loads there's some significant gains in price to performance especially if boutique. It's a weird time where it makes a lot of economical sense to buy shells already with primers due to shipping laws for a hunting trip and discard them. Things like 3.5" with heavy payload of spherical tungsten #7 for dense 70 yard shots, #F shot lead for varmints, or even variations of standard lead shots.

>>65059624
I was thinking more of recycling brass and possibly having a backstop in case of shortages or whatever other fake and gay happening will hit in the coming years. Seems like a better plan is just to stock up and make sure I keep the storage at a good humidity and temperature.

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So apparently Sierra has .45 Super loads without calling it Super...

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Let me know if anyone wants the other bullet weights.

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>>65051959
Can the freindly anon that posted the 8mm reloading data a few months ago please post data for 6.5 Swedish? I am trying to find a powder that will work with both, if that is ever possible, and I am looking to used a 200 grain bullet in the 8mm and 156-160 grain in 6.5mm.
If anyone has any experience or advice with either of these calibers, I would love to hear about it.

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>>65060387
I got ya, fren
Sorry the quality is a little lower than my last postings. I was in a rush to take care of something

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>>65060588

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>>65060590

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>>65060595

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>>65060599

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>>65060604

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>>65060607

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>>65060614
That's it for Speer vol 13 and Hornady vol 10
I have older volumes of each if you really want later

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>>65060614

>>65061793
Kek.

>>65060588
Super sweet, thanks! I will take the time to look at this a little closer when I get home, but of the bat, it looks like there is a big jump from the ~140 gran projectile to the 160 grain. Also, that 160 grain has the BC of a bog turd, lol. It looks like I have a lot of homework to do.

>>65061793
>>65062222
>375 JDJ
The best part is that is is absolutely unrelated to 6.5 Swedish.

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>>65062240
No problem

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On order
>500 .357 158gr FMJs
>500 .357 158gr JHPs
>100 .45 240gr JHPs
>100 .45 250gr JHPs
>100 .45 260gr JHPs

I'm burning through old test batches of 6.5prc, 308, and 300wm. Im kind of done fucking around with different loads....i dont have time any more.

Once the test loads are shot i plan to burn through my remaining powder and clusterfuck of different bullets with a basic charge and saami seating depth. This will get me to the range but also free up some storage space.

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>>65051959
.30-06, 180 grain hornady sst on top of ~55 grains of imr 4350. Last tests had a sd of 12 fps. Working on seating depth now, got some comparators today.
Pic related but old.

>>65064023
Good bullet. Im >>65064010.
I have the 165sst sitting at 2.8", fed brass, fed primers, and a healthy dose of imr4064...i want to say 46gr but im phone posting from my bed and my notes are far away.

Cheap bullet, good for plinking, and drops deer and bears like a sack of hammers.

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Almost done sizing and depriming my .357s
I'll load 300+ for my next batch

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>another 3# of Autocomp on order
>another 3k large pistol primers on order
Exclusively going to be used for 200gr SWCs.

>>65060387
Speaking of 8mm, is it worth casting lead 8mm Mauser for reloading?

>>65066095
Eh, if you don't cast already, probably not. You are limited to 1400ish fps before you have to put a gas check on, and they are harder to find nowadays.
That being said, I cast powder coat and gas check 200gr bullets for my krags.
It seems casting is best suited for larger bore stuff, like black powder cartridges.

>>65063631
Based America first and only reloaded. What powder are you using?

>>65067392
Titegroup
Autocomp
Power Pistol
2400
Long Shot
231
296

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Trimming .357s
The .35 caliber pilot doesn't fit in some cases, the .30 does and works. Whatever.

>>65067383
With a gas check and powder coating, could a cast rifle round approach 2000fps?

>>65068675
Can top 2,000 with gas check and proper lube even.

>>65064023
Tested my loads today (25 rounds); average velocity of 2737fps, sd of 13 and an extreme spread of 50 fps. Smallest group had a case head to ogive of 2.652".
Not my best shooting because of rain but I'm pretty confident they'll do what I want them to do for hunting. I'll get the last 25 loaded with this recipe and see how they do before I get some more bullets and powder.

>>65051959
Someone gave me at least 25-30 lbs. of rifle powder on Wednesday. Plus some large rifle primers, and some 243 brass.

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Well /rg/ this is it.
I'm shooting my .45 Super reloads after 12:00PM today, Sunday, April 12th.
Wish me luck. I'll post at some point afterwards.

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>>65069951
Fired all successfully. Recoil wasn't bad, brass didn't fly too far. 10/10 will load again. Eventually I'll get to borrow a chronograph to get velocity measurements.

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>>65057126
An update - shot both groups. The hot-cors gave me a 3" 10 shot group at 102 yards and the BTSP's gave me and 8 round group of about 2.8 inches. Average velocity was 2719 for the hot-cors and 2690 for the BTSPs.

I've abandoned traditional "load development" as a bunch of bullshit, and didn't look at seating depth at all when I put these together. Didn't change anything about the seating die between bullets. .30-06 has lots of slop and lots of freebore so I think I'll give the 20 pieces of once fired brass from this test a 0.020" shoulder bump, load with hot-cors seated 0.020 off the lands, and shoot one big group of 20.

These targets are a good reminder why it's important to shoot big groups - and I don't really think of these as "big." If I had shot 3 groups per load, I could have cherry picked the nice shapes and strings, declared a couple flyers, and declared my Model 70 the king of benchrest.

This session also reminded me of why I drifted away from shooting the .30-06. These hand loads were mild, but I also used up the last of my old 168gr TTSX loads that were pushing 2900fps, blowing up rocks. For the performance you get, it's just a hard cartridge to shoot in volume.

>>65064023
>>65064093
I took a 6'8" black bear with a 165gr SST over IMR4350. Superb killing bullet.

>>65051959
I just loaded up 200 rounds of 12ga with Lyman 525 slugs I cast a few weeks ago.

>>65052321
> IMO
> 6.5 creedmoor
yes
>.223
no. right now I just buy what is brass cased and cheap. I would only load this if I didn't have any on hand and store shelves are bare. I have dies, but have never used them.
>12ga
depends on the loading. Like .223, I won't reload any bird shot loads. I'd buy buckshot if I was out, and cast if I had to. I will shoot my own cast slugs over factory slugs.

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>>65072714
>didn't look at seating depth at all when I put these together.
Seating depth is key.
I got a box of pic related (it has a hotrod engine on it, it has to be good, right?), same bullet, different powder (62.5 grains) but seated 0.062" deeper than my loads and they shoot like absolute dog shit out of my gun (4" group vs 1").
Find your best sd on velocity then start dicking around with your seating depth for your tightest group.

>>65073096
Edit: I've got ten left I'm going to pull the bullets on 5 to my seating depth and compare the groups for funsies and to shit on hornady.

>>65073096
>Seating depth is key
So I'm told. My experience with more modern cartridges, modern match bullets and large group sizes doesn't really support that though. I got interested in testing it myself after reading some blog posts/redditors (lol) and the Hornady podcast bros talking about their failure to prove significance of seating depth (besides function and safety) when shooting for large sample sizes. I can verify that 6.5CM with an ELD type bullet doesn't care much about 0.010 or 0.020 differences in jump.

I used to do long ladder tests, looking for "nodes" and such, shooting 3 and 5 round test groups. They really don't tell you anything at all, in fact they'll just mislead you and get you chasing your tail. I think they actually made me a worse shooter - waste of practice time, endless spiral of systems testing under fairly high recoil. I had many 1moa loads... Until I shot bigger groups with them. This also solved the mystery of the wandering zero.

The 06 is sloppy and has a lot of freebore, and the bullets I'm loading are not modern bullets, and I doubt anyone can tell me if a 30 cal hot-cor is jump sensitive, so I'm just going to load it fairly close to the lands for the sake of alignment and support. If I can get a legit 3moa cone of fire, verified with 20+ rounds, I'll be content. For the sake of my own curiosity I might also try some 155gr ELD-M's and some 168gr Gold Dots.

>>65074319
Good post

>>65073126
I was going to say you should do that

>>65069951
excellent cartridge

>>65062240
It's for moose on driven hunts

Anyone know if its possible to make good (think match grade) ammunition with standard dies? I want to start reloading for the 6.5creedmoor and am trying to decide to go with either the redding type S seating dies or the regular RCBS FL die set.

For now it will be strictly fun target shooting...I'd like to get around 3/4" groups with the ammo

>>65075603
Consistency is key. Do the same thing the same way every time and you can get match grade accuracy from any decently made die.
Can also get better runout by rotating and redoing the cartridge after seating.

>>65075665
This
I make 308 'match' ammo with standard rcbs dies. I use an auto powder measure, I've found that consist powder weights make the biggest difference of all the things you can get autistic about. My buddy has one of those laboratory grade scales and gets extreme spreads of like 12fps.

Anyone else notice Hornady .357 mag brass is shorter than all the others? fucking annoying.
I used to think it was my fault my reloads were all fucked because of me and the federal brass was like at least .040 longer

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Anyone have any experience with sabots? Apparently I’m going to try to mess with them now…. Came across the file, have a 3d printer… with the varmint grenade 22’s and the sabot and gas check it’s just a hair under 80 grains…. Can test in 45LC, 454 casull or 460..

>>65075832
Yeah it's because of their proprietary bullets. I agree it's annoying.
>>65075846
No but I'm curious to see the results.

>>65075741
If you can find any winchester powder, it meters much better through powder drops (unless by auto measure you meant one of those auto tricklers)

>>65075741
Kind of powder matters quite a bit too depending on conditions.
Using RL15, it's somewhat temperature sensitive. If I chambered a round and waited for the wind to die down it showed a fairly massive jump. At least 50° difference between air and chamber.
First batch showed 220 fps spread. Second batch with identical components but fired faster since the wind as gone was 48 fps ES.
For comparison the Hornady "Match grade" ammo had 109 ES, shot the same groups, and cost $4 a shot. Not buying that again.

>>65071527
Those loads were the following:
230gr w/ 8.7grs of Power Pistol
200gr w/ 9.5grs of Power Pistol
185gr w/ 10.5grs of Power Pistol

The next ones I'm going to do will be:
230grs w/ 9grs of Power Pistol
185grs w/ 10.9grs of Power Pistol

Then some from >>65060330
230grs w/ 6.1grs of Titegroup
185grs w/ 8.9grs of Titegroup

I'm also thinking about:
230grs w/ 8.7grs of Long Shot
250grs w/ 7.9grs of Power Pistol
250grs w/ 7.9grs of Long Shot

I'm still waiting on 260gr bullets to arrive and I'd probably do 7.4grs of Long Shot and 7.4grs of Power Pistol for those.

I really need to borrow a chronograph too.

>>65076119
>hornady
Despite having a lot of their reloading tools and liking their bullets, I've been pretty well disappinted with hornady products as a whole

>>65075846
What material were you planning on using?

>>65076762
Pla for starters since I have it. Person I got the idea from reported no residue issues, just stabilizing ones… but the also had solid empty sabots going into wood…. Which would suggest to me that they’re too strong… I’m gonna try some different variations on solid base/thinwall “petals” and probably with a variety of different diameter bullets.. I have a feeling that the gas check, and solid base of the sabot or where you want it to be engaging the rifling, and if you can make the pedals thin enough for fragile enough, as soon as it exits the barrel, they peel back to hopefully cleanly release the round. Luckily, it’s trivially easy to print these, if I load them in 45 long colt cases and fire them out of a 460 X frame then I have a reasonably absurd level of overhead capacity for over pressure rounds. Along with a pretty sizable starting diameter to try this with maybe 44, 357, 40 caliber, and 22 caliber projectiles also the X frames got gain twist rifling which might work just a bit better on getting the softer material spinning up.

>>65076762
Pla for starters since I have it. Person I got the idea from reported no residue issues, just stabilizing ones… but the also had solid empty sabots going into wood…. Which would suggest to me that they’re too strong… I’m gonna try some different variations on solid base/thinwall “petals” and probably with a variety of different diameter bullets.. I have a feeling that the gas check, and solid base of the sabot or where you want it to be engaging the rifling, and if you can make the pedals thin enough for fragile enough, as soon as it exits the barrel, they peel back to hopefully cleanly release the round. Luckily, it’s trivially easy to print these, if I load them in 45 long colt cases and fire them out of a 460 X frame then I have a reasonably absurd level of overhead capacity for over pressure rounds. Along with a pretty sizable starting diameter to try this with maybe 44, 357, 40 caliber, and 22 caliber projectiles also the X frames got gain twist rifling which might work just a bit better on getting the softer material spinning up.

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>>65051959
lately only been loading paper cartridges for my .54 sharps, current load gets me about a 6 inch group at 100 or so.

>>65076789
>paper cartridges
Holy shit, anon. That's fucking awesome!

>>65076789
Based. I've messed around with paper cartridges before but all my black powder stuff takes round ball only, which complicates things

>>65076789
BASED, tried 25gr of powder in my 1858 rem clone with cigarette papers wrapped on a wooden dowel and sealed with a glue stick and a round ball, shit worked flawlessly. I was however still worried about the debris in the cylinder potentially causing a problem

>>65072714
>abandoned traditional "load development" as a bunch of bullshit, and didn't look at seating depth at all when I put these together
so you're just wasting components then ok

>>65075603
I'm very happy with my rcbs dies. I do admittedly reload very slowly, checking OAL after each round. I wouldn't load any better with match grade dies

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>>65076789
nice

>>65075603
>am trying to decide to go with either the redding type S seating dies or the regular RCBS FL die set.
Consider Forster FL sizer with their Ultra seater. The ultra seater is a sliding chamber 'match' style like the Redding Match seater. The Forster seater just doesn't have the micrometer seating depth adjustment unless you get the more expensive version with it. Forster lock rings actually work unlike the trash set screw rings that both RCBS and Redding ship with.

>>65076738
>230grs w/ 6.1grs of Titegroup
>185grs w/ 8.9grs of Titegroup
Ignore these. Can't be used in a semi-auto at all. Modern .45 ACP revolvers can handle them but ironically a .45 Super can't.
I'll try 5.5grs of Titegroup under a 230gr instead and work my way up.

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Going thru my reloading shit, cleaning spent brass and reorganizing a bit. Got '06 in the wet tumbler now, decapping .303 presently, then on to fuddy fih auto.

>>65076789
Sick, this tickles my 'tism.

>>65076825
Need more 'tism anon. It worked for 18th and 19th century world powers, it can work for you too.

>>65078769
>fuddy fih auto
What are you loading those with?

>>65078773
Nothin yet, got a bunch of poly jacketed shit i need my friends hi-point to chew thru first.

I do have some factory loads, and some of my reloads; those have 5gn of win 231 behind 185gn hornady XTPs

>>65078769
You've got a bunch of .303 to scrap already.

>>65051959
>>65075603
>>65078450
>Consider Forster FL sizer
I missed named the Forster dies on previous post.
Standard dies/seater are the "Benchrest"
Micrometer seater is the "Ultra" seater
The standard benchrest seater/FL set ar a good bang for the buck. More $ than RCBS standard dies, and less than Redding Competition, but great bang for the buck dies. My go-to for a caliber that I want to make quality loads for. Whatever you get, just go with a FL sizer, and skip any bushing nonsense. The sizer die neck diameter on the Forsters can be custom honed by them to match your loaded round diameter/brass thickness so that you aren't oversizing the necks on each sizing. I like to take the sizing button out and use a neck expander mandrel die after FL sizing.

>>65078991
Might get 1 or 2 more on some of those. Unless only once fired is ok for NZ?

>>65078769
I don't think they made paper cartridges for rifles with round ball ever actually. Paper patching probably would not have sufficed. Though I do know of some psuedo cartridges using fabric that just required a bit more prep to use

>>65079229
>I don't think they made paper cartridges for rifles with round ball ever actually.
Aside from every military doing it.

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>>65079229
Go read Sharpe if you like hisfic, its right up youre alley.

>>65078991
Here, Ranjit, use this image as inspiration to fuck your sister instead of shitting up a thread you cant comment cunstructively on.

>>65077566
cleaning as normal will remove any debris that dont burn up, my rem 1858 worked great until it got rust locked because I forgot to clean it
>>65076793
>>65078105
>>65078769
I also made lil cartridge packs from packing paper, with 10 cartridges and 12 caps for ease of storage and range use. at some point ill send it to larry flees for his modifications because it refuses to ignite the power quite often, even loose loaded. hopefully ill have it ready for mext deer season.

>>65077717
Tell me what you think you're testing with 3 and 5 round groups.

>>65079242
what brass headstamp is that and how many loads did you get before your .303 case blew up? are you full length sizing every time?

.308 with 165 gr TGK for my Hog Hunter.

Various bullets, such as 175 gr ELD-Xs, for my 2 7PRC rifles (an X-Bolt and B-14 HMR).

>>65079237
For rifles, or the smoothbores they used?

>>65080642
This is a better place to ask this