quote:

Originally posted by jmorris:

quote:

I do most bottleneck cases on a Co-Ax.
For a progressive, it is rather a waste of the press...I am not loading that many rounds.

Yes a progressive is a waste of money and time converting from one caliber to another if your not loading that many rounds.

I like my co-ax too but when I open a 6000 count box of bullets the co-ax isn't on my list of presses I want to load them with.



That's where the OP is at at this point.

quote:

bought 6,000 Hornady bullets for .06 ea, dusted off some forgotten A2230, and loaded up 250 rounds on my T-7. I almost grew old doing it.

^^ Yep, that's the box of bullets I purchased. I won't be getting through them anytime soon if I stick to a single stage. I'm going to set up a progressive, order a bunch of brass from brassbomber, and just get them all done at once.

I think the divide is the high volume "good enough" reloaders vs low volume perfectionist reloaders.

I sort of want the new Mark 7 Revolution reloader, as it looks like it has enough room on the tool head to do everyone for 223 on one pass through the machine.

By the time I even get my rifle brass (5.56/.223) onto my RCBS Pro2000, I've alread:

1. Deprimed
2. Wet Tumbled, mostly to get primer pocket pristine
3. Lubed and resized
4. Trimmed/chamfered
5. Dry tumbled in polishing media to remove wax lube and smooth any rough edges

All of the above occurs on my single stage Rock Chucker.

After that, I pre-prime all the brass on the progressive; die plate removed. At that point, all that is left to do on the Pro2000 is to drop powder, do a powder check, drop/seat a bullet, and then factory crimp.

quote:

Originally posted by Blue68f100:
It's a 2 step process.

Here is my procedures for most all rifle loads on a LNL-AP w/brass feeder.

1. Clean the brass. Since I use a wet system I de-prime using a universal die before cleaning. This way the primer pockets gets cleaned.
(I run my brass through my annealer after cleaning.) This makes sizing easier and more uniform.
2. Run all the brass through the sizing die. I use One Shot for the lube since it's the least messy and you don't have to remove it like other lubes. (I've switched over to using the Redding S bushing die for sizing. This makes things run smoother since there is no internal expander needed. )
3. Now it time to trim. I use Trim-It II (3 way cutter) mounted in a drill press. I find it's faster to just trim them all than to measure then trim.
4. Once trimmed they are ready to load.
5. Now I run them again through the LNL-AP without the Sizing die in. Powder selection is key when using a AP. You want one that meters fairly accurate. I use CFE-223 and TAC.
I use the auto dump with the dispenser. Fairly easy to setup for the 223.

I read this post, and for a second I thought I posted it and forgot about it. That's exactly how I load for 5.56 and 300 Blackout.

For precision rifle I run it a little different. For sizing I still use my bushing die, but I step it down with 2 bushings so that I never size more than .005 at a time and reduce runout. To speed things up, I decap with my bushing die and largest of the two bushings I'll use rather than using a universal decapping die. After I wet tumble I swap bushings out and run it though the bushing die, funnel die and seating die on the LNL. I also replace my LNL Powder Measure with a powder funnel die, and use an electronic powder measure to keep things fast. The LML powder measure is extremely consistent with ball/flake powder - but really sucks with stuff like Varget.

Annealing and using two steps in the bushing die really did a lot for my load consistency which can sometimes suffer on progressives. I'm not an ammo perfectionist, but I try to balance expedience with consistency and I've had good results.

Almost forgot, I do hand prime all of my precision brass, and sometimes any old military brass on .223 or 300 Blackout. I ordered thousands of pieces of "processed" brass but about 30% of the brass still has some crimp in the primer pocket. It's not enough to go through and remove the crimp on amevery piece - but my priming system on the LNL doesn't handle that 30% well and I don't like spilling powder because the previous station didn't prime. A hand primer breezes right through those.

For crimped primer pockets, I use the LNL-AP setup with Hornady's swagging tool. Works very well but you need to segregate brass by yr/mfg to get a consistent swage.

I do all my precision loading on a SS press.