Loaded out 300 rds of 223 - son is coming to town next week and is in need of some more 223 rds for his practice.....My hope is he brings me home some brass from his last sessions. Last trip home he picked up 400rds.....He gives me a reason to keep the Dillon 550 going....Mark

I set up my RCBS Pro2000 Auto-Index Progressive Press in its new configuration to load my first 50 rounds of .38 Special using my new Case Activated Powder Expander!!

I have now freed up a station by combining priming, expanding, and powder drop in station #2. My Lock-Out Die is now in station #3 and I can now use my Bullet Feeder Die in station #4 (have yet to set that up) while keeping the seating/crimping die in station #5.

Thanks to Chuck in the Reloading room for helping me with the setup.

I is a HAPPY camper!!

Powder expander? I need one of those....

Since Friday night I've soaked, rinsed, dried and tumbled 55lbs of 9mm brass (approximately 6,435 pieces) and sized and de-primed 15lbs of already cleaned brass (approximately 1,755 pieces).

Time to take a break and go back to work.

Finished construction and then finished cutting the last few hundred pieces of m200 I had. Still needs decapped and tumbled yet. That'll have to wait until tomorrow, I have tomahawk steaks on the grill right now (see lounge for pics).

Yesterday I decapped and tumbled the last of that rough-cut M200. Then I threw ~800 pieces of 9mm in the vibratory tumber.

This morning I took those out, and put the last of the dirty 9mm in the vibratory (~800 more).

Still have dirty 45ACP to process, and dirty 40S&W, and a whole bunch of dirty 300BLK, 223REM, and 308WIN.

All this, and I plan to hit the range this weekend, too!

Spoke to Dillon yesterday, my strong mount and other bits for my second 550 should be here Thursday, so Thursday night and Friday night I'll be a loading fool to make sure we have enough ammo for a long weekend worth of shooting.

Since this will be the first time I'm setting up this second press, and it's for large primer, I anticipate having to reset all my large primer dies. 308, 45, and 30-30. Ugh.

At least all my small primer stuff should be fine. Of course, I'll still check them, but they shouldn't need adjustment. In theory.

The UPS tracking site says that my X-Treme bullet order is out for delivery.

Maybe I should pretend I'm not here when he delivers so I don't get the angry glare when he brings the bullets to my door.

I hope he doesn't get a hernia.

Edited to add:

Just got delivery, he's not mad and X-Treme Bullets sent me a sample pack of 25 once fired, cleaned, sized and decapped .45 ACP brass.

I'm happy.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Flash-LB,

I got a m&p competition series CORE 9mm !
Picked up 5k fed sp primers.
Cleaned, deprimed,belled,1k+.
primed 999 (found a primer on the floor)
Powder and bullet on 500. Shot 300 of them !

Super cool! Has the ability to be a tack driver...
If I could shoot better

Reloaded 300eds of 38Spl and sorted and got about 900 rounds of mixed brass ready for cleaning...Gonna be a good 3 day weekend for loading....rain is coming....Mark

Decided to start loading and using up all my old 1980's vintage Accurate #5. Started with 45 ACP. I've got 200 rounds to load and hopefully that will kill the rest of that can of #5.

Dug through the garage and found a full dry box of LC 5.56 brass I processed about 8 years ago. Just need to trim and start loading.

Tony.

Decapped about 5" worth of a 5 gallon bucket of 9mm, and swaged about 2" worth of a bucket of rough cut 300blk.

Scored all 7 of these this morning!

Just finished reloading 200 rounds of .45 ACP, 200 rounds of 9MM, 200 rounds of .380ACP and 200 rounds of 20 Gauge plus 100 rounds of .410 bore.

Good thing it's my day of rest.

Presently taking a break. So far, swaged 2k m200 rough cut, and annealed about 200. The plan is to anneal them all today, then size them all tomorrow, with final trim/chamfer after my new Giraud arrives.

I aalso need to load up about 850 9mm and 650 45acp, not to mention 450 308 and 1k 223 and maybe 700 300blk subs. The plan is to have all that done for a range trip next weekend. I have two 550s, if only I had 4 arms.....

Loaded 2 .308 test groups for 150 gn FMJ-FB bullets using 748 and IMR 3031. I haven't shot 308 FB bullets and I have a thousand I bought years ago ($52). Rest of the specs are WLR primers, LC Match brass and OAL of 2.80. I loaded 10 rounds of each powder weight and will fire 5 of each at 100yds using an Stg58 kit gun made from an all matching parts kit and a custom marked Coonan receiver. I have a Fero scope setup for this gun. If I get good results from one of these, I'll fine tune it. I'll use another .308 gun to shoot the remaning 5 loads to see if I get similar results.

9/15/14 Very poor performance in the Stg58. Best 5 shot group 2 inches with IMR3031. Best 3 shot group, out of 5, was 3/4 inch with WW748. 3 or 4 groups like this with the other 2 rounds fliers.
One of guys who has been reloading since Washington said he thought the bullets were the
problem. I weighted 106 of them and found a range of 148.5 to 152.0 with 34 being 150.5 +/- 0.2 grains. 11 of these were 150.6 gn. I will load them with the best result from both powders and see what happens.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Gopher5,

Decided this morning to cast about 1000 .45 200 grain SWC...set up everything but stopped after 400 or so...it got hot really fast...I'm gonna wait for cooler weather...I'm getting wimpish in my old age ...I'll size and lube them sometime later in the week.

It's not getting wimpish in your old age, it's getting smarter and working smarter.

Found a pound of CFE223 today at a local shop, $35 (ouch!!!) but let's me try it before my back order ever comes (and cancel it if I hate it). Tomorrow, I'm spending all day at the range, playing with my new chronometer!

I introduced two shooters to reloading today. They came over and I walked them through the steps to reload 45 ACP. We discussed techniques and cost. In teaching them, I noticed my seating on my new Hornady XTP loads weren't seating right. The taper ended below the case mouth but the COL (1.210") was consistent from previous batches. I called Hornady to tell them and they told me they changed the design and COL should now be between 1.235" to 1.245". The part number on the boxes were not changed.

Tony.

I broke down and ordered more for my press.
Auto powder w/riser, auto primer for my lee turret.
I need to make more with less work....
Shooting close to 600 rounds a month now.
My new tricked out M&P competition core is fantastic!