I'm in the process of case gauging 2,000 rounds with a single hole gauge. SUCKS. Gonna buy a hundo soon! I like it because it gives me that much more confidence and I get to inspect the primers.
I'm in the process of case gauging 2,000 rounds with a single hole gauge. SUCKS. Gonna buy a hundo soon! I like it because it gives me that much more confidence and I get to inspect the primers.
i used to wannabe
What's everyone using for a seating die on coated lead bullets (think: Bayous, Blues, H&S, etc)? I find that my Redding Competition Seating Die changes the shape of the cast/coated bullets.
I LIKE the Coke Bottle shape on a reloaded round, it tells me I am not likely to get bullet setback against the feed ramp.
The Dillon sizing die is ok for most, but for light short bullets, I keep EGW/Lee "U" dies.
The Dillon seating die is about a dead loss. Now I am loading mostly coated bullets, the quick cleanout feature meant to get out bullet lube is no use and adjusting seating by turning the whole die in coarse loose body threads is very tedious. I have the 9mm set for my present supply of bullets and will leave it until I find something clearly better. I have an assortment of .45 bullets, so the Dillon seater was replaced with a Hornady with micrometer spindle. When I arrive at a good seating depth, I write the micrometer setting on a box label. It repeats very well.
I bought one of the EGW 4 holer gauges but it is not much use. It has no "leade" so a load with any bearing surface ahead of the case mouth won't pass.
I now have a Wilson .45 and a Lyman 9mm - because they were out of Wilson 9s.
I used to have a Midway - sure looked like a Wilson except for the roll mark - that had been hit with the same reamer as the chamber of the gun I was shooting most at the time.
I am shifting to a cheap dial caliper for OAL and other coarse measurements. My old Sears plastic vernier is getting hard to read, even with bifocals.
My old Midway tumbler has lasted a lot longer than I would have expected. Except that the bowl has the shadow of a Thumler's trademark.
The OAL on my initial load passed my case gauge, but it turned out to be too long for my barrel. So the cartridges would not manually extract. That was before i knew about the plunk test. You should be able to drop the reloaded cartridge into the barrel, twist it and it should turn, put the barrel upside down and it should fall out. So that is one reason to not just rely on a case gauge.Originally Posted by LittleLebowski
I'm currently using the Hornady New Dimension with the floating sleeve for 9mm 135gr Bayou Bullets, a Redding competition die should be here shortly.
You can always reshape the seating die with a Dremel, or I have even head of using hot glue. Other substances come to mind.
Fire up some NetFlix and settle down, I CG's 10's of thousands one at a time before I got a Hundo.
Put them in a MTM box primer up and inspecting primers is easy enough, although not as easy as with a Hundo case gauge.
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