njl

If you don't know what you want, you probably want the 550. But...I'm not sure I'd recommend anyone buy a press right now. Look around and see if you can actually get powder and primers first. Without primers, that RL550B is just modern art.

I'm using CCI, which I've heard can be harder to seat even in good brass. Is it possible the problems with S&B brass developed more recently, and this old stuff doesn't have them.

I've seen several people post that they throw away any S&B brass they pick up. I was planning to go to a match today I assumed would be lost brass, so last night I decided to load up some 9mm in less desirable brass. I've been loading Winchester. Last night, I loaded 200 in S&B. This was probably 8 year old S&B brass from S&B 115gr ammo I bought and shot. I didn't have any trouble with it. I haven't shot any yet...and I kind of overslept, so I think the match isn't happening. Is it worth chronographing these? i.e. does brass brand have much impact on velocity? I suppose the case volume could be different.

What amazes me is how few people actually take me up on this offer. You guys drive around looking when all you need to do is pay the cost of a couple postages stamps and I will send them to you for cost. I was >< close to doing that...but I really wanted to see/handle them before buying...and we have lots of Home Depot's around here. Depending on the route I choose, I can go by 2 HD's on the way home without going out of my way at all. I ended up buying one of each type. The round one looked like it'd be nice in that there's more area on it to mark up, but it doesn't give terribly good leverage. The wingnut one seems much easier to turn. I was doing all this playing around using the large measure not installed...as I didn't want to mess with the adjustment of the small measure in my machine which is currently dialed in for my 9mm load. When I convert the press to do some .45, I'll probably experiment with the round dial.

Isn't BLC-2 also a very popular powder for .223 and .308?

If you have multiple Hope Depot's in your area, check them all. I eventually found one that stocks them. They're with the Specialty Fasteners (usually a collection of pull out bins or sectional drawers) in the hardware section.

Has anyone shot these into jugs of water to test expansion?

The M&P does have a really nice trigger. From limited use of a friend's, I'd say stock, the M&P trigger is preferable to Glock...but with a little work, the Glock trigger can be made lighter and smoother than stock.

Some .40 loads do have nasty recoil. Try some 155gr Blazer if you can find it. Compare to 165gr Winchester white box (one of the softer .40 loads). If you're going to reload, then you can probably make .40 tamer than some factory 9mm loads, and the cost of reloading .40 isn't going to be tremendously more than 9mm, but the bullets do cost more, and brass may be harder to come by / more expensive. If you're not going to reload, definitely stick with 9mm. Even if you think you might reload, I'd stick with 9mm. It's going to be the cheapest to shoot. If you haven't already, try to test fire a full size Glock (17, 34) or full size S&W M&P. My preference is Glock. Simpler design. Durable as a cast iron pan, and lots of accessories available.

heh...they said 45mm. Better get a big truck.

I'm curious to know what you think of it. I'm new to reloading, and it's the only powder I have so far. I've been happy enough with it, that I have no motivation to buy other powders for pistol reloading.

Are these the sorts of JHP that might perform well as far as expansion and weight retention go, or just "target JHP"?

I think most people who don't reload have no interest in their brass. Most of them probably have no idea of its value. Funny thing is, I briefly talked about reloading with the father from the father and son pair that showed up. He asked what it cost me to reload. I told him around $6/box for 9mm and only a little more for .45acp, but that on top of the savings of roughly 50%, I also get exactly the ammo characteristics I want vs whatever you can find at Walmart or online. He said he'd been thinking about reloading and probably should get setup...all the while he's handing me his brass. I started collecting my brass years ago, because I was reasonably certain I'd start reloading at some point. Even though I mostly shot Blazer, I still have thousands of 9mm brass.

Since I had virtually no .45acp brass, I recently ordered and received 2k WCC match brass from TJConevera. Today, when I got to the outdoor range, the part I was using had just been vacated by a pair who'd been shooting some of everything, and didn't pick up brass. There was 32acp, 9mm, .38special, and .45acp. After picking all that up and getting started shooting, a father and son showed up and asked if they could join me. They were shooting 9mm and .45acp, and didn't want their brass. In fact, when they saw me recovering mine, they started picking up theirs to give me. It's nowhere near the 2k I bought...but a few more days like this, and I might not have bought 2k. BTW...I don't know if I just lucked out or what, but the WCC match brass I bought which is advertised as "over 80% WCC Match" was actually about 98% WCC Match. As has become my habit, I sorted it all by headstamp...and as long as I was doing that, I figured I may as well count it to be sure I got what I paid for. The only negative...there was 1 AMERC case.

I was using Birchwood Casey's Brass Cartridge Cleaner. Then I thought to try Simple Green (industrial automotive degreaser) and it works just as well. I use three 5-gallon buckets. The second of the three I drilled full of a ton of holes to make into a strainer. I fill the first one with dirty 9mm brass, no other calibers. When it's 1/2 full, I fill it with hot water from the kitchen sink sprayer, and add about 1/4 gallon of simple green. Shake the bucket for a full minute or so by hand, then let it soak for a few hours. Usually overnight. Dump it out into the strainer bucket, and rinse with a hose. Dump back into the first bucket, and fill with water to dilute the soap, then strain it again. I do this 2 or 3 times, until the water has no soapy bubbles - don't like the idea of soapy powder or primers. Then strain it, and lay it out on a couple of old towels for an hour or two in front of an old box fan. Then it goes into bucket numer 3, which is brass that's ready to load. I've heard estimates on here that a 5 gallon bucket holds somewhere around 5-8K of 9mm brass. So I'm prepping 2,500-4,000 cases at a time, with no lead dust, and it takes about 10 minutes of actual hands-on time. The only downside of this system is that it won't recondition severely corroded brass. It does a surprising job of shining-up brass that's been outdoors for a week or two, but after it gets noticeably dark, I won't touch it. 90% of my brass comes from our indoor matches anyway, and is mostly once-fired, which is why you need to keep luring new shooters to your matches. New guys usually don't reload. You shake a 5G bucket full of 2500-4000 brass and several gallons of water? That must be one heavy bucket. The part that worries me the most about washing brass is making sure it's totally dry / how long the drying will take. I have considered it though...because even when it comes out of the tumbler really shiny, handling it gets my hands visibly dirty, so some kind of fine dust residue is sticking to the brass.

How exactly do you wash it?

Seconded. I've only used the Al roller handle, but I can't seem to get the nut tight enough to keep the handle shaft from shifting around. Is there some trick? At least for 9mm, it seems the trick is to use just a bit of lube (lanolin) on the cases. Now the primer seating upstroke is by far the hardest part of the handle cycle, and it's not hard enough to twist the handle in the press. Brian mentions in the Dillon info that even with carbide dies, you really should lube...and I gotta say, once you've loaded with lube, you won't want to do without.

I've got the Lyman XP1000 digital...and it generally works, but I've found it to be inaccurate at the low end. i.e. one charge of 4.3gr of powder might register 4.1gr. Adding a second charge to the pan will register 8.6. I really doubt the second one was 4.5gr. I generally combine 5 or 10 charges (and divide appropriately) to make sure the powder bar is dropping the right charge. It'd be nice if I could trust it to weigh a single small charge.

I've been doing about the same load (4.3gr UC, 1.145 OAL, 124gr Precision Delta FMJ). PF from a Glock 17 is just over 130 (around 1050fps. Recoil and report are noticeably milder than 115gr Blazer, and I haven't noticed any issues with unburnt powder.

And you don't have to remove it? Humor me...I'm new to all this...but my understanding is that when doing bottleneck rifle rounds, you have to lube each one and remove the lube before shooting. Is it different here because you're not necessarily lubing every one, and not lubing nearly as much as you'd lube rifle brass?

Depending on bullet weights and the sort of performance you're looking for, Universal Clays can do all those calibers. I've been using it for 9mm and will be doing .45acp with it.

I was curious, so I just gave this a try. I got just a bit of bag balm on my thumb and index finger, rolled a 9mm case in those fingers, then put it in the press. OMG, did it resize easier than non-lubed. The next half dozen with nothing intentionally added to them also resized like they weren't there. AFAIK, bag balm does have some petroleum jelly in it, so that may not be a good thing to get in the primers...but it's pretty thick stuff and there's so little of it that I wonder if that's really a concern? I mentioned my experiment to my wife, and she actually had some pure lanolin (expired) she was about to throw out...so its on the reloading bench now. It's even thicker than bag balm and kind of sticky. I haven't experimented with it yet. I also smeared an excessive stripe of bag balm on one piece of brass which I'm going to leave that way for a few days just to see if it 'does anything' obvious to the brass. If I was to continue with this, do I need to make sure most if not all the bag balm gets removed from the finished cartridges before shooting them? Are there better / more conventional sizing lubes that don't require removal / any special steps to remove before shooting?

If the house is not full of your crap it is really your house? If you need a solid workbench I recommend getting the 2x4 basic kits from target/amazon. I bought some shelflinks and made a nice shelving unit while I was at it. Then I threw away my fiancee's crap. Very dangerous move but she didn't kill me I am in 100% agreement with njl. Order your primers now and order 1000 of each type jsut to prevent the added shipping fees. ~k_day64 1000? My first order for primers was 5k for the type I plan to shoot the most.

I've been using bag balm on my hands when they're dry and got to thinking today...what if on calibers that don't absolutely need sizing lube (i.e. 9mm), I had a little bag balm on my fingers and rubbed the outside of a case now and then (leaving just "hint of bag balm film" on it) before putting it in station one? I bet it would act as lube...but I wonder if it'd just mess up the dies? I did some searching and found I'm not the first to suggest this, but couldn't be sure if anyone was seriously doing it.

That sounds like you need a longer decapping pin. It should either push the primer out or run through it (preferably the former), no? Nope. Problem is that CCI primers grip onto the end of the pin, and get drawn back into the pocket. Fix is to stone a slight taper on the end of the pin. Just don't make it so pointy that it pokes thru the primer, instead of pushing it out. Search up, been posted about a million times. Ah, that's probably why Dillon brags about their spring loaded decapper that helps throw the primer off the pin.