Winter a great time to reload ammo
Ammunition will be a lot more expensive in 2024, but you can insulate your budget by loading your own rifle and pistol cartridges and shotgun shells.
Another benefit to reloading is that you can tailor ammo for optimized performance with your particular firearms, and also for specific shooting situations. You can build shotgun loads for target shooting, for small game hunting and for waterfowl hunting.
For sub-gauge shotgun enthusiasts, reloading enables building high-performance waterfowl and turkey loads for 16-gauge, 28-gauge and .410 bore.
The most expensive reloading component is a reloading press. It is a large, heavy, metal device that performs all of the major steps for preparing and reloading cartridges.
Most hunters use just one rifle, and many handgunners prefer a single caliber. Single gun specialists can reload cartridges with a simple Lee Loader. It’s an ingeniously designed tool that fits in a box or container that’s about twice the size of a deck of cards. It’s perfect for people that live in apartments or those that don’t have a dedicated reloading space.
Lee Loaders for shotguns are designed for paper hull cartridges and do not work well with plastic hulls. To reload plastic hulls, you need a large cam style press. MEC’s Steelmaster is designed to load steel shot loads.
METALLIC PRESSES
RCBS, Hornady, Lee and Lyman make kits that contain everything you need to reload metallic rifle and pistol cartridges. A kit contains a press, priming tool, balance beam scale, case lubing tray and lube, chamfering and deburring tool, primer pocket cleaning brush, powder funnel and reloading manual.
You must buy reloading dies separately. A die set contains a resizing die, a bullet seating die, and a shell holder that fits into the press ram to hold your brass case. Most kits resize the entire case. You can also get dies that resize only the neck. Lee Deluxe kits come with both types.
If you saved your spent brass from previous hunts, you can reload them about three times. If you anneal the necks, you might reload them as many as 10 times before the case expires.
Calibrate your die using the enclosed instructions. Close your rifle bolt on an unloaded case until the bolt closes with slight resistance. To reach the sweet spot, you might need to screw the resizing down in micro increments to set the shoulder back the proper amount.
Lube a case slightly before you begin the resizing process to prevent the case from sticking inside the die. A very small amount of lube goes a long way. You should only need to lube every third case. Excessive lube inside the die will dent the case.
Pull the handle down all the way to seat the case into the resizing die. This will return the case to factory dimensions and deprime it in one step.
Next, chamfer and deburr the case mouth. This will bevel and smooth the mouth to receive the bullet. Also, use the primer brush to remove fouling from the primer pocket. This will allow you to cleanly and securely seat the new primer. You can seat primers with a tool that attaches to the press. I use a separate handheld priming tool.
Next, pour the proper amount of powder into the case. Follow the recipe in your reloading manual, which suggests minimum and maximum loads for each powder.
I weigh every powder charge on a digital scale and verify it with the balance beam scale.
Finally, install the bullet seating die into your press. Holding the bullet against the case mouth with your fingers, gently raise the case into the die. Pull your fingers away and complete the step. You might want to experiment with seating depths to find an overall cartridge length that gives you the best accuracy.
The same process applies to seating pistol bullets, with an extra step to flare the case mouth.
LEE LOADER
The Lee Loader is a modular device that performs all of the reloading steps in a compact cylinder.
The first step is to deprime a case, which you do with a special rod and a light mallet. The mallet is sold separately.
Then, using the mallet, pound the case into the resizing die. This only resizes the case neck. It works most dependably with brass fired from the same gun for which you are loading.
Place a primer in the priming chamber. With the case still inside the resizing chamber, place the tool in the priming chamber. Insert the priming rod and rap it soundly to seat the primer. The first couple of times you do this, you’ll be paranoid that you will detonate the primer. Don’t worry. You won’t.
Use a second ramrod to tap the case out of the resizing chamber. Chamfer and deburr the case mouth.
Next, pour powder into the case. You can use the tool for this, but I use a powder funnel. Place the case back into the depriming chamber and place the die upside down over the case.
Drop a bullet into the die. It will come to rest slightly inside the case mouth, You will need to adjust the die to attain the proper seating depth. Place the seating attachment into the die and gently seat the bullet by rapping the tool. It will come to rest on top of the die according to the seating depth. It will remain the same unless you change the depth manually.
SHOTGUN RELOADING
I use a MEC Sizemaster single-stage press to reload shotgun shells. This press resizes and deprimes the hull, primes it, loads the powder charge, installs the wad and loads the shot charge by manually moving the hull around the press in a series of stations.
A progressive press performs all of these functions automatically with a single pull of the handle. You must buy a different press for each gauge.
Reloading is time consuming, but it gives you the satisfaction of hunting and shooting with ammunition you tailored and created yourself.
It’s also a great way to pass the time on cold winter nights.