What did you do in the reloading room today?

Loaded up 6 Dasher for the Howa mini. Not sure I’ll be able to get to the range with the weather now.

95tmk, 108eldm, 87vmax over Varget and Lever

Hoping that this will be my last load development trip before loading up a bunch to take it to distance.

Those are the good things I did.

The dumb things I did:

Modified a magazine past usefulness - sanded feed lips to where I thought was good, turns out I didn’t account for spring tension, so too much. Ruined.

Ran out of Varget thought I had another can. It was lever. Holy crap Varget is expensive now.

Annealed 20 rounds of dasher brass and dumped them onto a towel like always do. Smelled plastic. Turns out a synthetic towel made its way into my pile of not synthetic towels. Now I have 20 rounds of expensive brass with plastic melted to them.

What gets plastic melted onto brass off of it easily?


Not my best day in the reloading room haha!
 
The first two benchtops are complete. 14'8" and a 54" top for an "L". Two left to go 10'4" and 8'4". The two posted and the final two are/will be made of Pin Oak from our land. They are finished in Clean Armor. It isn't cheap, but if you want to save an absolute TON of time, it is worth looking into. I had the complete 14'8" bench sealed and top coated in less than 2 hours.





 
Loaded 9 44-40s, yes I know quite the number. 7.8 grains of Unique, Starline brass, CCI Large Pistol Primers, and a 200 grain cast boolit. I am officially out of boolits
 
Loaded some 200gr TTSX with IMR4064 and Tac for my .35 Whelen. Going to test those out tomorrow.
Check out the 196gr Hammer Hunter Tipped also if you aren’t set on the TTSXs. The HHTs shot better groups from my .358 Norma with higher measured BCs than the 200 TTSX. So far the 196gr HHT has the best form factor of any 35 cal I’ve tried. THE 215gr HHT is not far behind it.

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Where there's a will there's a way. I had a hell of a stuck case. The neck was jammed in the bushing and the case was stuck in the die. Tried to tap it 1/4" and do the bolt and spacer trick but it pulled the threads out of the brass and the casehead was beyond repair. That's when we went to phase 2.

First thing was to punch the bushing out of the top side. Then I tapped the brass 1/2"-13 about an inch into it. Then I had to figure out how to get more meat in there. I used a threaded plug and tapped it 1/4"-28. Used a spacer and a piece of bracket as a "washer" to tighten a bolt against.

I've never been more pissed off in my life because I needed to reload 150 of these to get my ammo shipped off for class with my 1k rounds of 223. This only delayed me a day. Could have been worse but now I need a new bushing.

Anyway, feel free to use my idea if you get in a jam.
 

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I received my new APR in 7 PRC and scratched out a little time to shoot it.

I loaded 30 rounds with a mild charge of H1k and 180 hybrids at .025 off the lands to shoot the barrel in a bit. I like at least 50 rounds prior to starting load work.

I used a scope from another rifle as I haven't bought rings yet for this rifle. Thought I had some.

The first 3 were way right so I made an adjustment left then up. Settled in more than good enough for load development. The dots are .625" for reference.

This was the first 9 shots through the rifle.

The rest were used banging steel at 300 for fun in field positions.


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It is going to be nice. My father, my brother and myself will all be using it.
I look forward to seeing it all geared up. Me, myself and I trip over ourselves in my small corner. But it's my first year reloading so I'm gonna stick with it and see how to does with a few tweaks. If after the 2nd year I'm unhappy, upgrades may be warranted.
 
I received my new APR in 7 PRC and scratched out a little time to shoot it.

I loaded 30 rounds with a mild charge of H1k and 180 hybrids at .025 off the lands to shoot the barrel in a bit. I like at least 50 rounds prior to starting load work.

I used a scope from another rifle as I haven't bought rings yet for this rifle. Thought I had some.

The first 3 were way right so I made an adjustment left then up. Settled in more than good enough for load development. The dots are .625" for reference.

This was the first 9 shots through the rifle.

The rest were used banging steel at 300 for fun in field positions.
That thing looks awesome bud!!
 
Tested out my 95gr LRX loads on the howa in 6 arc yesterday. Best load for accuracy had the biggest spread but with a 25y zero I was 100% consistent on a 8” gong at 280y.

Load was 28.2g of varget, fed primers Bullet was .050 off the lands.

As this is my hunting load for 300y and in I see zero reason to change anything. It also has practically no change in POI when using Hornady match 108gr ELDM which is a nice bonus
 
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