What did you do in the reloading room today?

[bpitcher]

Shot the last of my 108s yesterday and ran a quick ladder on the 112 Match Burners.

The middle of the road charges seemed to shoot best. 40.5gr and 41gr at .47" and .53", respectively. The Hornady 105s and 108s have shown a preference for a little more powder.

Got all 36 cases cleaned and prepped for next week when my next batch of 108s arrive.

 

[sdupontjr]

That's badass! When will you start taking orders??

If I had the time. I've had a few ask but have to find time to do it. Have complete building items as well as wiring schematic. Cost me about $80 in materials.

 

[letrbuck]

If I had the time. I've had a few ask but have to find time to do it. Have complete building items as well as wiring schematic. Cost me about $80 in materials.

I'd totally be in for a parts list and schematic. Nicely done sir!

 

[WestTN2288]

If I had the time. I've had a few ask but have to find time to do it. Have complete building items as well as wiring schematic. Cost me about $80 in materials.

Yeah, I’d be on the list for parts too. Surely we can crowd fund you a bottle of whiskey for your efforts?

 

[sdupontjr]

I'd totally be in for a parts list and schematic. Nicely done sir!

Yeah, I’d be on the list for parts too. Surely we can crowd fund you a bottle of whiskey for your efforts?

Dispenser

This is a thread i had started. In the thread is a list of all the items as well as an attached wiring schematic.

 

[Slick8]

I just walked by mine and sighed today....

On a bright note, I'm making 50 pounds of snack sticks and 50 pounds of link this weekend.

 

[Sandhills]

Put my new shell holder in my press and got some primer on the bench. Slowly getting ready.

Also looked at pictures of an upcoming gun auction at guns I won't be able to buy but at least I can drool over the pictures of a a couple 1873s in 44-40 and 38-40 and some model 94s in 25-35. One day.... One day...

 

[Vern400]

For many years I've been reloading under marginal conditions. Just a closed in room in an old equipment barn. I usually load most of my stuff in the winter when it's cold and rainy and I can't work outside. I run a sawmill business.

This year I built a new room under the same roof, but it's insulated to the max, vapor barrier, fully sealed with HVAC. I just started today framing the first workbench and it'll have a 2 inch slab top 30 in wide and 12 ft 6 long. Hopefully it'll be heavy enough that seating bullets doesn't screw up my electronic powder measure.

Now, I will be able to reload in the summertime. We have a lot of days where the heat index is over 100° and it's not a lot of fun. I've been looking forward to getting this up and running for quite a while.

It sounds kind of odd, but I will sharpen and set sawmill blades on the right hand side of the room on another bench. Hopefully that won't cause too much trouble. And no, I will not store powder or primers or loaded rounds here. The only storage will be a couple hundred sawmill blades.

 

[waspocrew]

For many years I've been reloading under marginal conditions. Just a closed in room in an old equipment barn. I usually load most of my stuff in the winter when it's cold and rainy and I can't work outside. I run a sawmill business.

This year I built a new room under the same roof, but it's insulated to the max, vapor barrier, fully sealed with HVAC. I just started today framing the first workbench and it'll have a 2 inch slab top 30 in wide and 12 ft 6 long. Hopefully it'll be heavy enough that seating bullets doesn't screw up my electronic powder measure.

Now, I will be able to reload in the summertime. We have a lot of days where the heat index is over 100° and it's not a lot of fun. I've been looking forward to getting this up and running for quite a while.

It sounds kind of odd, but I will sharpen and set sawmill blades on the right hand side of the room on another bench. Hopefully that won't cause too much trouble. And no, I will not store powder or primers or loaded rounds here. The only storage will be a couple hundred sawmill blades.
View attachment 851443

Looks like a great room! Would love to have a set up like that someday.

 

[49ereric]

Bought blemished 3 1/2” 00 buck @30 years ago. The shells leaked buffer due to poor crimps. Finally decided to fix them by cutting off the crimp and roll crimping.
Most the bad crimps shells have 17 pellets instead of 18 so adding a pellet.
Sealing with Elmer’s glue. A few crimps we good enough so just adding glue to seal.
Think I paid $2.50/box

 

[ridgeline]

Threw together a few of my Moly slicked Barnes 112 Match Burners and now once fired ADG brass, H4831SC and CCI 200's for a test drive in a fresh Tikka 1:7.5" 6 Creed' build. Last week I ran it's first 50 rounds of Moly 105 Amax and H4350 to slick things up and grab some data out to 500 meters, It most definitely liked the good old Amax...

 

[solarshooter]

Decided to experiment with some old components in my 284 Win. Loaded 30 with 162 ELDM, IMR7828SSC, CCI200, in Lapua brass. Shot 3 groups of 6, horrendous, which was what I found last time I tested this bullet. Then shot an abbreviated Form drill with the remaining 12. Logged radius data on the second 2 groups because the first had foulers in it.

I'd like to just abandon this load completely because I already have a really good baseline, but last night I decided I might as well use this bad load to do some testing on effective methods of load dev. First, to test components I loaded up 10ea of IMR7828SSC/FED210, H4831SC/CCI200, H4350/CCI200 (all still with 162ELDM at same seating depth). This covers a different primer, and 2 different powders. Will shoot for groups of 10 and record radius data to compare which of these changes, if any, produce an improvement over the first load tested.

Then with my remaining 20 bullets, I'll do 10ea of a drastically different seating depth (currently 0.055" jump) and then a drastically different powder charge with one of the above combos to see if either of those knobs produce a meaningful result. Will edit this post with results once I do.

View attachment 840741
Mean radius for these 12 was 0.55".

Following up on this, I finally went and shot this 162 ELDM test I loaded up.

First test was same IMR7828SSC powder and charge as above but switching primer to a FED210. Mean radius 0.98"!! If I look at each sub-group independently, I get 0.43" and 0.47". Overall group size is 2.5" for 10 shots, vs 1.75" for 6 in the initial test above. I don't know what happened here, either some change in my shooting input, I made a mistake in the reloading room, or this is just a real, weirdly shaped group.


What's really really weird is I shot this full test of 30 round robin style, in sets of 3/3/4 of each load, and the scatter into two groups manifested across multiple strings for this load. I would also expect whatever systematic error I had here to manifest in the other two loads, but here's the H4831SC/CCI200 group:

MR 0.33" for 10 - awesome, and a 40% improvement over the initial load.

And the H4350/CCI200 group:

MR 0.45", not great, but a 18% improvement over the initial load.

So, putting aside the very strange double group, my conclusion so far is that powder can make a HUGE difference in accuracy, but primer not so much. I'd like to hear the "nodes and harmonics don't exist" crowd explain that! No seriously, someone explain it to me - I thought precision was just proportional to recoil. Even though these are all different powders and speeds, the difference in precision is way bigger than the difference in recoil, and also not correlated.

Next up, I want to pick one of these loads and make a change in seating depth and a change in powder charge. I will also try and pick one load that I can keep constant and switch bullet, to really round out the test matrix.