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I got into reloading several years ago. I started to watch Youtube videos about it and was amazed at how anal some re-loaders can be. I saw one youtuber who would keep a log of every box of ammo and each group of case in that box as to how many times he loaded it and would make sure he never picked up anyones ammo at the range, because he did not know how many times it had been loaded and with what.
I learned to load from a man who owned a shop and loaded ammo for the State Police to practice with. He never cared about how many times it was loaded. He would do a quick inspection of case to make sure no cracks were present and no dings that could compromise the case and then load them up. I know that some people want to shoot MOA at 1000 yds and want the bullets and cases to be with in some set of specs. But This was not the case. I saw several videos where people were just going crazy like they were building a Thermonuclear device. It was fun to see how anal some people can get. I don't knock it, if thats your thing, but its not necessary to be so rigid when it comes to reloading.
There are some points that you should take care on, one is do a quick inspection of the cases, no cracks the other is to make sure that you are under max powder load and you can't or have not put in a double load of powder. To me this is the most critical. Other problems are no powder at all and you get a primer that puts a bullet half way down the bbl. and you don't know it.
To me keeping logs on how many times a case has been loaded and with what and what pressure it taking the fun out of loading. What are your thoughts?
Especially with straight-sided pistol cases, the issue of how many times you can reload is a joke. I've got cases I've been reloading for almost 15 years now that are still just fine. I don't load "hot", but I seldom have a "bad" case.
I too don't reload hot loads. I do this only on my personal pistol for bear protection so not many are shot and reloaded and I take the shells apart every 3 years by hand and clean the cases and reload again. I have other rifle and pistol cases that I have been reloading on for over 30 years. I check them from time to time for culling. I do have some pistol cases I have reloaded over 30 times, yes I do keep logs of the process in case I find a good load but don't really keep track of the actual cases from reload to reload.
Some reloaders are pretty, um, "exacting." But some of the things you mention are pretty common-sense. I reload shotgun shells so it is a little different than somebody reloading rifle cartridges. I do keep a log of each box of reloads and put a piece of tape with a description on the box. That's the only way I can tell what they are because I can't tell a pheasant round with an ounce of #6s at 1250 fps from a clay target load of 7/8 oz of #8s at 1100 fps just by looking at the shell after they are reloaded. They all just look like a 2 3/4" 20 gauge AA shell to me. It also allows me to decide what components to go with in the future as some do well and some are very mediocre or more difficult to load than others.
The one thing I am very particular with checking powder weights randomly as it is fairly difficult to detect a double charge with 15 grains of fine flake powder in a shotgun shell turning into 30 rather than 60 grains of coarse extruded rifle powder turning into 120 (and most of the second charge spilling out of the case) in loading a typical long-action rifle cartridge like my .30-06. My particular reloading setup with the way the charge bar works makes it very difficult to double charge a round but not impossible. I have seen folks who have had reloading/shooting accidents at work (a hospital) and don't wish to emulate them. It is generally not pretty and scars last a lifetime. A little extra diligence can certainly save your face
Agreed, it depends on what caliber and how hot the load is, if somebody is loading varmint rounds to "Gopher Baroque" levels of velocity, and thus pressure, and wants all the accuracy he can get, yeah, it makes sense to start with a group of matched cases, and log everything.
But for cast bullet plinking loads, you really don't need to do all that.
Very unusual to need to do this for any kind of pistol or revolver round.
Double charging is not normally that easy to do and not know it with more or less full power loads in 30-06 and similar, usually the case is more than half full with a proper charge. Most automatic pistol rounds, again if you are loading for more or less factory load power, will be more than half full. The real problem is revolver rounds, most of them will accept a double charge. You can double charge low power rifle handloads too.
My approach to avoiding a double charge is that I charge powder and then immediatly seat a bullet, either on the Dillon, or some other press or tool. My impression is that double charging is most likely when using a loading block and charging powder as a separate operation from seating the bullet - so if you lose count, and somehow charge and then charge again into the same case, it's harder to prevent. Some guys charge all the rounds in a block and then look into the cases, if you look closely you can see a double charge or a skipped charge.
True, for shotshells, particularly if like most you favor the AA hull, if you don't write down either on the box or on a slip of paper if you are using a plastic carrier box, what the shot size is and what the powder charge is, you won't know what you have. At least I wouldn't remember such.
I guess I could probably get away with not keeping a log now since I load up rounds two cases at a time and it's all the same stuff. My recipe of 7/8 oz of #7 1/2s, an RXP20 wad, 18.0 grains of 800X, and a Win 209A in an AA HS hull hasn't changed in a long time. But I still mark my lots because I can't predict if at some point I'd feel the need to make a box or two of "something else" and don't want to accidentally be shooting the "wrong" loads.
Depends what the purpose of the round. If you are shooting out of a pistol, you don't really need to do much, just the basic resize, bell, prime, powder, bullet, crimp. If you want be ch rest accuracy you can do some of the following
Weigh each case and bullet then sort.
Load brass with small amount of gun powder and oatmeal to fireform to match chamber.
Measure ogave of bullets, then sort.
Measure case volume, then sort.
Trim brass to length.
Ream primer pocket.
Debur flash hole
Ream case neck
Trim bullet Meplat for constancy
All of that didnt even cover the actual process of reloading the ammo, that is just to get consistent components.
Depends what the purpose of the round. If you are shooting out of a pistol, you don't really need to do much, just the basic resize, bell, prime, powder, bullet, crimp. If you want be ch rest accuracy you can do some of the following
Weigh each case and bullet then sort.
Load brass with small amount of gun powder and oatmeal to fireform to match chamber.
Measure ogave of bullets, then sort.
Measure case volume, then sort.
Trim brass to length.
Ream primer pocket.
Debur flash hole
Ream case neck
Trim bullet Meplat for constancy
All of that didnt even cover the actual process of reloading the ammo, that is just to get consistent components.
I know some loaders who do this. They have everything from OCL to weight within a tight tolerance for accuracy. I have load to shoot for reasonable accuracy at 200 yds and less and I only check my rifle case for COL and cut them down. My pistol case I have loaded so many times its unreal. I only check for cracker or primer pocket expansion. I never load to maximum or close. I load to just over min. I shoot out to 50 yds and its worked for what I need. I was not saying that these people who do this are wrong, but its way too anal for me. It just takes all the fun out of it and makes it work. I am not that OCD
Depends what the purpose of the round. If you are shooting out of a pistol, you don't really need to do much, just the basic resize, bell, prime, powder, bullet, crimp. If you want be ch rest accuracy you can do some of the following
Weigh each case and bullet then sort. Load brass with small amount of gun powder and oatmeal to fireform to match chamber.
Measure ogave of bullets, then sort.
Measure case volume, then sort.
Trim brass to length.
Ream primer pocket.
Debur flash hole
Ream case neck
Trim bullet Meplat for constancy
All of that didnt even cover the actual process of reloading the ammo, that is just to get consistent components.
That's quite a few steps, but about step 2 (in bold) - Sometimes neck-sizing cases after the first load will do the same, since firing the loaded ammo with new cases for the first time will fire-form them to match chamber. Of course depending on the caliber, neck-sizing can be done only so many times, and then the cases would have to be full-sized.
On reloading, I take my time with every caliber I load/reload and typically, I throw away cases that have been loaded more than 5 times for my rifles, and 10 to 15 times for my handguns. I also put labels on all the ammo that I load which contain load data, like the case brand, number of times it has been loaded, trim length, bullet seating depth, the powder, weight, primer type, and when the ammo was loaded.
I also have an Excel spreadsheet on my laptop that contains the number of rounds that have been fired in every one of my weapons. The reason I do this is for barrel cleaning purposes, as I use a special cleaning compound for the barrels in my rifles to remove build-up of copper residue in the grooves as cleaning fluid and brushes will not remove it. I use the compound every 200 or 300 rounds depending on the caliber.
Depends what the purpose of the round. If you are shooting out of a pistol, you don't really need to do much, just the basic resize, bell, prime, powder, bullet, crimp. If you want be ch rest accuracy you can do some of the following
Weigh each case and bullet then sort.
Load brass with small amount of gun powder and oatmeal to fireform to match chamber.
Measure ogave of bullets, then sort.
Measure case volume, then sort.
Trim brass to length.
Ream primer pocket.
Debur flash hole
Ream case neck
Trim bullet Meplat for constancy
All of that didnt even cover the actual process of reloading the ammo, that is just to get consistent components.
Sounds to me like you are doing benchrest shooting. If you can shoot well enough even from prone for this sort of component sorting/uniforming actually makes a difference in your groups or score, my hat's off to you.
In my experience, any box of jacketed rifle bullet from Sierra, Hornady, Speer, Winchester, Remington, etc. is plenty uniform for anything short of benchrest.
Usually the most improvement is in sorting and weighing brass, and turning the necks for concentricity.
I know a lot of guys weigh out each powder charge, but if you do an honest A to B comparison, you will generally see that any decent powder measure.
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