The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Mistakes at the Reloading Bench

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

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Welcome back to Matterfax podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MWFpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Ravale. Andrew, Nick, are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to Matter of Facts podcast. We are back to do exactly what we said we weren't going to do.

We said we were done talking about reloading, and then it occurred to me. There's one topic we've kind of glanced off of in the realm of reloading that involves us bearing our sins to the listeners, and that is mistakes at the reloading bench. Otherwise known as effing up, you will. And the best version of effing up only costs you some profanity and some hair and some aggravation. The worst versions involve your fingertips and eyeballs being at risk. So, you know, like take everything we say with as a cautionary note. I don't mean any of this to mean that reloading is like a dangerous black magic voodoo experience that you shouldn't partake. And it's a fun hobby.

Just know that you are making tiny little explosive charges and you're putting them in a steel cylinder and then you are igniting them approximately three feet away from your face and act accordingly. Yep. And Raggle, yo, was me. Was me this time. I mean, you might have screwed up most recently. But literally everything I put into these banners, I have. personally done or personally observed. So like these are all these are all very honest mistakes and I think most people

make if you reload long enough. Well, it's like anything. Any kind of manufacturing process has a percent chance of error. You just try to get that percent chance of error down as little as possible for safety, for cost effectiveness or anything. That's what a lot of these little things we're going to talk about, you can look for to try and prevent in the future. And see, I follow the NASA model for screwing up because there's an old saying that like every NASA mission had at least one screw up.

You just hope the screw up happen on the ground. Yeah. Or to a system you didn't really need. Yeah. When the screwing happens at the air, it's a lot more exciting. When it happens on the ground, it's just like, oh, damn, we got to fix that. Then try to light this thing up again. And actually, I've learned of a new thing that can help prevent screw ups for these progressive presses that I didn't know is this.

We'll get to that later. Oh, that'll be fine. Okay. Admin work. If you'd like to promote bad decisions by becoming a patron, that links in the show description. You should become a patron. You should promote bad decisions. It might be ours and it might be yours, but there will be bad decisions promoted. Trust that.

You should buy merch for the vibes from the Southern Gals. We were actually having a discussion literally within the last couple of days about possibly revamping the T-shirts because I've always wanted to do like fun, cheeky stuff. And occasionally when the line gets a little stale, we start throwing around different ideas. And like, I am pushing really hard for a Granby Community College welding program shirt. That would be a great one. Dude, like. It's just, it's just so fun. Well, but not like, you don't even need to put a killdozer or anything on the shirt.

Just no. If anything you need to not put a kildozer on it. Exactly. Actually, no, no. I don't find out what year he graduated high school. What you need is Granby Community College and then like a course. list and be like welding bulldozer operation you know things things in that there you go civics 101 got to include that yeah there you go yeah my FBI agent is

not going to find that near as entertaining as I do but that's okay it's fine it's fine they really don't care that much I mean he has an mk ultra for me in a in a little while the ticks are mostly gone so it'd be all right and if you'd like to prevent war crimes with disaster your coffee code MOF at checkout. It will actually I debate whether or not it prevents war crimes most of the time. But if you're intent on

inventing new war crimes, it could help with that too. Well, that's fair point. Well, caffeined, it does help the brain function. This is, this is true. This is true. I was at work today having kind of an off day and I kept wandering around like, why can't I think of anything? And then I was like, oh Christ, it's 10 o'clock

and I've only had one cup of coffee. that'll do course my cup of coffee is a 32 ounce tumbler so you know we have to be a little liberal but it's only one cup and I'm standing by that it look if it just has one handle and you haven't refilled it it's one cup if it's a bug

that takes two handles that's two cups we go by the hand I like that math okay there are people misbehaving in the chat raggle fragel so we're talking about the tinsel fairy tonight I don't cast and unless Nick has any

casting since he would like to discuss they'd be fishing related up to this point or musket related and it's really hard to fuck up a musket ball turns out Rachel said sorry for the dog barking there was a cat we have feral cats in our neighborhood and my dog hates

them with a passion and so fly feral cats kill songbirds don't leave your cats outside your dog lives there and the cats don't so the dog has the right of it's her yard any animal in her yard that is small enough for her to murder, she will give it enough time. And that seems fair. Except for birds.

She doesn't get birds that much, mostly because they could fly. It's mostly like, boved and footed animals. So years ago, before she passed away, my dog had an experience one morning because my neighbor's chickens got out of their yard. And they kept coming and pecking and scratching at my freshly manicured mulched bed. And, yeah, after chasing them out of the yard two or three times and little bastards kept coming back, I finally just let the dog out, let her do what she did. And I'm going to tell you why, the sound of a boxer German shepherd mix chasing down six, six chickens is hilarious. Oh, that's great. Dude, I don't know what they were saying in chicken, but it was very excited.

They were done with that yard. They never came back. They never left their yard again after that. Yeah. Anyway. So we brought up who's screwed up in it being me. You guys may have heard one of our patrons was lovely enough to send me a big box of spent casings you can see on the stool behind me.

I am still working through processing just the nine mill. Nice. I get a lot of range pickup brass from a variety of sources. And one thing, anybody's been reloading for any length of time, 9 millimeter. and 380 Auto look a hell of a lot alike. I mean, unless you get the calipers out or you hold them side by side or look at the head stamps, it's easy to mistake the two for each other at a glance. It's sort by head stamp is really the best way to do that.

Unless you have, there are shell sorter basket plates you can pick up. I'm going to have to get some because the last time I had to sort through grass, it took me like nine hours just because of the volume. and it was boring, painfully boring. But I had some 380 auto that got mixed in with my 9-mill brass, either through a lack of diligence on my end or just they got dropped in the wrong bucket. It happened. Me and Phil were talking, and we've come to the conclusion that with the load I'm running,

a 147 grain cast lead brown coated. over 3.4 grains of Winchester 231. It probably shouldn't hurt a gun to run a 380 case through your 9mm pistol. Now, I'm not advocating that anybody else try that, but I agree with Nick running the numbers. Like, I agree with Nick. I really don't think it would cause a problem because of the way the data stacks up. Yeah, it seems to me that Winchester 231 with that grain bullet, is according to at least two reloading manuals that we found safe up to 3.5 grains of Winchester 231.

At an overall length of what would we come up with 980? 980,000s. And my load of 147 grain in a 9mm case, I like at 1 inch 120. That feeds reliably in every firearm that I have that takes 9mm. I know that's slightly long, but it feeds really well. It shoots very reliably. and I get a clean cleaner powder burn than when I shorten it up. Actually, hold up a second.

Are you going to pull up the overall length? No, we're sitting here having to talk about this, and I'm about to recant what I said before. When 231, 147 green bullet. Yeah. It might be overpressure. Because I think you said 3.5 was horrible. good. Well, but I was doing exactly what I warned about later in this series.

Ah. 147 grain bullet. Because I couldn't find much data on 147 grains and 380 auto casings. Well, the point of the matter is, is that the 9mm case being slightly larger is going to give you a little bit lower bullet pressure, a little bit lower pressure during firing than the exact same load at the same length in a 380 auto case, which is a non-taper, wall cartridge. So the volume is slightly smaller because the tip of the case stays about the same. So I'm going to pull them down and I'm going to empty them out and I'm going to throw those 380 cases away and just eat the lost primer. I don't feel like blowing up my gun. I have a direct blowback I could put it in that would probably be fine because worst case is just going to blow the slide back and slam really hard. Yeah. But, well, I mean, I. I don't think it would hurt anything as long as you're sticking with 9mm data because what the only loss of the only thing that would really cause the pressure to be wildly out of spec is the fact that 9 mil is a very slightly tapered cartridge and 380 straight wall.

And since they both since the neck is the same. Yes, 9mm curse, Dr. Scary guy. Yeah. But since the since they use the same size bullet, the neck, the dimension of the neck is the same, which means the difference is the case. is the case head itself as far as diameter. And the nine millimeter Luger case is obviously longer, which doesn't matter here because what's really caught, what's really influenced in the size of the combustion chamber of this bullet is the overall length,

which you loaded to nine mill. My biggest concern with what you've created unintentionally is actually less to do with the powder charge. I think you're probably close enough to within spec that it wouldn't hurt your gun. But what I am pretty sure, happen is because the case is so short, your dye, the part of your dye that that taper crimps didn't come close to engaging with that neck. I put a pretty aggressive taper crimp on my nine mill, but pretty aggressive taper crimp is still like 20 or 30 thousands of an inch further

up away from the shell plate than where that that neck is. Like I don't, I would venture to say that the bullets feel quite tight. in there i'll put it that way you're still only depending on the neck tension i mean you're you're depending on the neck tension after the case was bell mouth and it's one of those things were like if your bell mouth was minimal and you know you didn't taper crimp you're probably okay but my biggest concern would be bullet set back when that when the nose that bullet slams in your loading ramp or your it very well could happen especially under rapid firing or you know just in transit if it wasn't in if it wasn't in like an mtm case or something yeah so

So since we've done this in completely the wrong order, the topic for the day is fixing screw-ups at the bench because if you reload long enough, you will screw something up. And I had to reorder these because Nick decided to slide this one in, but mixing similar brass, like 380 and 9-millimeter. And I've done it too. Raggle, Frago actually said in the chat that this exact same thing happened to him and he realized something was goofy because he was feeling the amount of resistance on the press handle. And like, call, I don't, I can't speak for progressive press, but I know that with a single stage, if you run a 380 case into a nine millimeter dye, it feels wrong. It does. It feels wildly different. The trouble you run into with a progressive press is most of your, say most of your pressure is coming from your decapping dye if you're running a dedicated decapping die in there. And then whatever dye you are using to crimp the round back in. to see you can crimp the wrong.

Because you have more going on. You do. I mean, you have, in this case, in the case of that press behind me there, you have five different stations going on. And you're probably using at least three, if not four to five of those, of those die locations. Which, to be fair, like this is, this is one of the reasons why most old hand reloaders do not recommend progressive presses for beginners. It's not that it's not that it cannot be done safely. it is that in my experience from messing with my dad's 650 on his bench, like a full auto progressive press will give you a lot less warning than a single stage when something's off.

Because all those different things happening at the same time tends to mask the one thing that's not right. Whereas my process being like one case going into one die per run of the handle, hand priming all my rounds, if anything's goofy, it feels wrong. And you have to be incredibly intoxicated or incredibly unattentive to not notice something feels wrong. You know, I will say that I started out on a single stage press. And I do recommend people if they're just starting out reloading, starting in a single stage press. But if you have limited hobby time, every hour you spend on that single stage press can be five times more effective on a progressive press. that's true but I would

well depending on how many stations you have I would still recommend if a person is in that boat where it's like I know I want a progressive press cool beans I still recommend a person go get a single stage oh yeah absolutely even if you buy the progressive press you set it up you intend to do your loading on that I still recommend everybody go out you don't have to get a really expensive nice single stage

you don't have to get a rock chucker that you can pass down to your grandkids you can go get a checker that you can go get a cheap Lee press or the the Lyman C frame presses that aren't like the fully enclosed O frames. You can go get the cheapest single stage out there and you can learn on it nice and slow

one thing happening at a time get the fundamentals down on that and then relegate it to being like your bulk decaper your utility press. I use my rock trucker exclusively for load development at this point because I'm going to make between 10 and 30 rounds in that new load.

I'm not going to make a lot because if I have to pull down all of them to fucking fix the powder charge, I don't want to have to pull down 500 rounds. Not just that, but I mean, we've talked about the difference in time to set up a progressive press versus single stage. It's significant.

And for doing load development where you're going to make like four or five of something and then make a change, single stage, it'll just make more sense. They do. They really do. You know, one thing I really would like to do on my rock trucker, it has a bushing to go to the larger dyes for like 50 BMG and stuff like that.

I would like to make an adapter to go from the quick change system that Hornity Press has behind me and add that into my rock trucker. Even if I have to tear it down, throw it in a mill, and bore it out larger, I think I am going to make that happen somehow. So I wouldn't swear to it, but are you sure that? that those lock and load dyes will not thread into the rock chucker already. I'm not. I haven't checked.

This is a thing that I, that came into my head just about a week ago. And I haven't really looked into it yet. You know that the rock chucker like has a bushing in the top of it already. Yep. I want to say I talked to somebody who had said that if you unscrew that big black bushing out of the top of that green press, the horny lock and load bushings will screw straight in same thread pitch

and everything I I haven't tried it myself I don't have any horny stuff to play with but it's definitely worth looking anyway before we move on from this so my I'm gonna find this out right now

my version of this in mixing similar brass was because recently I was footsing around on my reloading bench and late in the evening, I was trying to, like, get organized and everything. And I took one, like, coffee can of brass and threw it into another coffee can of brass to mix the two together. It was all brass of size. I was kind of accumulating it so that I could get enough to care for a wash. And I was like brass, brass, they both look like threw them in together.

And it wasn't until I did that that I noticed the label on one of the cans said 38 SP and the other one said three, five, seven. Mac. Oh. So I have oopsies. Oopsies. Now, this was easy to fix

because 3. 57 and 38 special are the same case except for the height. So all I had to do is literally just pull the cases out and stand them up on their butts

facing straight up on my bench. And at a glance, you could pick out the 30th special from 375s. Like, it was easy to see it. And the same trick would probably apply to 9 mil and 380 AC.

that you just put all those put them all you know so they're all facing upwards and you'll spot the shorties real fast so phil good news you are absolutely correct i won't take credit for it i'm passing law what i do lock and load die bushing the outer portion that has the i'm going to call it the female of those t slots that you drop in and turn is one in a what is it one and a quarter one and an eighth one and a one and a quarter one and a eight one and a one and a quarter one and a quarter one and a quarter one and a quarter one and a quarter one and a quarter 12 thread, which is the exact same size as the larger die thread bushes. That's what I had heard at one point, but I hate to stay... We're in business. I can do that. I hate that'll make load development easier. Yeah, I hate to say like, oh yeah, this is the way it is if I don't know for sure, but I had heard that. I just pulled up RCBS's website on the rock trucker as well as Hornady's website on those replacement die bushings because they are a wear item eventually, apparently.

Oh, Raggle just... I don't know if you'll be able to see that or not. rag will just send me this. Oh, that's a solid oopsie. That's, um, yeah, that, that's a broken decapping pin. I mean, that, that's a butcher, buggered up something or the other. Oh, let's see here. But yeah, mixing and matching similar brass. I mean, that's, it's a venial sin.

It's annoying. It can be easily fixed. And it, you should definitely locate that problem before it gets into your chamber optimally. One thing that I would recommend. you're learning is. So your shell plate for whatever size cartridge is going to fit multiple calibers.

Yes. Know what those calibers are for any given shell plate. It's like 9mm, 380 will fit in there, but it won't feel right. Imagine my surprise when I first started reloading 308, Winchester and realize that 45 ACP is the same, the same shell plate. It is. It is. 30-0-6, 308, 45 ACP, same shell.

Before we move on, we do have a poll. I like these polls. They're fun. Here's a poll for y'all. What is your greatest reloading sin, complete with cheeky innuendos? Y'all, y'all understand. It's a contractual thing. So there's not one for not enough lube, two for too much bang, three for putting things where they don't go, and four for reloading 40-Cal or 380 ACP. Because if you're doing that, I wish you would stop.

look if it's for a walther i will allow a 380 acp if you are not james if you are not bond james bond secret agent double o seven then it's still not allowed it everyone needs a suit gun in my opinion and it's a great suit gun it conceals very well it's classy you whip it out at a party people aren't going to get as mad the movies prove it all right me and nick have voted if y'all would like to vote you could put a one two three or four in the uh comment section of whatever platform you had to be watching

and i'll leave this up for a little bit before i drop it because it's impinging on my face and it's just a little bit frustrating but i'll be impinge it upon my face um we can i can scoot it over there great success great success It's tinged upon my head. All right. I like it. So I feel like this is going to be a good general. This causes lots of other problems.

Changing your procedure for no good freaking reason. Nick, have you ever violated your normal SOP for reloading for some crazy-ass reason? Just like I always do it this way. But this one time, I'm going to mix and match things just for no reason. And that causes a problem. So I have found what tends to happen is if I set up to do a batch of precision rifle rounds, a family member will show up at my house in the middle of me doing that. Doesn't matter when I do it. Somebody's going to show up and knock on my door.

Four reasons. Typically, my procedure for that is I will put the powder, take the powder, out of the powder thrower, dump it back in the jug it comes from, seal that, and then walk away. Because at the very least, I know what powder it is. For sure, I know what powder it is then, because it's in the right jug, not having problems. One time I did not. and so I came back downstairs a few hours later after they left and there were two jugs of powder sitting on my bench

and there was powder in the powder measure. Uh-oh. And some flake powders look remarkably similar. So the powder in the powder measure got dumped into a solo cup. That solo cup got dumped out into the garden. Don't know what it was. It was a fair amount of powder. Felt very wasteful, but I couldn't tell the difference.

Not worth playing with. So my version of this sin, Raggle, oddly enough, I was able to vote, and Nick was able to vote. It's just not taking your vote, and I'm not sure why. Hmm. But it's a conspiracy. It is a conspiracy. Your FBI handler decided that you've had enough fun for the night, apparently.

I wonder if I can vote number one for Raggle. I tried that. Huh. Oh, because interesting. Yeah. Anyway. It's big sad. We'll figure this out eventually.

So my version of this big screw up was traditionally, I do all of my powder charging, like immediately before the bullet goes on top of the case, before it goes into the press. This one time, I decided to do something different for no damn good reason. several friends of mine do this thing where they put all their cases into a loading block and they into everyone and then they they look at it afterwards maybe take a picture for Instagram to make sure they're all charged and they didn't miss any and I decided to try this one time and guess when Phil made his one and only squib load in his entire history of reloading missed one in the trail the one time I decided to charge every single one of them and then check with a goddamn a flashlight to make sure that they were all charged and still screwed that up.

Wow. And ever since then, we don't do that anymore. We put the case underneath the powder throw. We go click, click. We put the bullet on top. It goes in the case. It gets smashed together. We are not deviated from that procedure.

It works well. It doesn't cause problems. We're not doing this whole cute Instagram, look cute, reloading block thing. We're not doing that anymore. I mean, I'll use reloading blocks, but I ain't trying to charge 50Ks. and then. So I was taught to do it the opposite way you do it by an old time reloader. And the way he taught me was when you prime the case, the case goes primer side up in the

reloading block. When you then take it out, charge the case goes open side up. Then every case that is right side up will be. charged because it's upside down when it's just primed, right side up when it's charged. Now, however you're going to do it, stick with your system because it doesn't really matter which way you do that. It only matters if the change causes a problem, which incidentally was also the thing we talked about last show where I was like, yeah, that one time I decided that I didn't need to let my

cases air drive for 24 hours, four hours was going to be. be plenty. Yeah, that was an error made a change from what was obviously working just fine for no reason or than laziness and impatience. And, you know, it'd been. So I would just say that once you, once you get into a groove, once you establish a procedure, if you're going to change it, change it for a reason. Like change it because something works better or change it because I did this one time. It's not as efficient. But know the reason you're changing it and make that change intentionally. Like, if I had always reloaded the way Nick's describing, I'm sure it would have been fine.

But for some... It's the habit you build. But for some reason, trying to change that habit just on the spur of the moment, that bit me. And I don't know how I... The only thing I can figure is that I just somehow missed a case and then somehow missed it again when I was checking all of them and drop the bullet on top. thing that can happen when the human eye is looking at a pattern film where it's expecting to see brass case powder brass case powder brass case powder brass case powder brass case powder

and if you get into that habit and you're not intentionally looking your brain will just go it's a brass case it must it'll fill in the blank right this incidentally is a reason why in my in my day job my career i'm notorious for using conditional formatting in excel spreadsheets. Changes, what changes the background? You can do all sorts of stuff with it. Like change background, color, change the font, change all sorts of stuff.

But the point is that I have very lengthy, multi-tiered, like, whole list of conditional formatting. That way, if any of these conditions are met, it lights up the cell in red. So you've got a white sheet. Like, I don't do a lot of color. But with one red one. And here's the thing is, I don't do a lot of color. of color for I don't I don't I don't make my Excel sheets pretty I don't give a shit right I make them

very plain very functional it's lots of lots of white fields and you know maybe I might bump up the the weight of the grid lines just to make it a little more reasonable but I make it easier to read for certain things but people in my organization are to know I am notorious for using that conditional formatting to blast a cell red because if you not only if you're just scrolling through but if you have a, if you have some, if you're on some of my larger spreadsheets that have like 900, a thousand rows of data and 20 or

25 or 30 columns of data, then I like, but then I like to use the filters and filter on color. And if I get, if that, if that filter on color returns one single red, I know I got a problem. I know where it is. I know I need to go figure out what the problem is.

But that's, I mean, there, there are, there are tools. in the reloading world that can help you avoid this. But my tool is like just stay in that workflow. Grab the case, charge, bullet to the press. And as long as I have that going. The other thing I do is like, this isn't so much a

don't change your procedure, but this is like a me thing. Is if my wife or daughter walk out there to talk to me about something while I'm doing it, I will intentionally stop where I'm at. Like if I'm if all I need to do is press the bullet, I'll press a bullet and that'll stop. But if I get to a stopping point and I stop what I'm doing, I do not, whether it's a personality thing or whatnot, this and this don't work well at the same time.

So if I have to have a conversation with somebody, I stop what I'm doing. With anything that is precision driven or safety driven, that's probably a wise way to go. for for solving the issue of too much or too little powder or a missed powder charge in a progressive press phil if you heard of a powder cope die i did not know that that was a thing that exists i've heard them call powder cops but cop cope however you want to pronounce same same difference essentially what it is there's a little washer o ring or colored stripe on a little probe inside the die. And when you run the press to the up position, that colored line should be at a specific point at the top of this dye. I'm going to be getting one or building one for this reloading

press here because I have been very fortunate with this powder thrower. It throws very consistently, but any mechanical system can be susceptible to failure or creep over time. Always. It's just a threaded lock nut. That's all it is that keeps that. that powder measure set to the specific measurement. And if you're doing many, many cycles in an hour, eventually it is going to creep. And I think that would be a wise investment.

They're like 40 bucks. I mean, it really can. It seems wise to prevent what is designed to prevent. Because you can't, you cannot reliably in this press that I have, see the powder that has been thrown. But you can tell there's powder in there,

but you can't reliably, gauge the levels like you can with a single state where you're looking at each case. The bigger problem isn't so much that individual press. It's a numbers game. It's like the discussion you and I have all the time about human error. If your error rate is like

100th of a percent. Yeah. If you load 10,000 rounds, you're going to screw one up. It's a numbers game. It's purely, it's like the opposite of accuracy by volume. is inevitable failure by virtue of volume.

So that's what I always tell everybody. I'm like, if there's something you can do in your process, a piece of equipment, a procedure or whatever that helps decrease the error rate, that's good. Just accept the fact that the error rate will never be zero and you are going to screw one up one day. But like the NASA analogy, you want the script to happen on the bench, not in the chamber. So anything you can do to increase your quality. control is a really good idea.

Rangel, what's my powder dispense method? I have a just our CBS, what do they call their powder throw? The Uniflow, I think it is. Volumetric powder throw. But they have a brand name for it. I want to say it's Uniflow. Yeah, they do. So the one tip I will give about, hang on a second, individually wage one or volumetric

powder throwers. So here's the thing. when I first started reloading and still to a degree like with my 308 with with rounds that I know are capable of a very high degree of accuracy I will still go that extra mile of like throw a charge that is intentionally half to three quarters of a grain too light and then I'll get the powder trickler out and trickle up to you know trickle up to what I need to be at for for a lot of my rounds I will not go that extra step of like the powder trickler. What I will do a lot of times is I will set the volumetric to throw what I want to throw. I will throw 10 charges into a pan. Take your weight divide by 10.

If I'm averaging exactly where I want to be, I roll them. And then what I do is, is that every 5 to 10 cases, I will take a case, drop it on my powder scale. I'll drop it on my scale. I'll tear it. I'll throw a charge, put it back in the scale

and just check like one every five, one every 10. But the other thing I did a long time ago was two things that made my particular power to throw much, much more accurate or much more consistent. First of all is that, at least with RCBS,

and I'm sure the other manufacturers are the same, but I'm the green collate guy. They have two different drums that you can get for their power to throw. They have the rifle drum and the pistol drum. The pistol drum. drum is more than freaking plenty to load 5, five, six.

Yes, I would agree with that. But here's the thing, and I've come around to this way of thinking, because when I, the last time I reload 308, I swapped out to the bigger drum, I did all that nonsense, but I think what I'm going to do this time is I'm going to take the drum, the pistol drum, the smaller diameter drum, and I'm just going to have to charge weight throw it twice. Because what I discovered, what I discovered, especially because I'm, I'm, I'm,

those up to up to where I need to be anyway. Yeah, especially because you're trickling them. I would say that's not an issue. But the other issue, the other thing of it is, and the reason why I like that pistol drum, I keep using air quotes for the audio listeners is small volume drama. Yes, because it's a, because it's a smaller diameter, but the height of that chamber is the same. I find that because the diameter of the chamber is smaller, especially with very small amounts of powder, like four and a half grains from a nine mill or five and a half grains from my 45

ACP, it is much, much, much more consistent than the larger diameter drum. And because of that, if I have the choice between throwing that, throw in two charges that each added together equal that larger charge I need or switching out to the bigger die or the bigger drum, I'd just assume use a smaller drum throw two charges. So I have two different style of powder measures. both are volumetric one is the type that you have which is a cylindrical piston that is

driven forward or backwards by a screw I call it a drum because that's it is it's drum shape that they put the mind has a quick change thing for it and then I have one of the old leaf style volumetric powder throwers where you've got

a large a medium and a small different almost like a spacer that you move back and forth. I have found that on the newer style, which is on my Hornady Press, the newer style cylindrical cylinder whatever you want, volumetric powder thrower, those I have found crunch less powder and bust less large grain powder than the old style leaf spring type. I have not noticed a difference in consistency, but I do know that if you bust up those powder grains, you get slightly different burn rates.

And I've noticed that with this powder measure, I don't seem to have as much inconsistency in my, in my velocity on my precision rifle rounds as I did with that old style powder thrower. And I am using the same IMR 464 powder. Yep. With both. And 466. And the same lot of primers. And 464 tends to be fairly susceptible to getting crunched like that because it's, uh,

It's a stick powder. Yeah. It's fairly long, thin grain stick powders. But the air thing, and this is something I encourage people to think about. The earth thing that I found made my powder throw a lot more consistent. Because I started noticing that when I had the hopper filled to the brim and when I had the hopper down about an inch of powder showing, the charge weight was wildly different. Because you had more, because the powder throw was full, you had more pressure.

on the top pushing down into that Do you not have an equalizer baffle in yours? That's what I was going to say. Adding that silly silly looking little baffle, it looks like a bent potato chip upside down with two holes in it. I didn't put

angled side up. Yeah, I didn't think there was much to them. I am a died of the wool convert. I think it ought to come with the freaking powder throws. Because it does. Well, mine didn't. Yours didn't? Did not. Huh. Everyone I've ever bought, even like my

50 year old lineman all had those well i'm going to say that if you don't have one go get one and if you do have one make sure you use it and the other thing is like just in with with that i find that as long as i refill the powder throw when the powder get when the powder gets down to like the very top of that baffle that's when i refill it and as long as you keep the powder between full and the top of that baffle i mean i am within a tenth of grand higher low of where I'm aiming. I would say that I have found, and this might just be the powders I'm using, I need to keep about gay much powder above the top of that baffle for whatever reason.

Could be the humidity, could be the static electricity, cause the powder not want to flow. But if I get down below about an inch and a half, two inches above the top of that baffle, I get a little, my charges seem to be light. not a lot a couple tenths of a grain not nearly enough to make a terrible difference but it's a difference yeah all right so charging forward charging

pun intended crap in the primer pocket yeah pain of my existence yes you and I've talked about this before pretty easy remedy if I'm being honest usually you can just like take the case and tap it on the tap in your reloading press a couple times and that'll shock loose whatever's in there worst case scenario

you just get a universal decapping pin or a straight pin or something and just punch it out. So I went ahead and I bought one of the Dillon versions of that decapper that you have, that spring loaded decapper. Oh my God, is that nice for decapping cases? Love it. I used to wet tumble before decapping just because I decapped in my resizing dye. I'm now going to run all my cases through my press with my case feeder to decap all of them, just using it like a single stage, but rapid firing cases into it with the case feeder,

because I can deprive about 500 cases an hour with this now, which is fantastic. That's nice. Yeah, so I'm going to do that. Then run them through my wet tumbler so I don't have crap in my primer pockets anymore. Yeah. But like you said, I just, I try to order these in such a way that it was like from the, from merely annoying all the way to moderately dangerous. Yeah.

Next up, too much powder. Does everyone here have a bullet puller of some kind? Yep. Okay. So I use kinetic pullers. I know a lot of people prefer the collid pullers. There are pros and cons to either. I will just say this much, though.

If you have a kinetic polar, you got the little plastic hammer that you put the bullet in, you whack it on something, it pops a bullet out. I'm going to encourage you now to go buy another one and put that one in the drawer someplace for when the first one shatters. It will break for no reason. Brough, one of the last times I was reloading before I put everything up for a while. I think it was chilly and maybe the plastic got cold and it was. several years old at that point, but like I whack that thing on the friggin' concrete

floor and I felt plastic shards on the side of my face. The whole, the whole literally, the whole head sheared off the handle. The whole bottom just exploded. The piece that holds the case rim, that was actually still intact.

But just, I mean, it exploded everywhere. So then I had the problem. They will do that eventually. So then I had the problem of all these I had a couple of bullets left out of the batch that I was pulling. It was 5-5-6, actually. Oh, okay. So there's a fair amount of neck tension there.

Yeah. Well, you remember how we were talking about that load for WCA-844 that I developed? Well, the load wound up being the starting charge. So I had a bunch I had to pull. And after pulling down most of them, I smashed my hammer. And then I had a few left. And rather than leave those rounds just lying there. because my OCD kicked in.

I pulled out the poor man's bullet puller, which is what you do when you don't mind destroying the bullets. You get a... Leatherman in a bench vise. Well, Leatherman, vice grips. You put your bullet in your press. I'm assuming this to work with anything, but it works really good in a single stage.

Pull your dye at the top, run the bullet all the way up, clamp your vice grips onto the bullet, and then just run the press the other direction. They'll just pop the case right off the bottom. So one thing that I found works really great for that. If you happen to have a drill press with a vice in it, you can just close up your three jaw drill chuck and then just wheel the press up. Pulls a bullet right out of the case. Works great.

Yeah. Raggle is saying don't hit it on concrete. But here's the trick. You're right. The 4x4 is softer so it won't shatter. But the 4x. The 4x4 also has give. And it's that shot.

It's that sharp shock that helps pop the bullets loose. So you know what that means, Phil? You need an an anvil. I mean, frankly, I used to whack it on the bench vise. Because it's got a big, big steel pad on the side of it just for hitting stuff, I guess. Well, that's not what that's for. That's what it's going to be used for. That's not what that pad is for.

It works. Oh, God. It's not a hardened plate. You're a machinist. You're a machinist. I'm a coon ass. I realize, but that's not what that part of your vice is fine. That's what I've been using it for for about 43 years now.

Good Lord. Did I just tickle your tism a little bit? Well, you know, I have a very nice antique cast iron vice right behind me that has one of those big, nice cast iron plates there. That's not what that's. I have a very cheap, shitty bench vice. Yeah. Trying not to turn it into a hangar. Yeah.

Nick is not trying to turn it into a hand grenade. Not yet. So the only other alternative I will offer is that I actually ran into a person that had a pair of pliers. And I forget what it was. It was some bullet he had to pull down very, very often. And he actually took and took the, took the, took the, hook the, the, the pliers and drilled a hole that was like just slightly. smaller than the bullet. So it was almost like he made his own one, you know, fits one size colip polar basically.

That makes sense. Yeah. But I don't encourage you to ruin your bullets like that, especially with the really nice match bullets. But for 55 grain, you know, Hornity, bulk, jacketed bullets, I wasn't They can probably go back in after you hit them with a file. Yeah. Okay. Next. Okay. This is where things start to get a little. Oof. No lube.

Big oof, stuck cases. And just to remind everybody, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, one is not enough loob, two is too much bang. Three is putting things where they don't go. Four is reloading 40 or 380. And if you don't like innuendo, I don't know why you're here. So, Phil. You want to learn some material science? Lay it on me.

Is this about, is this, is this, is this. Is this still about the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the stuc cases. We're on to stuck cases in a chest freezer now. Okay. All right. So, carbide and steel. Uh-huh. They have rates at which they shrink.

They are not the same. If you have a stuck case in a carbide and steel die, do not do what I'm going to tell you right now, because that carbide could crack. if you have a rifle dye that is non-carbide and you have a stuck rifle case in it, chuck that bitch in your chest freezer and wait till tomorrow. The brass will shrink more than the steel and you will have an easier time getting that stuck case out. That makes sense. Do not do that with a carbide dye.

Carbide does not shrink nearly as much as steel and you will put a ton of extra pressure on that carbide insert. Not saying it will, but it could crack. that carbide. That makes sense. So at this point, I will offer. I'm assuming everybody has seen the special thing that they make to remove a stuck case from a die, right? You mean a quarter 20 socket head cap screw and a spaced out washer? Well, they actually sell such a thing specifically for that purpose for way more money than what you're describing. Yeah, it's like $75. I made one for like $3.40 at Ace Hardware. Yeah, I removed it. A tap I had in the I removed a stuck case and it cost me exactly zero.

So I'm not, this is not the preferred method. Nick might develop a Twitch from hearing this, but I'll tell y'all. So I ended up in the situation where because I changed my process for no damn good reason, I somehow managed to skip the lube before I put a 556 case into a 556 die. That a stick every time. Yeah, I realized my folly as I was, you know, expecting a nice, easy lube. And it just went and it just, it bound up very quickly and very aggressively. Like when it stopped, it was like slamming into a brick wall.

Brass don't like to get pressed without lobe. No, no, no. Lots of things don't like to get pressed without lube. That's definitely a thing. So what wound up happening was in an effort to save me. my reloading afternoon because this was like the first case of the day. That sounds about right. Yeah.

So what I did was I realized that the problem is I have this brass case and it's in this dye, but there's really nothing like the dehapping rod and the, the stem that bell mouse and everything. That's really not hung up on anything. It's just the case in there. So what I did was was with our CBS dies. and I'm assuming you could do this with most of the others. I unscrew, I left the seating stem in.

I undid the jam nut on the top, and I took the bushing that positions the seeding stem in the dye, and I unscrewed that off the top of the stem while leaving the stem in the case. Then I very strategically, like, tried to get this of this menagerie to where what I did was I took the shell plate, And I turned it so that I was able to pull the shell plate forward off the ram while leaving the case in the in the in the in the press. Sure. And then I took a block of wood and put it on top of that seeding stem and got a hammer and tap, tap, tap, tap, tap and use the seating stem to drive. Well, but here's the thing of it because it probably worked.

It worked perfectly. And because it only worked though, because the decapping pin was all the way down in the flash hole. So what I was doing was I was taking the very bottom of that that expander ball that doesn't usually contact anything because the neck is so much longer than that and use that to tap the shell out the bottom. It's not do that. It's not the preferred method. It's kind of redneck. It's not a great idea. But in a pinch, it can work.

So those are typically. So the expansion die is usually the expansion bulb on the end. That's usually a hardened steel component. The threaded rod above it is usually not. And where you can get in a little bit of trouble with that is you can bend or deform that threaded rod a bit. If you are a handy guy, like I know you are, Phil, do you not have a steel punch set laying around in your garage? I do. So why not just grab a steel punch that fits down the hole and use that?

didn't think about it. Now you will. Tunnel vision is a thing, Nick. Oh, it absolutely is. I mean, they also do make that, and you guys have all seen it, I made it on the lathe. It's basically a little cup that fits over the end of the case. You put your screw down in there after you've drilled and tapped the bottom of your case,

and you just swing that socketed capscar around until it pops a case right out. Either way works, smack it out sometimes with the wooden dowel works. If it is just a steel die, chucking it in the freezer can sometimes free it up after a couple hours. But the key is, loop your goddamn cases so it doesn't become a problem in the first place. Unless it's pistol brass in a carbide die, then it doesn't matter. Yeah, I've literally never stuck a case in a carbide die. I have had it happen once. I've had it happen one time.

what happened was the rim on the 9mm case was so abused that the rim ripped off that that I could see so it was a ripped off rim not a stuck case and I was able to just gently with a wooden doll pop that thing right out yeah I was about say it shouldn't have been bound in there too too badly because barbide is so slick it wasn't it was just that that case had been reloaded too many times I don't even know how many times times. It probably was right on the edge of the point where it would start splitting the case wall or getting a rim, uh, uh, case had separation. It was a very abused pistol case. Um, remind me about this conversation in one more, um, one more banner. Because I don't want to get them out of order now, partially processed, but lost in the sauce. Is everyone here ever done something really dumb like you, you leave stuff out on the bench, or than powder? We've already covered that. But you leave stuff out on the bench and you think to yourself,

I will remember what was going on here when I come back to it later or tomorrow or whatever. And then by the time later comes, it's like three weeks and two home improvement projects and, you know, super flu, meteor strikes, something happened. And you've totally freaking forgotten what the hell is on your bench, where it came from, what step you're on or anything else. So as you guys can see, there is a cardboard box on the stool over my shoulder full of 9mm pistol brass halfway through being processed. What you can't see is the pink index card that is sitting in the top of that case that says exactly what stage of the process that that is in for exactly this reason.

Yeah. I have three different boxes of 9mm pistol brass. scattered and a plastic tray full of stuff drying scattered around my basement right now, all exceptionally far away from each other, all labeled at exactly what step in the process they're in for this reason. Yeah, I did something kind of silly. I've done this some version of this silly shit on multiple occasions where, like, I was looking at this coffee can of brass,

and obviously it wasn't, it didn't have a spent primer in it, so we weren't at step one, and it didn't have a live primer in it. So we weren't at step like the almost, you know, we weren't at ready to load. We were somewhere in between. We're somewhere in between. And I know that the steps are like decap it and then, you know, like wet wash it and then bell mouth it and then prime it. But we're between, we're somewhere in the middle.

This is less of an issue with my pistol cartridges. And it's even less of an issue with actually, no, it's more of an issue. issue with my rifle cartridges. It would be more of an issue as extra stuff. Because yeah, well, I also, especially with 5, 5, 5, 6, because I have the extra steps of, like, I'm running every single case through

the primer, primary pocket switch. Even though, once you swed it once, you shouldn't have to do it again, and I get that, but I have so much range brass coming in and out of, like, my process, I just decided years ago, I was going to swage every single pocket. So I know they're all suage. I know it's all

done. I trim every last one of them. like that's just kind of my guarantee that I take all this range brass and when it goes through the intake, it comes out the airside consistent. And the only way to have that level consistency that I was comfortable with was it all goes through the same process no matter what. The only thing I'm not really picky about is my revolver brass, even though I do trim that. But it's because once I've intake that brass and I've trimmed it all to length, it's revolver brass. It's going to come out of the cylinder and go right back into the range bag to come home.

Right. I don't. It's not like you're picking up Lucy's off the ground and who knows what got mixed in with that. Like I ended up with some fucking 5-7 brass the other day for no reason. Remind me later and I'll send you an article about reloading that stuff. Not that I encourage you to do it, but it's an interesting science experiment. I don't have a 5-7 and I'm probably never going to. If you owned a 5-7, I would advise you against reloading.

This is purely just for the interesting. Really? remind me as soon as we wrap, I'll send you the article. Yeah. I would love to read that. I will have time tomorrow. It's interesting side note and science experiment, but after having read through it, I would never try it myself. Like, the juice just does not seem worth the squeeze to me.

Maybe I'll just scrap that. I have the show looking for somebody that does reward it. Rackle, I mean, trimming is not my favorite thing to do, but it is an evil. is an evil necessity. Yeah. It exists for a reason. Yeah. All right.

I got two more things. Do what? No crimp, no neck tension, round will not chamber plunk test. So there's a couple of things going on here. Over the course of my reloading career, I have had an instance where I had a whole batch in 45 ACP that would not chamber in my 1911 to save his freaking life.

come to find out later i had not i had not crimped those rounds oh you just kind of straighten the case out yeah so because i hadn't crimped those rounds now fortunately you're talking about a straight wall case so there's buchu neck tension even without it being crimped but because it wasn't crimped it just did not want to fully see it in that tight-ass chamber it would i mean it dude it would stop a 60th of an inch shy. But bigger than hell, I kept having issues with this one batch of ammo. I made several hundred rounds where if you plunk tested a bunch of those rounds, I mean like every third or fourth round would stand proud of the chamber. So what I did was, I finally sucked it up one day. I lit a cigar. I just committed myself to fact I was going to go

through this aggravating bullshit to find all this suspect ammo. And I took my, I took the barrel out of my 1911, put it in my pad advice, just, to stand it up and use that like a chamber gauge. And I dropped every single bullet into the into there. And I pulled out every single one that wouldn't just drop in to where the case head was like flush with the barrel hood. And then every one of those, I went right back to my 45 ACP seating die. I took the seating stem out. And I just put the first one in, ran it down until I felt it engaged the taper cramped, put it down there half turn and just taper cramped every last one of them.

that's usually all it takes it's quarter to half a turn yeah that's that's all it took to fix but that is one of the things that a failure to crimp your rounds will do is it can cause in a straight wall case it can cause that round to fail to chamber i find that in nine mill it doesn't seem to give a ship but it's because it's a tapered case if it seats you can yeah you can get, assuming you take the bell mouth out, you don't really have to crimp much on the nine mill, in my opinion, from my testing. I've never had a problem with neck tension on nine mill. I have had a problem with neck tension on my, on my 30-od six. So I have had a problem with neck tension on my nine mill.

Really? Yes, I had a small badge of nine millimeter that I thankfully, I caught and cold and fixed, that the neck tension was so woefully inconsistent that some of these bullets, you could set, some of these cartridges, you could set the bullet back with your thumb. I still have no freaking clue. That's upset.

How I pulled it off. I mean, I wonder, I'd be curious to throw on my crometer on those bullets and see if they were a couple of foul under spec. I don't know, but I know that every last one of them, I did exactly that. Took the seating stem out, ran them back through the taper crimp, fixed them just fine

I've never I've never previous to this had an issue where like neck tension was that out of whack on a nine mill round that you could set the bullet back that easily but it scared the crap out of me so I called all those bullets and fixed them

um fortunately that was that happened right as I bought my CZ Scorpion so I was like tooling up to load a bunch of nine millimeter because I've got like you know all of a sudden I got 10 30 round magazines to fill so thank you Thankfully, it was really easy to go back through all those magazines and be like, y'all, y'all are about to get a little bit extra attention. We got to catch this before we get too much further.

Prout Texans saying, don't forget about separation baskets for range brass. Yes. And actually, I've got right here, if I can get this to share the damn tab, it will not. So a company called Shell Sorter. The browser doesn't want me to share the screen. That's dumb. A company called shell sorter. Shellsorter.com.

You can find them. Stewart turned me on to this for sort and range brass. There's three baskets and then a plate to separate out at 380 ACP stuff. Fantastic. Save yourself a shitload of time and drinking three beers on the couch where you stare at headcase stamps. So great idea. I should have bought them when he sent me the casings. Instead, I hand-sorted it all.

I won't be doing that again. I got to address Raggle's question. He was, him and Stewart were talking about, I crimp 45 ACP and Stewart said taper cramp and Raggle said is it built into the seeding dye. Now, Stewart answered this, but I thought it merited a little bit of discussion. I think so. I'm, Stewart says many are some not. I'm not honestly familiar with any dye that does taper crimp that doesn't have the taper crimp built into the dye itself. although Stewart's been around since like

Stewart was sweeping the shop at John Browning's shop so like he probably knows something I don't there are die sets you can buy that do not have that in the same dye they will have a separate dye and it is labeled crimp die yeah like Lee's factory crimp dies correct but I usually you have to opt for that If you go and you buy an RCBS die set for 45 ACP or a Lee set or a Lyman set or a Redding set,

just about all of those will come with a tape or crimp in the seating die. I've not seen one that didn't. That was not explicitly marked and an extra dye in the set and considerably more money. Now, I will say that like for the only factory crimp I purchase was for 3.7, and not and 30 out six well and the reason I bought it for that one cartridge was because like revolver cartridges are roll crimped not taper crimped and a roll crimp traditionally is a fair bit more exuberant than what you're trying to get with the taper crimp especially with a magnum cartridge so instead of doing this you're doing this so because of that I opted for that factory crimpedi but I have that lee factory crimpedi mixed in with an rcbs set so all I did was I just backed the seat back the die body up like one turn and then put the seating stem in the same amount. That way your taper crimp isn't engaging on the top of the case.

So Raggle, to answer your question, like, unless you're in that special, that special little edge case where your, your taper crimp die is the taper crimps that's not built into the seating die, you control that by how far down into the press the dye is screwed. That it's a, it's a ring inside. side of the die and when it contacts the top of your case, it just very gently like takes the

bell mouth out. And then once you get that set, then your seating die goes up and down to adjust the seed depth of the bullet. Yeah. If you have, if you have that die set too tall, then you miss that. Yeah. You're just, you're just not, you're just not taper cramping at that point. Although I will say, which is okay. I mean, certain rounds you want that. Like my, my precision rifle rounds for my 30 out 6, I have a factory crimp die for because that's what shot the best. Now, I will say

this much and someone out there is going to get irrationally annoyed at this. I actually take for 5.56, I really only do this with 5,56, but I intentionally back my die out further than it needs to be so that I don't taper crimp at all.

I screw the seating depth. I screw the seating stem down, until I get my bullet to the right height. I load every one of my rounds in that loading session, which usually I've got three loading blocks or 50 rounds each. I usually load 150 rounds in whack. I seat every one of the bullets. And then I back the seating die out,

screw the die body in, and then in a second step, I taper cramp every last one of them. Okay. It works just fine. What I found was that I was getting less consistent seating depth when I was trying to taper cramp and seed in the same step. up. I have not had that problem in my rock trucker press, but I do not reload 5,56. Yeah. So could be something

with your dye set for 556. Could be the case, the head stamps that you have. I suspect that the bigger, because this, and the only place I really observe this to this degree is 5,56. And I suspect it's just down to the fact that I'm mixing so many different kinds of range brass. So a very small, a very small dimensional difference in the thickness of the neck will cause that will cause that neck tension to tighten up faster yeah i mean we're talking about and then your bullet won't seat the same yeah you're probably still within you're probably still within safe nominal i would bet but you're probably just not where you personally want to be yeah so that is that is a way that you can you can use you can reconfigure the die to do the seating and the crimping in two different steps if you

don't want to go spend the extra money on factory crimp die personally a factory crimp die does a better job in my opinion than the the the crimp ring built into most of your dyes and i prefer it for revolver rounds because with revolver round i'm going to get really aggressive with that roll cramps especially for magnums but if you want if you want an intermediate step between the way the dive is built to be used where you seat and cramp in the same step and go into a factory crimped die like that is an intermediate you can just all all it means to me though is is that i don't i don't lock down the lock the i don't lock down the lock rings on any on my seating dies they're always set up i set up that lock that that that that seating die every single time so sure it takes an extra minute or two but that's also why it doesn't bother me to have to set them up because i'm doing it every single reloading session anyway. Maybe I should do some 5-5-6 reloading just to play around with it and see if I get a similar result in my rock trucker with my 556 die set.

Maybe you can't straight and see what you get. And ragel. I have powder primers and I've got everything to do it. I just don't bother because I can't really go shoot ARs anymore. And I've got, I think last time I checked. like 380 pounds of 556. You need that Mossburg Patriot in 5. I know.

I need something in 556 that I can shoot. Ooh. What about the fight light lower? Can't. Oh, I hate your state so much. Can't because so it's, if the upper has a flash hider or a barrel shroud, I don't know, man.

We're not, we're not quite sure. The gun stores aren't quite sure. There was a gun store around me locally that was selling mini 14 ranches, but those mini 14 ranches had a flash hider on them. And another mini 14 ranch had a threaded barrel, but it was a compensator on it. And that was fine. But the flash hider wasn't. Nobody fucking knows, dude. I just this state, dude.

I don't even. I hear you. I'm honestly, I'm halfway considering buying a 5,56 bolt gun in a Remington 700 chassis. so that I can use it as a 5-5-6 trainer for my 30-ought-6, which I'm considering re-barrelling as a 6-5-0-6 because I hate money. That'd be interesting. Oh, it would.

Raggle asks, what kind of crimp does the factory crimped dye do? It depends. So it's not the factory crimped die. It's not that the factory crimpedi uses a roll crimp or a table crimps. It's the fact that different cartridges use a roll-crip or a tipped. paper crim. And whichever one, the cartridge you bought that factory crimpedi for uses, the factory crimpedi will apply. Correct. Think of all I got, okay, there's just one, one last, one last one.

Mix and match data. Bad, don't do. Yeah. Nick, have you ever committed this sin? I have not committed this sin, but I have watched somebody do it. I have definitely exceeded recommended safe specs with some of my rifle loads. But you did so intentionally. I have. I have definitely applied bullets very much not intended for 300 wind mag that are the same diameter as 300 wind mag because they're 30 caliber bullets.

They're M2AP poles, which are not meant to be loaded in a 300 wind mag because they're 155 or 158. I can't remember which off top of my head. So they're very light. So you have to use an incorrect powder. But if you're doing that, if you're going to do that, you need to be extremely cautious and ideally learn from other people who didn't blow up their gun and then start at the bottom of the load data and use velocities to try and figure out when you're getting up to pressure curves that are dangerous. So I'm going to tell this story and I have my father's permission to tell this story. He gave me permission years ago. I whip it out every now then as a caution, the ultimate cautionary note. This is how my dad unintentionally upgraded from a Smith-Western Shield to a Gen 2 shield.

So bear in mind that like my personal thing is is that as evidenced by when we did the recipe book show, you probably notice I don't have a ton of pad loads. No. Like usually one, maybe two, that's okay. One per one or two per cartridge. I load lots of them.

I have lots of those bolts on the shelf. That's just my thing. I find, I find a load I like. I stick with it. And I don't like the color outside the lines much. My father on the other hand, he's a tinkler.

He, he's retired. That's where you get dangerous. He's retired now. He has lots of free time. He's a range officer at our local gun range. All of his gun, gun buddies are out there and that's what these old farts do is just tinker because that's what you do

in your retirement and um he i but he accidentally conflated nine mill hill data for two different grain weight bullets so if i recall correctly he took the he took a heavier bullet i want to say now i'm i don't want to miss quote it was either a 124 grain and he used 115 data or it was a 140 that would blow up a gun yeah it might have been i think it might have been 124 to 115 because he tends to like the 150 if you use a lighter grain weight bullets powder charge it will create too much pressure with the heavier bullet but also if you seat that heavier bullet to the same o a l as the lighter bullet not only have you wildly exceeded the grain

weight of the bullet that's supposed to be in that case and you have way too much powder, but it's in way too small of a combustion chamber because the bullets way deeper than it's supposed to be because the bullet's a lot taller because it's a heavier bullet. And that's kind of the way bullets work is that a bullet is a certain diameter, kind of governed by what cartridge is. So if it's heavier, the bullet itself has to be longer. It's only so many ways you can make a bullet heavier when the diameter has stayed the same.

Yeah. So this is why heavier bullets and rifles perform better at longer ranges because you have a ballistic coefficient due to more mass behind the behind the bullet is really so so what my father unintentionally did was he swapped in a one 24 grand bullet for 115 grain data seated that bastard to the shorter OAL and through the heavier powder now he I don't think he was throwing a max charge oh probably not you wouldn't have to but it didn't matter because it was still like he had this data and this bullet put the

two together and he got about three of them out of his barrel before he heard a much louder bang than he was supposed to. The magazine shot out the bottom of the gun. He had powder burns on his right hand, threw the gun down on the bench, did lots, used lots of mechanic vocabulary, if you've ever heard that.

And the gun was locked up solid. So this is where we had the conversation about, like, use the pen as a depth gauge to see if we had a live round the chamber or not. Thankfully, we didn't. And then when we got the thing home, we chucked it up. We chucked the slide up and a pad, advice and literally took a hammer and beat the freaking gun apart to get just get this thing apart

yeah that's a problem yeah the the frame swole the gums destroyed there was molten brass just showered all throughout the inside of it i have to say though well-engineered gun it blew out exactly where it was supposed to down the magwell instead of shredding his hand yep the fantastic there was literally a hole in the case web pointed straight down into the magazine right right where the right where the chamber doesn't support the round that's exactly where you want it to do smith and wesson built that gun very robustly it failed exactly in the safest way human possible my dad wasn't injured or than his pride but he immediately tore down 250 rounds of ammunition after that and the gun was a right off oh yeah um

But that is like that that send it to Smith and Wesson for failure analysis. Tell them what you did. Their engineers would be interested to see it, I'm sure. Yeah. Well, that's that's why in the in the poll that I'm going to show the results for, I'm going to go and stop it. It was split evenly one vote for not enough loo, one vote for putting things where they don't go, and one vote for reloading 40 and 380, which I'm pretty sure was Stewart.

It was. I think he has all of the calipers. Yeah. But the one vote that didn't get counted was raggles, and that was two for not enough loop, which would have carried the day. But that's why I put putting things where they don't go in here. Because it wasn't just mixing up two different cases. It was also, if you mix and match your data, if you lose side of what you're doing, if you if you color outside the lines,

or if God forbid, you do that thing where you're like, well, I mean, I've got this powder, and it's not exactly the right powder, but it's pretty close. It'll be fine. Like, the reloading recipes, the reloading recipes are all developed by a company who has lawyers on staff. And all those...

And engineers. Yeah, they have engineers, but my point is that all those lawyers signed off on the idea that if we put this book, book out into the public, we're not going to get the crap suit out of us. So understand, someone did a lot of work to make sure that the lawyers gave two thumbs up on this. And if you start thinking you're smarter than all of those engineers and you're more risk-averse than all those lawyers, you're going to be wrong. Every time you're going to be wrong. Yes.

So just taking us a cautionary note, my dad's okay. He went right back to the reloading bench. He has not committed that sin. ever since I took it as a great cautionary note. I mean, I've never had a, I've never had a QC failure like that, but it made me redouble my efforts not to. But my dad,

my dad has always encouraged me to like share that story with everybody because he doesn't want someone else to hurt themselves if that story would save them the pain. You know, this is not something that happened to me. This is something I saw happen at a range on a three gun match day. Phil, do you remember when 300 blackout got popular real quick? Do I know where this is going?

You know exactly where this is going. A 300 blackout mag got loaded into a 556 chambered AR. I take it the results were not desired. The upper detonated. Ouch. So for those of you that don't know what the calibers mean, 556 is a 22 caliber round 300 blackout is a 30 caliber round that's there's a hundred thousandths different most of that bullet it's about nominal 0.224 0.308 but i get you're like 80,000's

different most of that 30 caliber bullet ended up in the barrel it did there was very little of it left in the chamber. All of the case, the bolt, the fire control group, the upper, and I believe the lower was damaged as well. This is one reason why I never personally gotten into 300 blackout because, number one, I can't have suppressors here, so there's really no good reason for me to shoot a 300 blackout around. And number two, I saw it as a potential source of problems for, you know, for a lot of ground.

my non-gun associates. We've all got buddies that come out with you once a year to the range, right? And if I've got an AR mag here and I've got an AR mag there and one's got 300 blackout and one's got 5-5-6 and I've got a not-gun friend on the range, gosh, that seems like an easy source of error. Even if you tape the mags, no matter what you do, it just, it was something that I didn't personally find a benefit to. Raggle, I know I need to move.

I really, really do. Raggle's all saying he's seen the results when the upper doesn't detonate. I have to. And I refer to it as stretches the bullet out like twice as long. It's wild. Super aggressive bullet swaging. Yeah, this super aggressive bullet swaging. Ragle, see, the problem, Raggle is all of our, and I've said this before on the show,

all of our family is here. My brother lives in Wisconsin. One of my wife's sisters live in Wisconsin. If we do end up going anywhere, it will probably be slightly north to Wisconsin. where suppressors can be had. The politicians aren't as Chicago-y, but they're starting to get that way because of Milwaukee and Madison. Any state you move to that has a major metro area

or two major metro areas that are comparable to the rest of the state's population is going to become very fucked for 2A very quickly. We've got three, maybe four of them, depending on what you're definitely if major metro is yeah uh doc scary guy moved wisconsin you have your answer yes um and then we come to the fact that i've got a sweetheart mortgage on a hell of a deal on my house and to get this house there my mortgage would triple golden handcuffs right i got it well i i can't i can't i can't afford i can't afford my mortgage look there's a whole bunch of it's just not going to happen Okay, Ragel is saying Shreveport would be five.

I'm thinking it would. Shreveport, Lafayette, New Orleans, Baton Rouge. Which one am I missing? I mean, Alexandria is not what I would call major metro and Lake Charles is like a speed bump before you get to the Spean River. Well, Major Metro is just major metro for your state. He's saying he's including Lake Charles, which I mean, that's Lake Charles is. Lake Charles is a lot bigger than it used to be. I'll give you that.

But yeah, he and I are talking about the same thing. Like the major metros really do screw up a lot of these really nice states. They do. And I get what Doc saying, you know, sometimes you have to just eat that pill and go. But if it's with what my career can earn and what my wife's career can earn, tripling our mortgage will never be doable. It just won't. So until we can find a place that is within a reasonable budget, because I am not making myself house poor.

I like my hobbies. I like getting to go to the range. I like being able to go on a couple vacations a year and have a well-funded retirement because I do intend to retire someday. But you mean before noon on the day you die? I mean, ideally, probably pretty close to it though, because I'm, I feel compelled to be. productive and the thought of not working makes me feel physically ill yeah so i will eventually probably need to retire for medical reasons because you know you get old that shit happens what are you going to do but i probably would not willingly retire i keep reminding my parents that the opposite of getting

older is not staying young forever it's not it's not getting old it's it's just that that is the other option. Yeah. Yeah, getting older is not any fun, but it's better than the alternative for most people. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at least when you're getting older, you can still have pizza and a couple of beers with your buddies. This is true. When you're dead, there's no more pizza or beer. Oof. Right. All right. So is there any other reloading sins to toss in here at the end? Have you broken your press handle off yet? no. I've done it twice.

Both of my, so not my horny, my RCBS press handle has broken once, my old Lyman handle broken once. Both were used, both were heavily used before I got to them. Stress fractures are a thing. If you guys aren't a machinist, here's what you're going to do when you break your press handle off. You're going to go down to your local bakery. You're going to buy a dozen donuts you're going to take off work at nine a m on a friday and you're going to show up to a local machine shop you're going to walk in the door and you're going to ask the boss hey i got this i need this threaded whatever size it's got to be do you guys have a few minutes could could you thread that for me i'll make it with your time and offer donuts as a sweetener now

if you happen to walk into our loading dock and the boss doesn't notice that's definitely getting done while we're on break while we're eating the donuts if the boss notices we'll probably do it like an hour later. But it'll get done that day, especially for donuts. So what I'm hearing is that donuts are excellent social lubrication. Oh, absolutely. You can get a lot of work done in a machine shop for donuts or free coffee.

No, that seems fair. I'm trying to think about reloading mistakes. What have we done that we haven't talked about? breaking your bench because you were trying to reload 300 wind mag dies on a lineman press. And the C press just goes, Pink. Haven't done that. Have heard it.

I have heard of it being done. That's why I got the rock trucker because I cracked my lineman. C-frame presses are not as rigid. Yeah, this, this is true. Oh. It's not what I would call a mistake, but it is an interesting little footnote since we were talking about 300 blackout earlier. Have you ever seen what happened? Okay.

So what do you think is the proper order to size a 300 blackout case in? Do you cut it first, then run it through the sizing dye? Or do you size it and then trim off the excess? I would think if you're going to trim it first, you would trim size trim. because when you move that brass, you're going to end up with a different length at the end than you trimmed off because the material has to go somewhere. Well, if you size, then trim,

you wind up with the funniest-looking 300 blackout case with like an erection on the top. A mile, yeah, yeah, a mile of extra case at the end. Yeah. So I would probably, if I was going to do it, I would probably trim size trim. I would trim to the plus, size it, and then trim to exact size, if I was going to do that. So a buddy of mine actually made himself a little, just, it's literally like a little, a little mitre box.

And he drops his case in, he chops, just goes in and chops all of them to approximately the right dimension so he can run through the size and die. And then after that's done, he runs them all through a world, world spot as trim or the final trim. That makes sense. But he did tell me that he did that. one time just had a curiosity he just ran a full length 5 five five six case in that 300 win that a 300 blackout die and had about that much that much of a 22 caliber neck poking out the top nice yeah all right well i don't want to belabor this we always end up doing like an hour and a half show and i'm trying to keep it under an hour it's fine even when i think it's not going to be a long

topic it doesn't matter it's fine okay well those are all of our reloading sins. Shall we give the listeners a sneak peek into what's probably happening next week? New toys. So, yes, new toys. So I am holding in my hand for the audio listeners a ham radio. I don't have a ham radio license. I'm a GMRA sky.

But Beofeng recently came out with the new UV5R minis. And even though they're teeny tiny and they feel like, kind of funny in the hand because they're so goddamn small. I decided to pick up a pair of them for two reasons. First of all, because these have AM, which means they have their air band capable. And I'm an old aviation nerd, so that's something I wanted to have. That's the capability I wanted to have,

especially for like air shows or hanging around the local airports, just be able to listen to our frequencies. But the other reason was, the one thing that is frustrated me about some of my GMRS radios, is that even though MERS exists and it's a license-free channel ban, you can't access it with a locked-up GMRS radio. You can't with this. And that really is a lot of the long and short of it.

So what I'm going to do over the next week while I'm away for work is get the programming software, give it a try, set these things up as GMRS radios with MERS channels, with the AM bands on the local tower frequencies, spend some time playing with these things because I will be within spitting distance of Barksdale Air Base in North Louisiana. And we might be,

I don't know if it's going to be a whole episode or just a foot no, but we're going to talk about kind of how I like these things for next episode. A little field test and report. Yeah, because I don't, I don't hold it against anybody that does like unboxing videos, but I don't like doing it.

unboxing videos. I like to talk about things after I've had some time to play with them and learn them and learn the ends and the outs. And like for me, a lot of, a lot of what I focus on is like user experience. So I'm going to be super critical of like how it feels in the hand or how it's balanced with a big old long whip intent on the topic because it's so small in line. I'm going to be focused on things like how aggravating is the programming software to use or how hard is it to program through the face plate. It's the usability of the item that catches my attention more, and that's a lot of what I'm going to be focusing on.

But my hope is that because, like, this, this when it hit the market, kind of became the new hot ham, you know, cheap ham radio. Yeah. So I'm curious to see how I like it for my purposes, seeing how up to this point,

I've been pretty heavily invested in GMRS radios. Hey, man. You know, that's one thing I've never liked about unboxing stuff because, number one, you don't have any time on the item. Yep. You just don't. You know, I have been, I have been fighting with myself on whether or not I should buy a small bench top hobbyist mill. Because I have drill press, I've got a bandsaw, I've got the lathe, a lot of things would be easier with the little hobbyist mill. and every goddamn video I see about these hobbyist mills.

It's like an unboxing video. And they're like, oh, yeah, it's got this, and it's got this, and it's got this, and it's got this. And they never cut anything ever. Suspicious. Yeah. And it's always, oh, yeah, precision Matthews sent me this thing. Or Grizzly, gave me a great rate on this thing.

Like, throw a three-inch shell mill in it and whack, some P20, some half hard, semi-stainless. I want to see if the head breaks off. Well, that is the one thing I will say about this before we wrap this up. Like, personally, if I ever get like a discount on a piece of equipment or a firearm or something like that, I'm very open about that. And they usually are. Nine times out of ten, I pay full freight for my stuff because this channel is too damn small and nobody gives shit to give me free anything. Those radios were purchased off of Amazon.

So if they're trash, it's going to be the exact same trash you would buy if you'd have bought them off Amazon. Raggle, T-Mool-Lay, two problems. One, it's not made a cast iron. Two, plastic gearbox. Oof. No, well, hear me out. There's a good reason why that's not necessarily horrible. If you're a new person to running lathes,

and you are using power feed or you are threading, you can do damage to the motor if you lock that shit up at full RPM. Those plastic gears on those shitbox lathes that you get from Amazon, whether it's a grizzly or whether it's a Tmu special, it will strip the gears before it screws up your motor or it screws up your power system. But then you're stuck trying to get a new plastic gearbox or plastic gear. Which you can. That lathe there is a flat belt drive.

direct to a motor shaft and cast iron bull gears. If you lock that up, it will slip that belt before it strips the bull gears. If you have the V-belt pulley version of this exact lat, then you lock it up, it will strip the bull gears instead of spinning the V-belt. Ouch. So if you are in the market for what I'm going to call hobbyist grade equipment, As far as lathe mill, whatever. First off, by the biggest one you can. And I mean that by like cutting volume and horsepower and power rating,

like the power draw that your house will support. By the biggest one you can get because, number one, the weight of the castings gives you better consistency in cuts, heavy or light, because the heavier the castings, the more rigid the machine, the better it cuts. That's just the way reality works. Number two, don't buy a hobbyist machine. Go on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist or find obituaries for machinists and check their

fucking garage. Because you can probably get a South Bend like mine for between $1,000 and $4,000, depending on how well equipped it is and how good a condition it is. Those Amazon or T-Moo machines, they're almost about $1,000. their swing is half of what the swing of this lathe is. This is a 10-inch swing. Most of those are five to six. I've got a three-foot bed on this.

Most of those are 18-inch or 20-inch beds before you account for the tail stock. So look for used industrial grade equipment. This is a tool room lathe. So, yes, I can't swing a 12-inch piece of steel in it. You don't want to if you're learning anyway. but you will get more value per dollar out of used old cast iron than you're going to get off of those those i would say hobbyist great equipment most of those most of those things they really only are good for plastic for turning plastic or wood or is this thing will turn hardened tool steel if you

if you really want to we'll call that good advice but let's go ahead and wrap this up it's nine o'clock at night. I don't have work tomorrow. You do have work tomorrow, but I have a long day of house tours to get ahead of. Good Lord. Before, well, Gilly and I have a, we have classes to teach on Saturday for our local mutual assistance group. And then Sunday, I'd like spend some time with the family before I have to blast off out of town for a couple of days. So, you know. Yeah. But. Nice. Anyway, hopefully I get a chance to play with that radio. and we'll talk about that next week and maybe something else. I don't know.

We'll see. We'll see. Talk to you later. Bye, guys. Good night.