22 October, 2009

Reloading Part 3

Now that we've re-sized & re-primed the cases, we can move on to deburring and charging the round. Personally I own two case blocks and they hold fifty cases each. One is grey and the other red. I do this for a very simple reason. The uncharged cases go in the grey block and after I've charged the cases, they go in the red block. Red is for charged cases.

Red is for charged case


In the photo below, the deburring tool can be easily seen. One rotation around the mouth of the case should produce a shiny edge ready to accept your slug.

deburring the cases

This photo shows the second and fourth cases having been deburred versus the first and third not. Notice the shiny brass on the neck of the deburred cases? This is how they should look.

deburred vs un deburred

Charging the cases with gun powder is the next step. You will be working with an explosive so no smoking or drinking is allowed. The powder measure can be adjusted to dispense or “throw” a precise amount of gun powder. You should never have more than one kind of gun powder on you work surface at any one time and never leave powder in the measure after you're done. This particular measure has a hopper with a valve that can be close and removed from the base to easily return the powder to its original container.

powder measure

Also, a scale and some sort of pour is required to to accurately measure your powder.This allows you to pour through a funnel, into the case.

Measuring the powder

Below is the powder being poured through the funnel and neck opening die into the case. The through powder die opens the neck of the case up for easy seating of the slug and charging the case all at one time.

Pouring the powder in

One thing that can easily happen is the double charged case. On lighter loads all you'll notice is an extremely hot round going off when you pull the trigger. On heavier loads, you can bulge the barrel and ruin it. On super heavy loads, the gun can and has blown up in the shooters face. Always wear eye protection when reloading, shooting and cleaning your guns.

Double Charged Case

In the above photograph, in the second column from the left, third case down. That is what a double charge can look like.


Next up is seating the slug in the case. See ya soon.

Update: Some of the photo's were cropped by the blogspot software. If you want to see the whole photo, you should be able to click on it and see the entire picture.

1 comment:

Taupe of the Chain said...
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