Bit By The Reloading Bug

To start with, I want to begin with the sad news of the loss of my extended magazine release on the mail. I got the letter on Saturday with the big red, "We're sorry, your letter was damaged during delivery." sticker on it and the lower right hand corner chewed to bits -- probably in their auto-sorter. I emailed Scott from Springer Precision and he said he'd get me another out today; this time, I hope he uses a small box for shipping. Hoping it gets here before Saturday's competition!

So! I went over a guys house on Saturday evening -- I'd met him at the range a few weeks earlier... he's a regular over a Ommelanden here in Delaware and very much into reloading. Once we got to chatting, he told me he'd drop me a line once he switched his dies over to 9mm. He had the Hornaday Lock-N-Load progressive turret uncovered (and about 3 other presses setup with dust covers). A quarter of his basement area was filled to the brim with powder, casings, bullets and equipment for reloading -- it was like a dream.

So, he sat me down, showed me the basics and let me have at while we talked guns and ammo. Over the course of 45-minutes, I probably rattled off 150 rounds or so total. The spring loaded ejector for the cartridges that were finished was rather strong and I found that, with my first completed round, I needed to manually remove the round otherwise it would shoot across the room... In addition to that, placing the empty case in the first position and inserting the bullet into the last station cut down on my time, I'm sure.

While I like the Hornady press, I think I'll still be going with the Dillon Square Deal B pictured here. Since I'll pretty much only be loading 9mm, this progressive press comes right out of the box.

I've budgeted about $800 for the press, a work table and the initial batch of power, primers and bullets as well as a tumbler. I probably have close to 2000 casings saved up, so I'm not too concerned there.

With any luck, I should be able to start getting set up by about Christmas time, depending on when I'll be getting some paid for some outside contract work...

I think, for me, the biggest appeal about getting into reloading is being able to make custom loads for competition shooting. In the Production class, Minor Scoring for USPSA/IPSC, I need to have a minimum power factor of 125,000 -- to get that number you take the bullet weight multiplied by the speed in feet per second. So, if you're using a 125gr bullet, it needs to travel at least 1000 feet per second. If it's a 115gr bullet, that would be.... about 1087 feet per second. So, with the lower power rounds, I'm hoping for less recoil. We shall see!