This year was a bit slow on the reloading front. I spent a lot of time working on precision ammo for .300 Winchester Magnum and .223 rifles. Individually weighing the charges to less than 0.1 grains is extremely slow compared to the .40 S&W rounds I pump out on the Dillon XL650. And then there is the case preparation that consumes several seconds per round on top of that.

The last couple of months my supply of .40 S&W practice and USPSA match ammo became critically low and I ignored the rifle ammo. This last month I reloaded 5,786 rounds of .40 S&W. This is more rounds in a single month since the first month I began reloading. That was 10,944 rounds of 9mm in November 1997.

5,432 of those .40 S&W loads were 180 grain polymer coated bullets from Black Bullet International. This finished off my supply of those bullets and I loaded one box of the 200 grain bullets (552 bullets in a box instead of the stated 550). Mixed in there were test loadings of CCI 500 primers instead of the usual Winchester WSPs. I really like the Winchester primers but I thought would be a good idea to have loads for the CCI primers if we get into a situation where reloading components are difficult to get.

This brings my rounds for the year up to 12,114 and my lifetime count up to 143,638.

My yearly and lifetime reloading numbers are below,

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I use two different color bullets to indicate major (black) and minor power (blue) factor loads. I’ve loaded a fair number of red bullets as well. I just noticed that Eggleston Munitions has 16 different colors available now:

Wow. What to do with another color (or 13)…. Maybe white for extremely low power loads for new shooters. But what about the rest? Christmas presents for the kids?

I couldn’t find Ballistics Coefficients on the Black Bullets International web page so using data from my chronograph over the range of 0 to 25 yards I made some estimates for the .40 caliber 180 grain and 200 grain bullets.

I came up with 0.199 for the 180 grain bullet and 0.179 for the 200 grain bullet. Yes, the heavier bullet has a lower BC.

I’m a little skeptical of this although I suppose it could be possible. The two bullets look like this with the 180 grain bullet on the left.

The lube groove on the 200 grain bullet may increase the drag enough to account for the unexpectedly low BC.

Does anyone else have data that verifies or refutes my estimates?

In the comments Sendarius asks:

When you say “clean”, how do you do that?

Vibratory tumbler with dry media?
Rotating tumbler with wet media?
Power drill with a Brasso-soaked rag? /jk

I have been using a Lyman tumbler with walnut shell dry media for years, and I am considering switching to wet solution with those tiny stainless steel rods.
Others at my club have made that switch, and their brass looks amazing.

Any thoughts?

I first sort the brass using a set of these (Amazon also has them for $10 more):

This is how the brass ended up in a five gallon bucket.

There is a similar product available for less money but I have not had my hands on them so I can’t compare the quality:

Amazon sells it for the same price.

I then put the brass in an ultrasonic cleaner (I bought mine from Harbor Freight several years ago but Harbor Freight is slightly more than Amazon for what appears to be the same product):

I use Hornady One Shot Sonic Cleaner Ultrasonic Case Cleaning Solution. I tried a homemade recipe using vinegar and Dawn dishwashing detergent but this works much better. I run the cleaner for at least 24 minutes (three cycles of 480 seconds each).

After the cleaning the brass may not look that great. But most of the remaining dirt/tarnish will come off in the rinse.

I then dump the brass and cleaning solution into a colander:

I stir the brass with a gloved hand to remove most of the liquid.

I then rinse the brass in tap water:

Again I stir the brass with my hand.

I drain and rinse two more times. The final rinse is done with distilled water from my dehumidifier.

After the final draining I put the brass on a rack above my dehumidifier. I built the rack from PVC pipe, a plastic screen, and transparent duct tape:

The dehumidifier puts out warm dry air. I usually let it run for about eight hours and I may stir the brass a time or two.

When cleaning rifle brass I may remove the primers before cleaning. This will result in clean primer pockets as well as a clean interior and exterior.

If I want really shiny brass I will first run it through the vibratory cleaner with the usual corn cob or walnut shell media and a brass cleaner additive. I then follow up with the ultrasonic cleaning.

For many years I just used the vibrating cleaner with the corncob or walnut shell media but the ultrasonic cleaner gave me a faster throughput and the cases are cleaned on the inside as well as the outside.

I considered buying a wet, stainless steel pin, type cleaner but I decided what I had worked well enough.

I haven’t reloading any .40 S&W ammo in a long time but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been shooting any. Here is a partial illustration:

This is what I have picked up of the floor after practice as the local range before I sorted and cleaned it. Maybe five percent of that is 9mm or .45 ACP that got mixed in as I scooped it up. That this bucket is full means I don’t have a place to put the brass I’ll bring home from the range this week.

It’s time to sort, clean, and put away some brass.

This last weekend I finally got around to doing some chronograph work on some (relatively) new loads I made last February. To make sure the chronograph was all set up correctly I fired some old rounds that weren’t marked but I was pretty sure what they were. The mean velocity should verify or disprove my hypothesis as well as do the function check on my chronograph setup.

The mean velocity was 3507.92 fps. I looked up the last time I had reloaded and chronographed the ammo. I last reloaded that bullet in April of 2001 and chronographed them using the same gun in May of 2001. The mean velocity from over 18 years ago was 3506 fps.

The ammo (and gun!) aged better than I expected. I like Varget powder even more than I did before.

Prior to the Area One match in Bend Oregon I expressed some concerns about making Major Power Factor. It turns out I did just fine:

I saw the chrono team weigh the bullet before getting any velocity measurements, 180.2 grains, and knew I was going to be okay. My sample of 20 had a minimum of 178.3, a maximum of 180.7 and a mean of 179.2. I was concerned they might pull a 177 or something. Then, if the velocity was really low for some reason I could be pushing the threshold and perhaps break into Minor Power Factor (< 165). But the velocities were good. Had they pulled a 177 grain bullet and measured the same velocities the power factor would have still been 170.6 and comfortably in Major.

The odds were low of getting a low velocity since my measurements indicated a mean velocity of 978.4 with a standard deviation of 10.6. But still, you never know how the tolerances might stack up against you on any given day. As it is I suspect the chronograph they used would not agree with my chronograph, which is another variable that is difficult to plan for.

For USPSA matches I’ve been using 40 caliber 180 grain, polymer coated, Truncated Cone, bullets from Black Bullets International. They are very accurate, clean to reload, clean to shoot, and don’t have a jacket that comes back at you when you shoot at steel. I have reloaded almost 11,000 rounds using these bullets.

My only complaint about them is the quality control appears to be a bit marginal. One time I found a 125 grain 9mm bullet in with the 180 grain 40 caliber bullets and a few bullets which weighed as little as 177.5 grains.

The most concerning to me, which isn’t that big of a deal if you take it into account in your reloading, is the weight variation. They are advertised as 180 grain bullets. I have had batches that averaged 181.26 grains. And, most recently 179.2 grains.

Looking a bit closer at the data (a sample of 20 bullets) I found:

If I had assumed the bullet weight was the advertised 180 grains, adjusted my load for 925 fps to get a 166.5 Power Factor and expected to meet the 165 minimum PF required to “make Major” at a USPSA match I would have ended up shooting Minor with a PF of 164.9 if chrono man had pulled a 178.3 grain (or less) bullet. This would have made me rather annoyed. One has to take into account the variation in bullet weights too, not just the average or the minimum from a sample. The statistics are a bit complicated and beyond the scope of this blog post but after taking into account the weight variation, velocity variation, and temperature sensitivity of the powder I had to load for a PF of about 175 at 70F to have less than a 10% chance of shooting Minor at a match where the chrono tested was done when the temperature was near freezing.

Okay, fine, that’s not really a big deal. I can tell the difference between a 175 PF load and a 165 PF load but it doesn’t make that much of a difference in performance.

Today I found another thing to annoy me about their quality control:

It looks as if the bullet mold was not completely closed when the lead was poured. Why wasn’t that caught by some quality control process? When Barb and I toured the Montana Gold Bullet manufacturing facility QC was clearly a big deal. The bullet above clearly would have been rejected. But I have other indicators that Montana Gold may be an exception in the QC department.

This last month I spent a lot of time prepping .300 Win Mag brass. I purchased the Belted Magnum Collet Resizing Die suggested by Bob B. That was an interesting experience. The die arrived a day later than I had expected it, which meant I was out of state for over a week when it arrived and I was unable to do any testing until I got back. And worst of all the website doesn’t say anything about it only working in single stage presses.

The die inserts from the bottom of the toolhead and the bottom of the die hits the index sprocket before it fully engages the cartridge case. The index sprocket was always a mystery to me. It seemed to be fastened in some way to the shellplate bolt. It would rotate independently from the bolt but would not come off. I figured that during assembly they had shrunk or resized the sprocket such that it would not come off.

I started filing away on the index sprocket on my Dillon 550 so it would allow the ram to raise high enough to fully engage the collet resizing die. When I realized that it probably was going to result in that tooth of the sprocket either being completely removed or so frail it would break I went online to order a new bolt and sprocket to use for reloading. I would use the modified one for resizing with the new die.

Much to my surprise the bolt and sprocket were sold as independent parts. I ordered a new sprocket to replace the one I had filed on. I went back to my existing sprocket and bolt and decided they were supposed to be separable. A vice and a few blows from a plastic hammer and they came apart. Well, that would make it easier to file or use the Dremel tool on the old sprocket. I was explaining what I was working on to Barb and all of a sudden I realized I no longer needed to modify the sprocket! I could just put the bolt into the shellplate without the sprocket and the new die should work fine.

I soon started resizing my oversized cases. It’s a little slow but it works fairly well. There are still a few pieces of brass that won’t go into the cartridge gauge but I have successfully resized hundreds of cases now. I’m almost done with the resizing. I then have to trim, clean the primer pockets, and clean a few hundred cases before I can crank out loaded ammunition.

I did load a total of 167 rounds of .300 Win Mag this month. I got down to less than a half pound my IMR 7828 powder and started on some old H4350 after I ran out of the bullets I use with the IMR 7828. How old is the H4350? I don’t know for certain but the sticker on the cap is a clue:

This brings my lifetime reloaded ammunition totals to:

223: 6,897 rounds.
30.06: 756 rounds.
300 WIN: 1,977 rounds.
300 Savage: 50 rounds.
40 S&W: 98,363 rounds.
45 ACP: 2,007 rounds.
9 mm: 21,641 rounds.
Total: 131,691 rounds

As I reported the other day:

I have lots of one fired brass but I knew that brass wouldn’t chamber in any some other rifles even though I was using a full length resizing die. I got my hands on a .300 Win Mag rifle that had problems chambering it. Then with a few rounds of empty, once-fired, brass, my micrometer, and the specs for the brass I sorted out the problem. I found the case just forward of the belt was one to two thousands of an inch larger in diameter than spec. I think the die is the problem so I ordered a new resizing die from a different manufacture and which I expect will fix the problem.

The new die arrived yesterday. It does fix the problem, but just barely. The specification for the case dimension in question is 0.513 inches. The once fired cases were 0.514” –> 0.515”. After going through the new die they are about 0.5135. The brass chambers, but it is tight. I ordering still another die.

Update: I looked up the SAAMI specs on the cartridge and chamber rather than what the reloading manuals tell me.

The portion in question of the case is specified as 0.5126”. The chamber is specified as 0.5136”. I suspect the rifle in question is at exactly the minimum specification while the dies, combined with the “spring-back” of the brass being used results in something oversized. I ordered an RCBS undersized die which should solve the problem.

Update 2: Thanks to an email from Bob B. I ordered what looks like a better solution. The Belted Magnum Collet Resizing Die. I canceled the order for the RCBS undersized die.

In 1999 I started loading for 300 Win Mag. In fact, I had the gun built with the specific intention of shooting a particular bullet which I planned to handload. The bullet was the Berger 210 grain VLD Target. At that time the BC was listed as 0.640. Then in 2007 I was looking at their website and discovered they had changed the BC to 0.631. It still didn’t fully explain the results I was getting but it was closer. Today I discovered they have changed the BC again. It is now listed as 0.621. That fully explains the results I was seeing. Whoops on their part.

I haven’t reloaded any of these bullets since 2000. It was time consuming. I would clean the primer pockets, trim the length, and individually weight each powder charge. I found that I got better accuracy at short ranges (less than 300 yards) and decent results at longer ranges with Black Hills Match (190 grain Sierra Match Kings with a BC of 0.533). And, most importantly, it saved me a lot of time.

I still have the powder and primers for the Berger bullets and figured it was time to load it up. I now have a much better tool for prepping the brass which speeds up the prep by about a factor of four.

Last night I was preparing some 300 Win Mag brass for reloading. I noticed that some of the brass I had used for the Berger loads had primers which were mushroomed:

Not good.

I checked my notes:

1999 Hodgdon manual/website says:
200 gr. Nosler Partition bullet, max 79.0C gr. -> 2883 fps
This is with a 24″ barrel.

Older Hodgdon data (1997, 1998) says:
200 gr. bullet, max 80.0 gr -> 2984 fps.
220->225 gr. bullet, max 77.0 gr -> 2881 fps.
This is with a 26″ barrel.

…

Starting loads are 90% of max.  My guess is that max should be about
80 gr. with the 210 grain bullet.  The Nosler Partition is a straight
shank bullet without a boat tail.  This gives it more bearing surface
and friction (especially without the moly) than the Berger will have.

Initial loadings:
6/2/99 16 rounds Berger 210 grain moly coated VLD:
One round each of 72.0, 72.5, 73.0, 73.5, 74.0, 74.5, 75.0, 75.5, 76.0,
76.5, 77.0, 77.5, 78.0, 78.5, 79.0, 79.5

I settled on a load of 78.7 grains of H1000 after firing charges up to 79.5 grains. I measured the base of the case for expansion as my indicator of high pressure and didn’t find expansion greater than with the light loads. It seemed good but the gunsmith who built the rifle told me an interior ballistics program he used said my load was unwise. I continued to use that charge with the few rounds (423) that I actually loaded.

Last night I checked the Hodgdon rifle reloading website and found they list a 208 grain bullet with a maximum load of 78.0 grains of H1000. And for one 200 grain bullet the maximum load is 77.0 grains! The max load for 220 grain Sierra Match Kings is 78.0 grains.

Whoops!

That explains my mushroomed primers and validates my gunsmith’s concern. I need to redevelop my load and disassemble the existing ammo with the previous loadings.