PBking51
Gold $$ Contributor
The following is a rather lengthy review of what I have been doing when stuck indoors. Load development for rifle is futile since I don't want to go overboard for a specific caliber without testing all loads and loads I have on hand for guns I use most often are well stocked. What I don't have is a ton of handgun ammo and this is regarding how I made lemonade with this giant lemon and some great products that certainly helped get me into production mode for handgun and plinking with the AR-15.
We had just had our first Child and about 1 week after we got home from the hospital I didn’t have to worry about taking time off to be home with mom and baby, because like many other employees I was told I would be working from home through the month of April (and now through MAY 31st!) I didn’t need a way to kill time as in between conference calls and helping Mommy take care of our daughter my days were pretty well booked. Having a newborn in a time where most people are urged to stay home was a bit uneasy for me, as I have a ton of projects and hobbies that I was looking forward to doing in between shifts of work and baby duty. However it was now necessity to stay home, not just for my own health, but to make sure I wasn’t brining anything back home to the baby. Plus, I didn’t want to miss out on one of life’s precious moments and also leave my wife by herself to care for the child.
Mondays and Fridays were now the same and I had a lack of sleep regardless, from obvious reasons. Still my need to always be doing something and refusal to just sit on the couch all weekend had gotten the best of me and what better to do in this situation but reload until I ran out of components. It was also motivating that retailers were in short supply of 9mm, 45ACP, 223, and 300 blackout. I had not bought all but 9mm in years as I couldn’t justify the time spent on my turret press loading to save $30-40 on 1000 rounds of 9mm, but the others I had large amounts of components and certainly saw immediate cost savings by reloading.
I currently have and reload for more than 39 calibers (I counted) but as you can imagine, unless I was a true hermit or retired I simply don’t have the time to load more than a box of bullets at a time and most of the time it was 1-2 weeks before hunting season, the night before going to the range or the night before my pistol league. With that being said I am also one to never pass up a deal, so as a result I have built up a nice stash of primers/powders/bullets and everything in between over more than a 15 year time span. It is worth noting that though I have a few presses, my go to press that has loaded 99% of all ammo to this point is a 4 station single stage Ponsness Warren Metallic 2 press. What that equates to is about 100 rounds an hour for the pistol, and for rifle rounds I would usually spend that same hour with case prep and precise loading to yield 20 rounds.
I don’t know exactly how it started, One day I was working on the computer and watching YouTube in between sending emails, but next thing I knew, Amazon, UPS, USPS, and Fedex packages were being dropped off outside my home office door just about every day (Separate entrance from the rest of my house). What I had been doing was randomly purchasing reloading equipment to finally reload the 10’s of thousands of pistol brass, 223 brass, and others I had stockpiled the better part of 10 years. Did I buy a Dillion and all “blue Stuff”? Nope, that would be too simple and I still don’t shoot that much to feel I need a progressive press, plus that would make the time go by too fast
The following are items I had researched the first week and come to the conclusion are great upgrades for everything I had been using all along. Not that I had finally broken even, but I decided that maybe its time to get with the time and speed up my process since with the addition of a new baby my free time may very well go the way of the plains buffalo.
#1 The first Item I bought was in response to me hating to keep a power drill nearby to trim brass on my Lyman Universal trimmer. I found out quick that I want to shoot too many calibers to be cranking away and early on purchased the drill adapter. This got old quick but I’ve had so much virgin brass that I’ve forgotten what a pain it is to trim either by hand or rather with the drill attachment. Solution: Lyman Xpress Trimmer. This thing measures off the shoulder with a case specific bushing. 10 are included and I only had to purchase 1 more for 7.62x39 and 6.5 Grendel. Long story short, its powered, accurate within .001 once you get your feel for it, and it is adjustable without tools! Paid $115 on sale from Midway/ $7.99 for bushing #7
#2 I also bought a set of lee Dies for the 32-20 + the factory crimp die. Nothing you guys didn’t already know, but I strayed from Big Green for the fact that I needed a shellholder and I’ve found that Lee dies are just as good as the others and you get the shellholder for free! $33 Midway
#3 Lee APP Press(Deluxe w/ Automation Kit)…This is perhaps my most satisfying purchase, and I regret not getting the word out sooner. For those of you who shoot your pistol or AR under 500 rounds a month, use a single stage press, and still value your time…Stop reading and buy this. This compact unit, once set up correctly, will feed and perform 1 die function at a time, then eject the shell into whatever box or bin you desire. I was scared at first by how delicate this thing truly was so I started depriming 45 ACP with a universal decapping die. WOW. Once you figure out how to perfectly set it up, it runs and runs and runs. The setup comes with a case feeder and one 18” piece of tube in 4 sizes. As you suspect this means you can load about 18 +/- pieces of 45 brass. With every pull jaws grab a case put it under the die and return for the next case while the die is lowered onto the case. On the upstroke the next case slides in pushing the completed case down a shoot. The press comes with a LARGE primer catcher bottle a breech lock bushing and 3 shellholders for 40,45,9mm,223, 308, and all their common sized case heads. After a few hundred cases I manned up and installed the carbide sizer/decapper. With what you get in the box, You can size and deprime 50 9mm cases in under 2.5 minutes including the time to refill the tube. But this is just the start with this press…It worked flawlessly in sizing 380, 9mm, 38Spl, 40 S&W, 357Mag, 45, 44 MAG, 30 carbine, and lubed 223 cases. Note I had purchased the “xpress shellholders” for about $4 each from Titan reloading when I bought the press. I then upgraded the case feeder to the 4 tube design and again, once setup it works great and increases the output speed of this press. Also teamed it with the case collator which magically seats all bullets rim down with a little agitation. Just to make it super secure, I also bought a pair of 3d-printed tube clips on Ebay. ….APP Press $75 Titan Reloading, case feeder kit…$25 Midway….Collator $17 ebay….Tube Clips for Case feeder $10 ebay….Additional shellholders $3.99 each Titan reloading…Swage Kit for App press $35 Titan Reloading
#3.5 These are so simple, but I must mention them. No idea if they are available in hardware stores, but Lee makes a simple metal bracket that holds small parts bins (aka AKRO Bins) I figured I would by one to mount to my bench for the APP Press to feed to, and just for fun get a second one to put in front of my other press. $6.99 @ Titan reloading
#4 Frankford Arsenal Platinum Rotary Tumbler+ Accessories…I rarely cleaned pistol brass fired from my guns. As I knew it was new, or rather 1x fired and if I was reloading it a 2nd time then that meant I had thousands of more 1x brass on deck and didn’t need to look for issues resulting from worn out brass. When I did clean Brass, it was in a ultrasonic cleaner. I also would use a vibratory tumbler only when I wanted really shiny brass to show off at deer camp. Given that I was not only using my 1x brass but also wanted to process thousands of rounds of stuff people had given me over the years I first ran everything through the APP press with universal depriming die, and then along with the supplied 5lbs of media dropped a little dawn and some lemishine in this for 2 hours. Wow, those who clean brass, I now get it. The prep work and rinsing was nothing compared to seeing new brass come out of this guy. I wanted to experiment so after rinsing I put just lemishine and water in it for 1 hour. AWESOME. The frankford media separator was awesome throughout the process, and GunTap SS Pins were order as they came with a transfer magnet. ZERO Complaints….Frankford Platinum Tumbler $161 @Amazon, GunTap Pins and Magnet $34.99 @Amazon, Frankford Media Separator $34.99 @ Amazon
#5 Frankford Arsenal Hand Priming Tool… I had never owned a single tool or press from Lee as of March 1st 2020…Aside from my original Auto-prime. I think after 10 years of me using it and then probably 20 years of someone else using it, it started to stick and there was some serious wear going on in the handle. Knowing I was going to load a surplus of brass, I didn’t take a chance on it breaking and halting my fun. I can prime on my press with a primer feed tube, but I prefer doing it by hand. Its also something that lets me spend some time with the family while still reloading and not bothering anyone. My wife actually would love if all my stages of reloading could be done in out living room! The Frankford hand priming tool is like the muscular well refined version of the Autoprime. It even uses the same style shellholders. It’s a little wacky with what calibers are left out of the shellholder chart and what calibers are included. Who the $%&^ owns a rifle chambered in “240 Souper Pooper”? Aside from that nonsense, I sat on a conference call and primed 500 pieces of sized, tumbled and flared 9mm and it felt so smooth. It also features adjustable primer depth though I found my ideal adjustment was about 10 clicks from max seating depth. ….Frankford Arsenal Hand Primer $71 @ Amazon
#6 Inline Fabrication Ultra Mounts…Just as I was happy as a clam with my APP press and the bin system that I had attached to my bench, I thought “Gee, Imagine If this 10” tall mini press was not 36” off the ground but more eye level. Enter the Inline fabrication Ultramount. This thing is rock solid and for those who are not aware, if you have multiple presses there are quick change plates and wall mounted brackets so you can switch plates and presses in seconds by loosening the 2 thumb screws. So I mentioned I have this giant 4 stage turret press made in Ohio in the 1970’s…that wont fit on it the press and not that it needs to being that it doesn’t need to hang off the end of the bench to function like most presses…but I digress. I should note that I also have a Paciffic 007 press that I used primarily for swaging brass with a swage die and I recently was given an original rock chucker with a PiggyPack conversion for 223. Having now 3 presses that need to be off of the edge of my 5’ long bench meant I wouldn’t be able to use drawers, wouldn’t have any real estate to work on guns, or store anything without having to reach over a collection of presses. By getting mounting plates and wall mount brackets I can store my presses when not in use and dedicate an 8x8” footprint for the use of these presses. Later on I found out that I like being able to sit down on occasion and purchased a flush mount from them that also utilizes the quick change system. This company has been along for a while, but again, these are great MADE IN THE USA products that after now owning, regret not having them sooner. My latest purchase was actually the sidebin system for the APP press as you loose your bench mounted bin when putting the press on the ultra mount, but It holds cases or bullets used as “INPUT” and another bin on the right for “OUTPUT”. …Ultramount 9” $80, Quick change Plates @$20 each, Flush mount @$45..Free shipping and no tax directly through their website. VERY QUICK SHIPPING
#7 Lee Auto Drum and Powder through dies….So I have established that in my current setup I was able to deprime and resize pistol brass at a rate of 50 rounds in 2.5 minutes. I also was able to flare those 50 rounds in 1.5 minutes in the APP press. That’s 4 minutes before taking in the amount of time to prime. So what I would do now is set up either my Harrels or an older redding powder measure to individually dispense a charge in each case, then I would transer to a loading block and once I had 50 charged, I would place a bullet on each and then proceed to seat and crimp on my single stage. I am very familiar with case activated feeders such as the Dillon and the one featured on the Hornaday LNL AP press. At the end of the day If I was going to spend 130+ on another powder feeder I was going to purchase the Hornaday LNL or a used Dillon 650. I looked into my Lee catalog that came with the App press and I knew of their auto disk and have seen one in person….but, no thank you. Too much plastic, too flimsy, and I just knew it would leak finer powders much like the Lee shotgun presses do. HOWEVER, enter the Auto Drum! I love this guy when paired with a lee powder thru die. Again, having all green, blue, orange and the other red brand of die sets I found myself placing an order on Titan for the 380, 45, 9mm, and long rifle Powder through dies. Now I am flaring and filling with powder in one pull so all I do is seat the bullet and slide the shellholder over to the next station to seat the bullet. These 2 stages feel like I am running a Dillon 550 (of sorts). Its not terrible to set up and I have not attempted to swap out drums and test if the drums are consistent each time you change back., but I don’t see any issues so I purchased 4 more drums from Titan Reloading….Auto Drum $35 ebay…Lee powder thru dies @ $13 on average @Titan Reloading….Auto Drum Quick Change Kit….$16 @Titan Reloading
#8 Honorable Mentions….Lee Breech Lock Rings 4PK for use in APP press or other Lee presses $20@Midway....Honrady OneShot Spray Lube, got the piggy back running and this worked great for sizing 223 without rolling on a lube pad. LET DRY 1 MINUTE BEFORE USE….$15 for 10oz @Midway…..Grade #8 Nuts/bolt/washers from the local ACE hardware. I love their loose hardware selection and they always have the right size for the job. Frankford Brass Dryer: I have had this forever but never needed to load it up and dry ASAP, but with this dryer, you can effectively dry 1000 pieces of pistol brass in less than an hour.
Once I had all this new “stuff” I went to work. I have sized, deprimed, tumbled over 10,000 pieces of 9mm Brass, #5000 pieces of 38 SPL Brass, #5000 Pieces of 45ACP, #2000 45ACP, #4000 223, #1000 308, #2000 380ACP, #1000 pieces of 40 S&W. I have primed over #5000 pieces of various calibers. I have charged (on auto drum) #2500 9mm. Lastly I have trimmed #200 6.5 grendel brass, #1000 5.56/223 brass, #100 300 wsm brass, #100 30-06 Brass and #200 308 Brass.
I feel that based on my results and the flawless operation of all equipment mentioned that this stuff is built to last. I have increased my output of loaded rounds to about 400-500 rounds an hour from 100. If you are in the market for any of the following supplies or looking to kill time and bulk process or reload please know that this in depth review was put together by someone just like you with 15 years experience and knows what the value of a hard earned dollar is. I hope I did you a service or at least gave you a good read. I thank you for your time if you read this whole write up and hope you and yours stay safe and get to spend some time together away from the bench. Hopefully when this is over you walk away with some more knowledge and a crap ton of ammo for a nice range day in June!
We had just had our first Child and about 1 week after we got home from the hospital I didn’t have to worry about taking time off to be home with mom and baby, because like many other employees I was told I would be working from home through the month of April (and now through MAY 31st!) I didn’t need a way to kill time as in between conference calls and helping Mommy take care of our daughter my days were pretty well booked. Having a newborn in a time where most people are urged to stay home was a bit uneasy for me, as I have a ton of projects and hobbies that I was looking forward to doing in between shifts of work and baby duty. However it was now necessity to stay home, not just for my own health, but to make sure I wasn’t brining anything back home to the baby. Plus, I didn’t want to miss out on one of life’s precious moments and also leave my wife by herself to care for the child.
Mondays and Fridays were now the same and I had a lack of sleep regardless, from obvious reasons. Still my need to always be doing something and refusal to just sit on the couch all weekend had gotten the best of me and what better to do in this situation but reload until I ran out of components. It was also motivating that retailers were in short supply of 9mm, 45ACP, 223, and 300 blackout. I had not bought all but 9mm in years as I couldn’t justify the time spent on my turret press loading to save $30-40 on 1000 rounds of 9mm, but the others I had large amounts of components and certainly saw immediate cost savings by reloading.
I currently have and reload for more than 39 calibers (I counted) but as you can imagine, unless I was a true hermit or retired I simply don’t have the time to load more than a box of bullets at a time and most of the time it was 1-2 weeks before hunting season, the night before going to the range or the night before my pistol league. With that being said I am also one to never pass up a deal, so as a result I have built up a nice stash of primers/powders/bullets and everything in between over more than a 15 year time span. It is worth noting that though I have a few presses, my go to press that has loaded 99% of all ammo to this point is a 4 station single stage Ponsness Warren Metallic 2 press. What that equates to is about 100 rounds an hour for the pistol, and for rifle rounds I would usually spend that same hour with case prep and precise loading to yield 20 rounds.
I don’t know exactly how it started, One day I was working on the computer and watching YouTube in between sending emails, but next thing I knew, Amazon, UPS, USPS, and Fedex packages were being dropped off outside my home office door just about every day (Separate entrance from the rest of my house). What I had been doing was randomly purchasing reloading equipment to finally reload the 10’s of thousands of pistol brass, 223 brass, and others I had stockpiled the better part of 10 years. Did I buy a Dillion and all “blue Stuff”? Nope, that would be too simple and I still don’t shoot that much to feel I need a progressive press, plus that would make the time go by too fast
The following are items I had researched the first week and come to the conclusion are great upgrades for everything I had been using all along. Not that I had finally broken even, but I decided that maybe its time to get with the time and speed up my process since with the addition of a new baby my free time may very well go the way of the plains buffalo.
#1 The first Item I bought was in response to me hating to keep a power drill nearby to trim brass on my Lyman Universal trimmer. I found out quick that I want to shoot too many calibers to be cranking away and early on purchased the drill adapter. This got old quick but I’ve had so much virgin brass that I’ve forgotten what a pain it is to trim either by hand or rather with the drill attachment. Solution: Lyman Xpress Trimmer. This thing measures off the shoulder with a case specific bushing. 10 are included and I only had to purchase 1 more for 7.62x39 and 6.5 Grendel. Long story short, its powered, accurate within .001 once you get your feel for it, and it is adjustable without tools! Paid $115 on sale from Midway/ $7.99 for bushing #7
#2 I also bought a set of lee Dies for the 32-20 + the factory crimp die. Nothing you guys didn’t already know, but I strayed from Big Green for the fact that I needed a shellholder and I’ve found that Lee dies are just as good as the others and you get the shellholder for free! $33 Midway
#3 Lee APP Press(Deluxe w/ Automation Kit)…This is perhaps my most satisfying purchase, and I regret not getting the word out sooner. For those of you who shoot your pistol or AR under 500 rounds a month, use a single stage press, and still value your time…Stop reading and buy this. This compact unit, once set up correctly, will feed and perform 1 die function at a time, then eject the shell into whatever box or bin you desire. I was scared at first by how delicate this thing truly was so I started depriming 45 ACP with a universal decapping die. WOW. Once you figure out how to perfectly set it up, it runs and runs and runs. The setup comes with a case feeder and one 18” piece of tube in 4 sizes. As you suspect this means you can load about 18 +/- pieces of 45 brass. With every pull jaws grab a case put it under the die and return for the next case while the die is lowered onto the case. On the upstroke the next case slides in pushing the completed case down a shoot. The press comes with a LARGE primer catcher bottle a breech lock bushing and 3 shellholders for 40,45,9mm,223, 308, and all their common sized case heads. After a few hundred cases I manned up and installed the carbide sizer/decapper. With what you get in the box, You can size and deprime 50 9mm cases in under 2.5 minutes including the time to refill the tube. But this is just the start with this press…It worked flawlessly in sizing 380, 9mm, 38Spl, 40 S&W, 357Mag, 45, 44 MAG, 30 carbine, and lubed 223 cases. Note I had purchased the “xpress shellholders” for about $4 each from Titan reloading when I bought the press. I then upgraded the case feeder to the 4 tube design and again, once setup it works great and increases the output speed of this press. Also teamed it with the case collator which magically seats all bullets rim down with a little agitation. Just to make it super secure, I also bought a pair of 3d-printed tube clips on Ebay. ….APP Press $75 Titan Reloading, case feeder kit…$25 Midway….Collator $17 ebay….Tube Clips for Case feeder $10 ebay….Additional shellholders $3.99 each Titan reloading…Swage Kit for App press $35 Titan Reloading
#3.5 These are so simple, but I must mention them. No idea if they are available in hardware stores, but Lee makes a simple metal bracket that holds small parts bins (aka AKRO Bins) I figured I would by one to mount to my bench for the APP Press to feed to, and just for fun get a second one to put in front of my other press. $6.99 @ Titan reloading
#4 Frankford Arsenal Platinum Rotary Tumbler+ Accessories…I rarely cleaned pistol brass fired from my guns. As I knew it was new, or rather 1x fired and if I was reloading it a 2nd time then that meant I had thousands of more 1x brass on deck and didn’t need to look for issues resulting from worn out brass. When I did clean Brass, it was in a ultrasonic cleaner. I also would use a vibratory tumbler only when I wanted really shiny brass to show off at deer camp. Given that I was not only using my 1x brass but also wanted to process thousands of rounds of stuff people had given me over the years I first ran everything through the APP press with universal depriming die, and then along with the supplied 5lbs of media dropped a little dawn and some lemishine in this for 2 hours. Wow, those who clean brass, I now get it. The prep work and rinsing was nothing compared to seeing new brass come out of this guy. I wanted to experiment so after rinsing I put just lemishine and water in it for 1 hour. AWESOME. The frankford media separator was awesome throughout the process, and GunTap SS Pins were order as they came with a transfer magnet. ZERO Complaints….Frankford Platinum Tumbler $161 @Amazon, GunTap Pins and Magnet $34.99 @Amazon, Frankford Media Separator $34.99 @ Amazon
#5 Frankford Arsenal Hand Priming Tool… I had never owned a single tool or press from Lee as of March 1st 2020…Aside from my original Auto-prime. I think after 10 years of me using it and then probably 20 years of someone else using it, it started to stick and there was some serious wear going on in the handle. Knowing I was going to load a surplus of brass, I didn’t take a chance on it breaking and halting my fun. I can prime on my press with a primer feed tube, but I prefer doing it by hand. Its also something that lets me spend some time with the family while still reloading and not bothering anyone. My wife actually would love if all my stages of reloading could be done in out living room! The Frankford hand priming tool is like the muscular well refined version of the Autoprime. It even uses the same style shellholders. It’s a little wacky with what calibers are left out of the shellholder chart and what calibers are included. Who the $%&^ owns a rifle chambered in “240 Souper Pooper”? Aside from that nonsense, I sat on a conference call and primed 500 pieces of sized, tumbled and flared 9mm and it felt so smooth. It also features adjustable primer depth though I found my ideal adjustment was about 10 clicks from max seating depth. ….Frankford Arsenal Hand Primer $71 @ Amazon
#6 Inline Fabrication Ultra Mounts…Just as I was happy as a clam with my APP press and the bin system that I had attached to my bench, I thought “Gee, Imagine If this 10” tall mini press was not 36” off the ground but more eye level. Enter the Inline fabrication Ultramount. This thing is rock solid and for those who are not aware, if you have multiple presses there are quick change plates and wall mounted brackets so you can switch plates and presses in seconds by loosening the 2 thumb screws. So I mentioned I have this giant 4 stage turret press made in Ohio in the 1970’s…that wont fit on it the press and not that it needs to being that it doesn’t need to hang off the end of the bench to function like most presses…but I digress. I should note that I also have a Paciffic 007 press that I used primarily for swaging brass with a swage die and I recently was given an original rock chucker with a PiggyPack conversion for 223. Having now 3 presses that need to be off of the edge of my 5’ long bench meant I wouldn’t be able to use drawers, wouldn’t have any real estate to work on guns, or store anything without having to reach over a collection of presses. By getting mounting plates and wall mount brackets I can store my presses when not in use and dedicate an 8x8” footprint for the use of these presses. Later on I found out that I like being able to sit down on occasion and purchased a flush mount from them that also utilizes the quick change system. This company has been along for a while, but again, these are great MADE IN THE USA products that after now owning, regret not having them sooner. My latest purchase was actually the sidebin system for the APP press as you loose your bench mounted bin when putting the press on the ultra mount, but It holds cases or bullets used as “INPUT” and another bin on the right for “OUTPUT”. …Ultramount 9” $80, Quick change Plates @$20 each, Flush mount @$45..Free shipping and no tax directly through their website. VERY QUICK SHIPPING
#7 Lee Auto Drum and Powder through dies….So I have established that in my current setup I was able to deprime and resize pistol brass at a rate of 50 rounds in 2.5 minutes. I also was able to flare those 50 rounds in 1.5 minutes in the APP press. That’s 4 minutes before taking in the amount of time to prime. So what I would do now is set up either my Harrels or an older redding powder measure to individually dispense a charge in each case, then I would transer to a loading block and once I had 50 charged, I would place a bullet on each and then proceed to seat and crimp on my single stage. I am very familiar with case activated feeders such as the Dillon and the one featured on the Hornaday LNL AP press. At the end of the day If I was going to spend 130+ on another powder feeder I was going to purchase the Hornaday LNL or a used Dillon 650. I looked into my Lee catalog that came with the App press and I knew of their auto disk and have seen one in person….but, no thank you. Too much plastic, too flimsy, and I just knew it would leak finer powders much like the Lee shotgun presses do. HOWEVER, enter the Auto Drum! I love this guy when paired with a lee powder thru die. Again, having all green, blue, orange and the other red brand of die sets I found myself placing an order on Titan for the 380, 45, 9mm, and long rifle Powder through dies. Now I am flaring and filling with powder in one pull so all I do is seat the bullet and slide the shellholder over to the next station to seat the bullet. These 2 stages feel like I am running a Dillon 550 (of sorts). Its not terrible to set up and I have not attempted to swap out drums and test if the drums are consistent each time you change back., but I don’t see any issues so I purchased 4 more drums from Titan Reloading….Auto Drum $35 ebay…Lee powder thru dies @ $13 on average @Titan Reloading….Auto Drum Quick Change Kit….$16 @Titan Reloading
#8 Honorable Mentions….Lee Breech Lock Rings 4PK for use in APP press or other Lee presses $20@Midway....Honrady OneShot Spray Lube, got the piggy back running and this worked great for sizing 223 without rolling on a lube pad. LET DRY 1 MINUTE BEFORE USE….$15 for 10oz @Midway…..Grade #8 Nuts/bolt/washers from the local ACE hardware. I love their loose hardware selection and they always have the right size for the job. Frankford Brass Dryer: I have had this forever but never needed to load it up and dry ASAP, but with this dryer, you can effectively dry 1000 pieces of pistol brass in less than an hour.
Once I had all this new “stuff” I went to work. I have sized, deprimed, tumbled over 10,000 pieces of 9mm Brass, #5000 pieces of 38 SPL Brass, #5000 Pieces of 45ACP, #2000 45ACP, #4000 223, #1000 308, #2000 380ACP, #1000 pieces of 40 S&W. I have primed over #5000 pieces of various calibers. I have charged (on auto drum) #2500 9mm. Lastly I have trimmed #200 6.5 grendel brass, #1000 5.56/223 brass, #100 300 wsm brass, #100 30-06 Brass and #200 308 Brass.
I feel that based on my results and the flawless operation of all equipment mentioned that this stuff is built to last. I have increased my output of loaded rounds to about 400-500 rounds an hour from 100. If you are in the market for any of the following supplies or looking to kill time and bulk process or reload please know that this in depth review was put together by someone just like you with 15 years experience and knows what the value of a hard earned dollar is. I hope I did you a service or at least gave you a good read. I thank you for your time if you read this whole write up and hope you and yours stay safe and get to spend some time together away from the bench. Hopefully when this is over you walk away with some more knowledge and a crap ton of ammo for a nice range day in June!
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