I’m following protocols and staying inside during these days except for going out for needed essentials (food, gas, medicine). Time to reload!

I just finished reloading my favorite cartridge (38-44) for use in my Ruger Blackhawk 357 Magnum using 358156 type bullets with double crimp grooves.

Cartridge: 38-44
Bullet: 358156 type (GT Bullets) with double crimp groove
Bullet weight: 155 grs
OAL: 1.525”
Powder: Unique
Grs: 6.0 grs
Case: 38 Spl +P
Comments: For use only in my heavy frame 357 Mag revolvers. Crimp in lower crimp groove and mark the primer in red.
Approx velocity: 1,100 FPS +/- (6 inch)

Here is a pic:

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I to got bore "Sheltering in Place". Been shooting my Circa '93
S&W 686-3 357Rem Mag a lot lately.

Just got done with one Box, another one in waiting.
My plinking 357mag Reload:
Bullet: 148gr LDEWC (Lead Double End Wad Cutter)
Power: 3.0grs Alliant Red Dot
Primer: CCI SP #500
Brass: 357 Nickel Win and Starline brass
Crimp: Medium, what I call it.
FPS: 750fps?
Bullets tumble lubed with Ben's Liquid Lube, for Lead free
barrel performance.
Primers no where near flat.

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SD social distanc'n since 1889

No reloading, but for the first time in 30 years I cleaned out the five drawers beneath my loading bench. I threw away a lot of oil samples, hunting licenses, and matchbooks collected over the years. Found a lot of other assorted junk and dirty pieces of patches, etc.

I found a couple of cheap knives I didn't know I had.

Just finished cleaning up from reloading some 148 dewc .38 spcls and some of my light .357s, 5.5gr Unique 158 rnfp, for the '92 and '73 Winchesters. The '92 runs easier with the .357 cases, but the '73 doesn't really care.

I through some brass in the tumbler yesterday more because it has pretty much rained all day here in wild wonderful West Virginia than fear of the "virus".

I loaded some 30-06 with cast bullets that I cast and gas checked for my Springfield 03A3.....using it in a side match (Bolt Action Military Rifle Match)....has to be a lead bullet traveling slower than 1400 fps.

Seems to pretty accurate at 100 yards. Used 10 grains of Unique and a 175 gr. bullet

Randy

41 mag target loads this morning-44 mag target tonight- both with Hornady XTP bullets. I think I will reload a few 17 caliber 45 LC a friend custom made for me when he worked the night shift at Bell H. They are solid brass. You install a primer--fill it up with bullseye-or any fast powder-and press in a pellet. No loader required.

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Hunkered down here. Loaded 500 10mm 200 gr loads on my Dillon this morning. This afternoon, loaded some 90-95 grain 224 Valkyrie loads for 1000 yd shooting that I will do later this week.

Working up .357 rifle loads for my Ruger 77-357. 180gr Hornady XTP. Settling on W296 with a Federal magnum primer. About 1350 fps. Otherwise, 100 new 148gr Berrys DEWC .38 with W231.

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Heavily armed old man.

.45acp 230grain FMJ over 5.0 grains Green Dot @ 1.250 OAL.

My last 200 hollow based wad cutters over the classic 2.7 grains of bullseye for my Model 14!

1000 more wad cutters on the way

I've been reloading 9mm. Since I just started loading 9mm I'm taking it slow, I'm using my SDB as a single stage press. I'm using 700 X powder (it's a flake powder) and my powder measure is inconsistent so I am weighing each load. But I have plenty of time because of the Corona stay at home order. Reloading is a good way to pass the time.

147 grn Black Bullit

2.8 Bullseye

10mm 200 Grain WFNGC under 13 grains Accurate #9 using a win LP and new Starline brass. The bullet is 90-6-4 alloy, a little too much tin but that’s what it came out as. It also is clear powder coated with powder from Smoke4320. OAL is 1.25 which seems to feed fine in my G40. Bullets sized .401 which will also work in my 610

Edit to add pic

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-Matt

Take a look at the "AA" powders, if you're metering. Ball powders, they meter like water. AA2 will load 1500 or so per pound, being cautious about double charges. AA7 still meters like water and fills the case enough that you won't double charge.

Just what works for me. YMMV, of course.

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Just Say No - To Social Media

I deburred cases today. 5.56, which is a new trick for me. I've discovered that I despise trimming and deburring bottle neck rifle cases. A lot.

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Just Say No - To Social Media

700 x wasn't my choice of powder, I got it in a deal. Since the brass was free (range brass) & the powder was basically free, I'm trying to to "save some money". L.O.L.

im loading some .308 Win.
110gr Sierra Varminter
37 gr Reloder 7
2.550"
These are for a Savage Model 10 TR.

.223 on deck then it`s back to .38 spl, .357 .44 Mag and 9mm.
Jim

.223 Rem for F-class.

80.5 gr Berger Fullbore
22.0 gr - 24.5 gr Varget
Lapua cases
L.E. Wilson neck sizer and straightline seater in an arbor press

All dressed up and nowhere to go . . . .

Loaded 9 boxes of 410 shot shells.

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S&W Accumulator

150 rounds of 300BLK
Just having fun, not stock-piling.

Sierria Match King 220gr HPBT
Remington 6½ Small Ridle Primers
Hodgdon H110 9.5 gr
2.260 OAL

Hadn't tried a "true" pistol powder for BLK, so wanted to give it a go.

Tested 8.5 - 10.5 gr loads first, at .5 gr spread.
Then tested 9.0 - 10.0 gr at .2 gr spread.
Finally, 9.3 - 9.7 at .1 gr spread.
9.5 gr is giving me 1¼" at 100 yards, and I'm pretty happy with that.

Next up... 150 gr bullets for the BLK.
So far, this "duck & cover" drill is proving productive for me!

As everyone is aware, I'm new to reloading handgun cartridges. Reloaded approx 1000 Rnds 148gr HBWC, and another 500 Rnds 138 Gr Wadcutters from Bayou Bullets. Loaded both with Bullseye powder, but noticed there's a Recipe in my book using Red Dot, which is significant, because I reload 12 Gauge rounds in my Spolar with Red Dot and keep approx 24lbs on hand. More shelf space is always a plus for me. I'm not sure how the Dillon would meter the Red Dot, as it does an awesome job with the bullseye, just thinking outlaid, and maybe one of you more experienced loaders can add feedback on the Red Dot and the Dillon powder system if you have time. I usually use Red Dot in both my Mec's and Spolar Gold which drops powder identically to the Dillon.

Tomorrow I'd like to set up a new tool head to load a wildcat round I use, a .270 Max. I've got 1500 pieces of unprimed brass, Annealed, resized, trimmed and deburred, waiting to be loaded, with another 500 pieces, of new .357 Maximum brass sitting new in the boxes, waiting to be annealed and necked down. I'll be using 21.5 Gr of Accurate 2015 powder, and I'm very curious how the Dillon Powder system will meter this powder as well. Prior to my Dillon Press, I was loading these on a single stage RockChucker press, and weighing each load out by hand on an Ohaus 10-10 scale. I've been told time and again the Dillon would handle this task with ease, and save me a lot of time and trouble, so I'm curious to find out for myself.

Since January our Range in the Honey Island Management area has been closed nearly every weekend due to flooding issues, My two grown daughters, and their husbands and I love to shoot clays on the weekends. It's a family time gathering, and we really enjoy it, as we break up into pairs, with one person operating the thrower control. Between the 5 of us shooting, we usually go through 1,250 rounds in a day, and approx 5,000 a month. I have a month supply in reserve right now, with another 10K empty, and waiting to be loaded on my Spolar. So with this Carona stuff going around, at least for the next 3 weeks of confined to home, I should be able to easily catch up. My Spolar Gold is a fully progressive loader, and if properly fed components will fill a 5 Gallon bucket every 15-20 minutes, leaving the issue of reboxing the loaded rounds as being the biggest time consumer.

Thinking with all this reloading going on, and as sparse as components are getting, I should be able to keep occupied until the end of this isolation period, both running down components and loading.

100 .38 S&W with 158 gr SWC over 2.8 gr True Blue and 100 .44-40 with 200 gr LFN over 7 gr of Unique.

RCBS Single Stage Partner press so a little slow, but a lot of fun.

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I finished reloading my two large coffee cans of 45 ACP, 230 LRN over 4.5 gns of Bullseye. Yesterday I switched the dies and primer feed and started on my one and a half coffee cans of 40 S&W, haven't been collecting 40 S&W brass as long. That load is also 4.5 BE except a 180 gn TC bullet. I'm not bored enough to start loading 9x19 but I'll trim down a 1K or so of 9x19 and load up some 9x18. We have a CZ82 my wife and daughter really like shooting and I use the Lee bullet mold with liquid alox, and BE powder. Don't misunderstand, I have other powders available but I've got BE loads I like in 32 Long, 380, 9 Mak, 9x19, 38 Special, 40 S&W and 45 ACP. So when I buy BE it tends to be in 8lb jugs, the other powders I've only got a pound or two. So when I can't easily replace the pound canisters, like now, I tend to revert to the keg loads.

9mm
115 gr extreme plated RN
4.1gr W231
CCI 500
mix head stamp yellow brass
I know 9mm is boring, but still better than the best day at work.

I'm breaking in a new RL550C that I got yesterday. After 40 years of using a single stage I'm in a learning curve. Homecast 158 grain LSWC over 3.5 grains HP38. Powder puff load in my 38's and 900 FPS in my Marlin 1894CS. That's about 2,000 rounds per pound of powder and cost less than most .22 ammo.

It starts with a little story.A while back I sold my government model and also my reloading equipment thinking my reloading days were over and life would be going with my
22´s pistols only.Then fate messed with my plans when I came across a mint S&W 1917/1946 brazilian, and suddenly I was kicking myself for being so stupid in selling the reloading kit, case and primers.
Since then I started to re-equip starting with a Lee loader. Then I remembered a friend had given me some 85 .45 AR , but these are berdan cases and worse, primed with corrosive primers . Next step was a bullet puller to took all primers off. Next I bought some CBC made non corrosive primers sized and primed all 85 of them.
And this is what I´ve been doing reloading wise in this quarantine days.
I got also a powder tricker and am expecting the deliver of a powder scale.
That´s the story, thanks for reading, regards, Ray

Congratulations on the new Dillon!! I know you will do just fine and love the 550. Beware one will not be enough!!! LOL

I've been reloading 9mm as well on my Lee single stage press. I do about 300 a day working slow and steady as I have lots of time on my hands. I've always used CFE pistol powder but I'm down to my last pound or so and couldn't find any at this time so I'll be switching to Titegroup before long. I'll have to hope for some halfway decent weather so I can do a little range testing before I load too many with the new to me powder.

I also have a couple hundred pieces of 223 brass to reload as well but I have a pretty good stock of ready to go ammo for that so it's lower priority. I'm also kind of low on the H335 I use for that round, and really low on the bullets for it. Last I looked the bullets were going for 4 times what I last paid for them so I think I'll wait that one out a while.

I try to make a range trip once a week and with my current supplies I can continue for maybe 12 weeks or so. I'm hoping the worst will be behind us by then. If it doesn't look like that's happening I'll start some rationing measures with my ammo on those trips.

Today I plan on loading some .45 auto rim and a couple boxes of .30 Remington.
SWCA 892

Loaded 200 rounds of .38 S&W - 100 rounds with Remington 148 grain HBWC's over 2.3 grains HP-38, seated about halfway out of the case to 1.11 inch OAL for top breaks, and 100 rounds with Lyman 35864 (146 grain RN) over 2.9 grains HP-38 for my recently acquired 1949 Colt Detective Special in .38 New Police.

Now I'm starting on 200 rounds of .455 Webley with Hornady brass, Remington 250 grain swaged bullets (.455 diameter) over 4.5 grains HP-38.

Next up will be 9 mm, which I haven't reloaded in awhile because of the pre-Corona availability of cheap factory ammo. Although I have lots of factory ammo, I also have lots of components from the last panic that need using up.

I'll get around to some actual loading later in the week - probably .455 Webley and 32-20. Right now I'm doing my two least favorite things, trimming rifle cases to length and running my previously cast bullets thru the luber-sizer. For some reason these two tasks seem the most tedious of the reloading process.

I reloaded 1000 rounds of 9mm 115grn RNLC with 3.4gr 700x yesterday. Today it's gonna be 1000 rounds of 45acp 200grn SWCC with 4.8gr. of HP-38. Glad I have been stocking up the past couple years on lead, powder and primers. Planning on retiring next year and figured I'd be short on cash but long on free time. The free time came early than expected !!!

I loaded 18 rounds of 243 win ammo (3 ea at each charge weight), to test charge weights with two different bullets. The powder is H414 and the bullets are 68 gr Barnes match burner and 95gr Sierra BTHP......

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Regards,

Tom

Today I'm loading some S&W .40 165gr practice loads for my local police Dept.

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SWHF #595

Yesterday (I know I’m late), loaded up 250 38SUPER/130 Berry JRN and another batch of 250 357Sig/125 Speer GD. Today it’s 7.62/308Win and 7.62x39. Goal is 100-150 of each. Got bullets, powder and primers. Got time now too.

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"Your other right........."

So you can think up a new way to do it!

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

I've got to saw some leftover plywood in half so I can get to my reloading bench.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Now this is going to be an unusual answer. I have re-loaded a bunch of Speer indoor practice ammo. This consists of a plastic bullet and case powered by only a magnum pistol primer. Why you may ask? I have 7 grandchildren living with me and this was my effort to get them of those horrid games they play all day long. So far it's been successful and even the 8 years old's(twin girls) are enjoying shooting.
Jim

This weekend, I loaded 35 Remington with 165 and 190 grain cast bullets using IMR 4227 powder, .32-40 Winchester with 170 grain cast bullets using Red Dot powder and 6.5x55 Swede with 140 Match Bullets and IMR 4350 powder.

Glad you got back-in!!!!! Thanks for your post.

Dear friend of mine brought over some .380 acp brass and projectiles. I have a set of dies.....his hands are quite large and has trouble handling the smaller .380 case or bullets.

Make 250 for him.......Dillon 550B made short work of that session!

Randy

Fun thread. I think I can get the award for the most eclectic loading rooster for yesterday. I finished one hundred light target .44 Mag loads, about 200 28ga loads, loaded all the .378 Wby. Mag. brass I’d recently prepped, loaded almost fifty .458 Win. Mag. and prepped some brass for the .460 Wby. Mag. Also changed the scope rings on the .458 Win, got all three of those rifles sighted in, finished working up two new loads for the .458 and .460 Wby and broke about 75 clays with 12ga. Great day. Back to working from home today.

Now if you had left off the "with 12ga." after saying you broke about 75 clays we would have all been in awe.

44 Mag,240 SWC,2400

Last night I loaded a test batch of 32 S&W L with bullets gifted to me by a friend. The bullets were cast in a Lyman 313631 mould with the GC groove removed and that has been hollow pointed. My friend also provided me with some special gas checks he makes to go on non-gas check bullets, so I added those. I used up some of my remaining supply of WW 231 to make them go. Now if I can just get out and shoot them!

Froggie

PS I guess it would be too much to hope for that somebody would know where I could find some more WW231 02 HP 38 reasonable?

Well I've been fighting my gear trying to load some oversized 45 colt bullets .454 without swaging them down when seating .451. I even got Lyman to send me a bigger stem .453, but the brass springs back into .452 immediately. I want a minimum of .454 and would love a .455 nest from that M die expander stem.
I'm doing a lot of pulling of bullets to measure those diameters as I test.

My S&W 25-5 has .454 cylinder exits and my swaged down .4515 bullets are starting to tilt by the time they get out of the cylinder. I'm seeing regular keyholing on the target as a result.

I even tried seating a .457 fmj and then pulling the bullet to see if the brass would stay at .454. I think the brass swaged that .457fmj down to .453. So still looking for an answer.

Off to call Lyman and see if they have a bigger stem or a giant one I can have machinist take down.

Prescut

The last couple afternoons it was 1100 45ACP coated 200gr SWC and 850 9mm coated 125gr RN. Under normal conditions I'll shoot 150-200 weekly but for now I'll follow the rules, stay home and reload. My Dillon 550 makes it easy, 12-15 minutes per 100. The only part I dislike is filling the primer tubes.

It was a 9mm kinda weekend for me!

I was sick for months and never could get and get up and go. But I've been missing shooting and reloading and I've been tempted to get back into the game. But I saw this post, and I was inspired. I set up my reloading station at a desk that wasn't being used in the house. It's hot and dusty in the garage and I've needed to clean the place up since late last year. But I bypassed all that and mounted my press on a board and clamped it to the desk. Started 150 9mms last night and tonight I almost finished them, but I ran out of bullets.

Oh well, get online with Missouri and I can fix that.

Thanks.

PS: I was going to attach a picture, but I've got some sort of 'missing token'. I'll add it if I can, but then, you know what it looks like.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Have been cleaning up my reloading bench. Suprised at what I found. A 5 gallon bucket of 45ACP brass, 3 or 4 thousand 9mm's and other misc. stuff. My tumbler is working overtime. My 550 will be working overtime to catch up. I've been a member for a lon, long time, but this is my first post. This forum has been a wealth of information.
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