Done reloading? (cleaning and maintenance)

[rockquarry]

One more item concerning casting your own bullets. I know plenty of guys including well known journalists that talk on about how well they shot with wheelweights. All is well and good but if you are truly going for a quality product, garbage in garbage out. I would recommend to anyone to get a good quality pure lead and add your own tin to get to the appropriate hardness, stay away from antimony, it is not good for your health. You can get a quality lead product at local recylclers with a little knowledge you can discern between whats good and what is not. Stay away from anything suspect, if its not in a sheet or an ingot from Bunker Hill I stay away. Look out for someone's fishing weights...get your alloys on-line from a number of outlets, weigh your ingredients and go from there.

Some of what you say is generally true. What is your casting background? It may far exceed mine. Scrap lead and wheelweight alloy and tin and possibly other ingredients in the mix will make an excellent alloy for many purposes, duplicating a variety of commercial alloys. This is first grade level bullet casting knowledge. If one uses garbage, as you mention, yes, you have garbage. I know of no serious casters that use garbage mixes.

Who are the well known journalists you know that use simple wheelweight alloy with good results?

 

[Green Frog]

Unfortunately, I am out of brass. No worries, I'll get more from the range next time I go, but that will likely be about 5 weeks from now. Then after tax season, it will be back to weekly sessions. Now seems like a good time for maintenance and cleaning. I use a Redding T-7 and a mix of dies (Lee, Hornady, and RCBS).

The press seems easy. Take a part, clean, dry, oil/grease on the rotating parts of the press, make sure everything without oil is really dry, then reassemble.

What about the dies? What's the best way to clean them? Any tricks or special concerns about taking them apart? I'm okay with doing the unnecessary, but I don't want to cross the line into messing things up.

Out of brass to reload? I can send you a couple of bucketsful to load for me. No problem, I'll even pay shipping both ways since I hate to see a fellow reloaded with nothing to do.

A serious response to your cleaning question... as far as the dies are concerned, so long as they haven't gotten wet (don't ask about the burst pipe spraying across my loading bench! ) the main concern I have is for the inside of my dies... any bits of contamination inside the sizer, foreign materials on the belling spud, and most frequently lube or other foreign materials that accumulate inside the seating die all need to be addressed and removed. The last, the seating die is usually the worst affected in my experience.

As for my press(es) I have to admit to belonging to the "If it ain't broke" school of thought, except of course after the aforementioned spray disaster. Otherwise, I try to keep the presses somewhat protected and free from external contamination. I do have to finish cleaning my inherited Dillon 550 (for the first time in this century!)

Froggie