Reloading Advice

[THEWELSHM]

One thing to consider when making the color choice is "What brand do the competition shooters use?" These are the guys (and gals) that spend bunches of money and time to be the best and won't accept any compromises. The latest figures I find (4th quarter IDPA Tactical Journal) show 95% Blue, 4.5% Red, and .5% everything else. A lot depends on how many rounds you load per week. During the season, I normally load between 900 and 1200 rounds per week.

All that said, any of the brands will work, some just work easier and faster than others.

Thats what they said about the PC . Look how many use a a MAC now.....

Thewelshm

 

[THEWELSHM]

They go blue because they DO wear out their presses and Dillon has a no BS warranty and an excellent costumer service.

Green and Red have this too......

Thewelshm

 

[fredj338]

You must have had an entirely different experience than I for the last year or so. For many people, myself included, powders were basically impossible to come by new.

That said, yes it would be idiotic to walk into some store and say "I'd like to reload, please sell me some powder". The OP has already identified he wants to load .380 and 9mm. One can identify several powders that would work well in that application by reading freely available reloading data from powder manufacturers. Then one can create a list of powders to keep an eye out for if they become available for purchase.

Well yes I did. I've been loading long enough to keep reserve components in stock. I bought powder & primers right after the golfer & chief was re elected. So while everyone see was scrounging, I was shooting.
My point, buying 8# of powder you know nothing about, is asking for disappointment. I have several partial 1# jugs of powder I will never load unless I am completely out. If they were partial 8#, I would have spent a bunch of $$ for something I really can't use.

 

[YNC(AW) TangoCharlie]

I've consolidated the load data from Lee, Hornady, etc all onto one spreadsheet and sync a copy on my phone so if I'm in a store and they happen to have powder I can just open my sheet and see if I have a load for it.
Made up my own labels too.

I love this idea. Since I'm not very "computer smart", I'll have to ask wifey to help me, because I don't want to start buying the supplies now and then find out afterward that I can't use what I purchased.

 

[EugeneNine]

I just took one of my boxes into the office supply store and held it up next to the labels to see what would fit. The one there was an Avrey 22805. I downloaded the template from their web site, it was Micro$soft format but worked fine in OpenOffice.

 

[Bkreutz]

Thats what they said about the PC . Look how many use a a MAC now.....

Thewelshm

Yes, MAC has increased their market share, it's getting close to 20%. I was surprised, the last time I looked it was <10%

Usage share of operating systems - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia