Mean Machines

Last time I spoke about the advantages of reloading. This time it’s the nuts & bolts. Reloading is no more complicated than disassembling a Rigby-Bissell rising-bite sidelock with your Swiss Army knife. Piece of cake.

Before buying a reloader, buy a good scale capable of measuring in grains. A scale will allow you to check your powder and shot charges to make sure that they equal the loads in the book. Don’t rely on the reloader charge bar bushing charts. Measure and make sure.

Which reloader do you get? I dunno. All the reloaders work. They are all capable of making very nice loads. They all jam and break.

The first decision is whether you want a single-stage or carousel reloader. The single-stage reloader operates on one shell at a time and requires five to six pulls of the handle to make a single cartridge. But they are inexpensive and allow careful monitoring of the process. The best-selling loader in the world is the MEC 600 Jr. Mark 5 single-stage. It costs about $160. It is particularly handy in 10 gauge, 16 gauge or for 3” shells. It will do all the regular stuff too. If you are just reloading for hunting, it is a great choice.

If you want to go faster, you’ll want a progressive reloader. These have five to seven stations that all work on a different shell at once. You get one finished shell per handle pull. On some you can load 500 per hour if you work at it. Current popular brands are MEC, RCBS, Ponsness Warren, Hornady, Dillon and Spolar. Prices range from $300 to $1,500. MEC is by far the most popular brand and the least expensive, RCBS and Dillon come with lifetime guarantees, Ponsness Warren and Spolar have the best machining and resizing. I’ve had them all except Spolar. Each has its strong and weak points.

For the truly slothful among us, the MECs, Ponsness Warrens and Spolars can be set up with hydraulic or electric actuation. You just put in a hull and wad and push the button. Magic does the rest. This method isn’t any faster, but it is a boon for those with tennis elbow or an uncontrolled urge for gadgetry.

Going fast isn’t always good. Stuff happens. I’ve had both electrically and hydraulically assisted machines. They are like the little girl with the little curl: If all is perfect, they are great. But if a wad is a little crooked or a primer doesn’t feed properly, you can lose control. Shot on floor. With the hand-operated machine, you have a better chance of feeling that something is going wrong before it actually does.

Most of the brands auto-advance and auto-eject a finished cartridge when you pull the handle. You can add a little marble-chute-type deal to guide the finished shell from the machine, through a hole in the table, down a PVC conduit, into the bucket on the floor. Ditto the spent primers into an old plastic jug.

All this automation is very nice unless you are using badly worn hulls that need a little more TLC and fiddling to render that one last reload. Then you will want something more hands-on. You .410- and 28-hull stuffers know who you are.

How long do hulls last? The general rule is that the smaller the gauge, the shorter the life. I’m lucky to get six reloads out of my old Winchester AA compression-formed .410 hulls, but Hodgdon’s most excellent Shotshell Data Manual reloading handbook of 1996 (the best book on reloading I’ve seen) reported the old Remington Premier 12-gauge hulls lasting 15 reloadings, while Remington’s 28-gauge hulls made it through seven. But here’s the key: According to Hodgdon’s figures, pressures and velocities during the entire string were basically unchanged. The idea that an old hull degrades performance is an old wives’ tale. The wad does the ballistic work, not the hull.

Today most of the avid reloaders I speak to say that the new Winchester AAHS hull is the best for .410 and 28, while the Remington STS is longest lived in 12 and 20. Your mileage may vary. The best reloading hulls are the ones you have an ample supply of.

The bottom line is that reloading really doesn’t save you money, but it does allow you to shoot more. Fair enough.

Do you have any reloading advice you care to share?

Boots off. Beer open.