WITH a lid. For sure. No lid = everything in the box scattered on the floor and 2 or 3 lost plates.
I have a drawing for shell holders & dies that I did about a year ago. I even created an assembly for them in inventor.
May I recommend a rack set to keep all of the components together for a single caliber. And mark them well, large & clearly.
I have a question about this single stage press - is it robust enough to try to machine a set of swaging dies for it? I want to make .40 bullets from 9mm brass. My turret press canât take the needed pressure to seat the lead or form the nose of the round. But that single stage looks like it might be robust enough to try machining a set of swaging dies for that press. Any takers? I want to make lead soft nose partially jacketed rounds. The idea is to have a partial jacket to prevent leading, but a soft exposed nose for max mushroom that I can push at the speed of a FMJ powder charge. Such a round is more ballistically sound than a JHP so you get more range and accuracy. Using soft lead for the core gives you a better expansion than some thickly jacketed JHPs. I was mining lead from my cousinâs range backstop last weekend and found round after round of .45 JHP that hadnât expanded at all due to the thick copper jacket. All of my cast .40 lead rounds, however were between a dime to a quarter in size after passing through 3 inches of phone book into 6 inches of TX soil. I want to make the middle ground and stop leading my barrels.
This was what I came up with last February (2016).
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Well then lets make it happen. Obviously i have to wait for the bored to give me a card and make me a procurement officer. I also need to get lampy to get our account figured out it still currently says we are negative as of i believe 2 weeks ago
Progressive presses are awesome when youâre loading large quantities of a single caliber. Otherwise, they just add a lot of setup and tear down time.
I like the newer hornady presses better than the rockchucker (owned both).
Might be worth discussing, adding some tools to support loading for maximum accuracy. Arbor press, Wilson dies, Harrells culver measure, various case prep tools. These are needed if you want to get your loads into the .5 MOA class, but many of the tools can also be used to improve the quality of hunting loads as well.
Thereâs a lot here Iâd like to talk through with you, so if you want to meet up in person, Iâd like that.
Strictly speaking yes, but I really donât recommend it. There are presses designed specifically for swaging bullets, and you want a dedicated press because swaging makes a HUGE mess.
So, this is one of those âyes, itâs theoretically possible, but does that make it a good ideaâ kind of discussions. The single biggest issue youâre going to run into here is making your bullets ballistically stable. Itâs doable, but is not easy. There really isnât a good way to ensure that your weight is perfectly distributed to account for any defects in the brass, let alone the material removed when the headstamp is created.
If you want a jacketed lead nose bullet, just buy them. They exist. And theyâre going to be ballistically stable, and theyâre not going to put all the wear and tear on your lands/grooves that running a brass jacketed bullet will.
Iâm going to disagree with you here. Youâre talking about a .40 S&W, which is, as best I know, almost exclusively a handgun round. Sure, there are a few PCCs out there that shoot .40, but theyâre the exception, not the rule.
At the ranges where youâre actually going to hit your target with a .40, there is absolutely no difference in the range or accuracy between a modern JHP and what youâre talking about making here. I would argue that the JHPs are going to be much more accurate, in fact, due to nothing more than you know theyâre ballistically sound.
Maybe 20 years ago this was the case, but no solid lead bullet can even hope to perform as well as a modern JHP.
The jacket isnât why the round didnât expand. Without getting into messy fluid dynamics and the awful math that goes with it, hollowpoints are designed to expand when they impact a fluid-filled mass (or semi-fluid mass) but not expand before that point. It requires a minimum velocity as well. But to say that you found unexpanded JHPs in the backstop doesnât in any way, shape, or form, describe how theyâd expand when they hit a body. This was one of the original challenges with the JHPs of the 80s and 90s, in that theyâd plug the hollow part of the hollowpoint, and as a result, wouldnât expand when they hit the body behind the plugging material.
Thatâs why modern ballistics testing includes shooting through several layers of denim and cloth before hitting the ballistics gel.
Now, this is an interesting one, because if youâre experiencing a leading problem with .40 S&W, we can troubleshoot this. Either your bullets are too soft or your load is wrong. Thereâs not enough pressure in a .40 S&W to make gas checks necessary, so either youâre way overloading (or using the wrong powder), youâre shooting lead through a polygonally rifled barrel, or (my guess) is that your bullets are too soft and you need more tin or antimony in your lead. Are you using a brinell hardness gauge on your rounds after youâve cast and cooled them? Are you trying to load to 10mm specs? Details, man, I need details! So many potential issues to troubleshoot!
This is, incidentally, the problem with going down the reloading rabbit hole, and the reason I quit casting my own bullets.
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I am genuinely intrigued. Youâre the first person Iâve ever heard say that. Iâve never had a Hornady press, so what do you like about it better? I may need to get one to try it out, sell me on it!
Part of that is intertia (and I love my piggyback manual index for doing match ammo), but if theyâve got some cool new wiz-bang toy, Iâd love to hear about it.
So true. Theyâre the necessary evil to keeping belt feds happy and well fed.
Lower cost, quick-change dies, nice rigid frame, easy to use. May be a taste thing, but I do prefer it.I wonât use RCBS dies, preferring Redding or Lee dies for their superior concentricity and bullet seaters. Also, like every knowledgeable reloader, I use a Lee FCD to fix glocked brass in 40.
I use a single stage press for hunting ammo, a progressive for pistol (I tend to shoot 400-500 rounds at practice sessions, or 1000 if competing). For the long range rifle, I use wilson dies in an arbor press, and a Harrels culver measure. I also bump size, weigh cases, turn necks, uniform primer pockets and flashholes, de-burr, check case runout, and use only Lapua brass.
Yet another reason to not carry or shoot those oversized pigs.
To each his own. 
I carry either a Ruger SR40/c or Kahr CW40.
One day Iâll get up to Hatcherâs and learn how to use all that reloading gear. I have a bunch of it here I havenât set up yet.
Havenât shot the SR40 yet, but I also frequently carry a CW45 Kahr for itâs thinness.
Glocks are awesome pistols, despite their quirks (polygonal rifling and unsupported chambers). I was always a 1911 guy, but got talked into trying a G36 in a few matches, and was completely surprised at the way they handle. If I had to choose a single pistol for self defense (actual fighting), it would be a Glock in .40S&W.
If all youâre after is a little fun at the range, most any pistol will do. But for fighting with a pistol, its all about DVC (Diligentia - Vis - Celeritas), and Glocks are accurate, fast, and extremely reliable. They completely dominate all the production matches in the various action pistol disciplines, and for good reason.
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That has been my experience. I shoot best with a Glock. I still regret not buying one or two when the going price new was $400âŚ
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Yup.
Itâs not a bullseye pistol in the least, but when you need dead-bang reliability, they really canât be beat.
I can take you through Hatcherâs Lock-n-Load. There are things I like about it and things I donât like and things that are just unlucky.
I have a friend that shoots a âlotâ of .223 and he just bought a Lock-n-Load for his 200yd and 300 yd ammo and he really likes it. But itâs one caliber and one load. He is pleased with it.