Matter of Facts: Mistakes at the Reloading Bench

Welcome back to the Matter of Facts podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping, guns, politics every week on iTunes, Ditcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mwefpodcast dot com. On Facebook or Instagram. You can support us be a Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Raveley Andrew Nickar on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to the Matter of Facts Podcast. We are back to do exactly what we said we weren't going to do. We said we were done talking about reloading, and then it occurred to me, there's one topic we've kind of glanced off of in the realm of reloading that involves us bearing our sins to the listeners, and that is mistakes at the reloading bench, otherwise known as effing up you will. And the best version of effing up only costs you some profanity and some hair and some aggravation. The worst versions in your fingertips and eyeballs being at risk. So you know, like take everything we say with as a cautionary note. I don't mean any of this to mean that reloading is like a dangerous black magic voodoo experience that you shouldn't partake in. It's a fun hobby. Just know that you were making tiny little explosive charges and you're putting them in a steel cylinder and then you are igniting them approximately three feet away from your face and act accordingly. Yep, and ragal yo was me. It was me this time. I mean you might have screwed up most recently, but literally everything I put into these banners I have personally done or personally observed. So like these are all these are all very honest mistakes, and I think most people make if you reload long enough. Well, it's like anything, any kind of manufacturing process has a percent chance of error. You just tried to get that percent chance of error down as little as possible for safety, for cost effectiveness or anything. That's what a lot of these, a lot of these little things we're going to talk about you can look. For to try and prevent in the future. And see, I followed the NASA model for screwing up, because there's an old saying that like every NASA mission had at least one screw up. You just hope the screw up happened on the ground. Yeah, or happen you didn't really need. Yeah, when the scrup happens in the air, it's a lot more exciting. When it happens on the ground, it's just like, oh damn, we gotta fix that and then try to light this thing up again. Actually, I've learned of a new thing that can help prevent scripts for these progressive presses that I didn't know exist. We'll get to that later. Oh that'll be fun. Okay, admin work. If you'd like to promote bad decisions by becoming a patron that links in the show description you should become a patron. You should promote bad decisions. It might be ours and it might be yours, but there will be bad decisions promoted. Is trust that you should by merch for the vibes from the Southern Gals. We were actually having a discussion literally within the last couple of days about possibly revamping the T shirts because I've always wanted to do like fun, cheeky stuff and occasionally when the line gets a little stale, we start throwing around different ideas and like there I am pushing really hard for a Gramby Community College welding program shirt. That would be a great one. Dude, like it just it's just so fun. Well but not like you don't even need to put a killdoze or anything on the shirt. Just community college welding. Exactly. Actually that year he graduated high school. What you need is gramby community college and then like a course list and be like welding, bulldozer operation, you know, things, things in that bain. There you go, CIVICX one on one. There you go. Yeah, my FBI agent is not going to find that near as entertaining as I do. But that's okay, it's fine, it's fine. They really don't care that much. I mean, he has an mk lt of me in a in a little while, the tics are mostly gone, all right, And if you'd like to prevent war crimes with disaster coffee code mof at checkout, it will Actually I debate whether or not it prevents war crimes most of the time, but if you're intent on inventing new war crimes, it could help with that too, well, so that's fair. So well. Caffein and it does help the brain function. This is this is true. This is true. I was at work today having kind of an off day, and I kept wandering around like why can't I think of anything, and then I was like, oh Christ, it's ten o'clock and I've only had one cup of coffee. Of course, my cup of coffee is a thirty two ounces tumbler, so you know, we have to be a little liberal. But it's only one cup, and I'm standing by that. Look if it just has one handle and you haven't refilled it, it's one cup. If it's a mug that takes two handles, that's two cups. We go by the I like that math. Okay, there are people misbehaving in the chat Ragle fraggle, so we're talking about the tinsel fairy to. I don't cast, and unless Nick has any casting sins he would like to discuss, they'd be fishing. Related up to this point, or musket related, and it's really hard to fuck up. A musket ball. Turns out, m Rachel said, sorry for the dog barking. There was a cat. We have faral cats in our neighborhood and my dog hates them with a passionate. I mean, feral cats kill songbirds. Don't leave your cats outside. Your dog lives there, and the cat's stone, so the dog has the writer correct, it's her yard. Any animal in her yard that is small enough for her to murder. She will give it enough. Time, and that seems. That seems fair, except for birds. She doesn't get birds that much, mostly because they could fly. It's mostly like boden footed animals. So years ago before she passed away, my my dog had an experience one morning because my neighbor's chickens got out of their yard and they kept coming and pecking and scratch it, my freshly manicured mulched bed and yeah, after chasing them out of the yard two or three times, the little bastards kept coming back. I finally just let the dog out, let her do what she did. And I'm gonna tell you why if the sound of a boxer German shepherd mixed chasing down six ringing six chickens is hilarious, that's great, dude, don't. I don't know what they were saying in chicken, but it was very excited. They were done with that yard. They never they never came back. They never left their yard again after that. Yeah. Anyway, so we brought. Up who's screwed up? And it being me? Uh, you guys may have heard one of our patrons was lovely enough to send me a big box. I've spent casings you can see on the stool behind me. I am still working through processing just. The nine mil nice. I get a lot of range. Pickup brass from a variety of sources, and one thing anybody's reloading for any length of time. Nine millimeter and three eighty auto look a hell of a lot alike. I mean, unless you get the calibers out, or you hold them side by side, or look at the head stamps, it's it's easy to mistake the two for each other at a glance. It's sort by headstamp is really the best way to do that. Unless you have there are shell sorder basket plates you can pick up. I'm gonna have to get some because the last time I had to sort through brass, it took me like nine hours just because of the volume, and it was boring, painfully boring us. But I had some three eighty. Auto that got mixed in with my nine mil brass, either through a lack of diligence on my end or just they got dropped in the wrong bucket. It happened. Me and Phil were talking and we've come to the conclusion that with the load time running a one forty seven grain cast led brown coded over three point four grains of Winchester two thirty one, It probably shouldn't turn a gun to run a three eighty case three or nine milimeters pistol. Now, I'm not vocating that anybody else try that, but I agree with me not going running the numbers. Like I agree with Nick, I really don't think it would cause a problem because of the way the data stacks up. Yeah. It it seems to me that Winchester two thirty one with that grain bullet is, according to at least two reloading manuals that we found safe up to three point five grains of Winchester two thirty one, and. An overall length of what would we come up with nine eighty. Pounds and my load of one forty seven grain in a nine millimeter case? I like at one inch one twenty. That feeds reliably in every firearm that I have that takes nine millimeter. I know that's slightly long, but it feeds really well, it shoots very reliably, and I get a clean, cleaner powder burn than when I shorten it up. Actually, hold up, second, are you. Gonna pull up that overall length. No, we're We're sitting here having to talk about this, and I'm about to recant what I said before win Win two thirty one one hundred and forty seven grand bullet. Yeah, it might be over pressure, because I think you said three point five was horny. Good. Well, but I was doing exactly what I warned about later in this series one hundred and forty seven grain bullet. Because I couldn't find much data on one forty seven grains and three eighty addo cases. Well, the point of the matter is. Is that the nine millimeter case being slightly larger, is going to give you a little bit lower bullet pressure, a little bit lower pressure during firing than the exact same load at the same length in a three eighty auto case, which is a non taper wall cartridge. So the volume is slightly smaller because the tip of the case stays about the same. So I'm gonna pull him down. And I'm gonna empty him out, and I'm gonna throw those three eighty cases away and just eat the lost primer. I don't feel like blowing up my gun. I have a direct blowback. I could put it in. That would probably be fine, because worst case is just gonna blow the slide back and slam really hard. Yeah, but well, I mean, I don't think it would it would hurt anything as long as you're sticking with nine millimeter data, because what the only loss of the only thing that would really cause the pressure to be wildly out of spec is the fact that nine mili is a very slightly tapered cartridge and three eighty straight wall. And since they both since the neck is the same, yes, nine millimeter curves doctor, scary guy. Yeah, but since then, since they use the same size bullet, the neck, the dimension of the neck is the same, which means the difference the case head itself as far as diameter, and the nine moimeter luger case is obviously longer, which doesn't matter here because what's really called, what's really influenced in the size of the combustion chamber of this bullet is the overall length which you loaded to the nine mil. That my biggest concern with what you've created unintentionally is actually less to do with the powder charge. I think you're probably close enough to with inspect that it wouldn't hurt your gun. But what I am pretty sure would happen is because the case is so short. Your die, the part of your die that that taper crimps didn't come close to engaging with that neck. I put a pretty aggressive taper crimp on my nine mil. But pretty aggressive taper crimp is still like twenty or thirty thousands of an inch further up away from the shell plate than where that neck is. Like, I don't I would venture say that the bullets feel quite tight in there. I'll put it that way. You're still only depending on the neck tension. I mean, you're you're depending on the neck tension after the case was bellmouthed, and it's one of those things where like if your bell mouth was minimal and you know, you didn't taper cramp, you're probably okay. But my biggest concern would be bullet set back when that when the nose that bullet slams into your loading ramp or you're. Very very well, it could happen, especially under rapid firing or you know, just in transit, if it wasn't in if it wasn't in like an MTM case or something. Yeah. So, since we've done this in completely the wrong order, Uh, the topic for the day is fixing screw ups at the bench because if you reload long enough, you will screw something up. And I had to reorder these because Nick decided to slide this one in but mixing similar brass like three eighty and nine milimeter and I've done it too. Ragofrago actually said in the chat that this exact same thing happened to him and he realized something was goofy because he was feeling the amount of resistance on the press handle and like, I don't I can't speak for progressive press, but I know that with a single stage, if you run a three eighty ks into a non milimeter die, it feels wrong. It does. It feels wildly different. The trouble you run into with a progressive press is most of your say, most of your pressure is coming from your decapping die. If you're running a dedicated decapping die in there, and then whatever die you're using to crimp the round back in. To see you crimp the round because you have more going on, you do, Yeah, I mean you have. You have in this case, in the case of that press behind me there, you have five different stations going on, and you're probably using at least three if not four to five of those of those dial locations. Which, to be fair like this is this is one of the reasons why most old hand reloaders do not recommend progressive presses for beginners. It's not that it's not that they cannot be done safely. It is that, in my in my experience from messing with my dad's six point fifty on his bench, like a full auto progressive press will give you a lot less warning than a single stage when something's off, because all those different things happening at the same time tends to mask the one thing that's not right. I can, whereas my process being like one case going into one die per run of the handle hand hand priming all my rounds, if anything's goofy, it feels wrong, and you have to be incredibly intoxicated or incredibly unattentive to not notice something feels wrong. You know, I will say that I started out on a single stage press, and I do recommend people if they're just starting out reloading starting in a single stage press. But if you have limited hobby time, every hour you spend on that single stage press could be five times more effective on a progressive press. That's true, but I would. Spend out how many stations you have. I would still recommend if a person is in that boat where it's like, I know I want to progressive press cool beans, I still recommend a person go get a single stage. Oh yeah, absolutely. Even if you buy the progressive press, you set it up, you intend to do your loading on that, I still recommend everybody go out. You don't have to get a really expensive, nice single stage. You don't have to get a rock trucker that you could pass down to your grandkids. You can go get a cheap Lee press or the Lineman sea frame presses that aren't like the fully enclosed O frames. Yeah, you can go get the cheapest single stage out there, and you can learn on it nice and slow, one thing happening at a time, get the fundamentals down on that, and then relegate it to being like your bulk decap or your utility press. I use my rock trucker exclusively for load development at this point, because I'm going to make between ten and thirty rounds in that new load. I'm not gonna make a lot because if I have to pull down all of them to fucking fix the powder charge, I don't want to have to pull down five hundred rounds. Not just that, but I mean we've talked about the difference in time to set up a progressive press for a single stage, it's significant. And for doing load development where you're gonna make like four or five of something and then make a change, single stage will just make more sense. They do, they really do? You know one thing I really would like to do on my rock trucker. It has a bushing to go to the larger dies for like fifty BMG and stuff like that. I would like to make an adapter to go from the quick change system that Hornby Press has behind me and add that into my rock trucker, even if I have to tear it down, throw it in a mill and bore it out larger. I think I am going to make that happen somehow. So I wouldn't swear to it. But are you sure that those those lock and load dies will not thread into the Rockchucker already? I'm not because I'm not. I haven't checked. I this is a thing that I that came into my head just about a week ago, and I haven't really looked so yet. You know that the Rockchucker like has a bushing in the top it already, I want to say. I talked to somebody who had said that if you unscrew that big black bushing out of the top of that green press, the horny lock and load bushings will screw straight in same thread pitch and every well, hopefully. I I haven't tried it myself. I don't have any hornity stuff to play with, but it's definitely worth looking anyway before we move on from this. So my I'm gonna find this out right now. My version of this in mixing similar brass was because recently I was footzing around on my reloading bench and late in the evening I was trying to like get organized and everything, and I took one like coffee cann of brass and threw it into another coffee can of brass to mix the two together. It was all brass of a size. I was kind of accumulating it so that I get enough to care for a wash, and I was like brass brass. They both looked like. Threw them in together, and it wasn't until I did that that I noticed the label on one of the kids said thirty eight sp and the other one said three five seven mag oh, so I have oopsis oopsies. Now this was easy to fix because three seven and thirty eight special are the same case except for the height. So all I had to do is literally just pull the cases out and stand them up on their butts, facing straight up on my bench, and at a glance you could pick out the thirty especially from through sevens. Like it was. It was easy to see it. And the same trick would probably apply to nine mili and thirty nine mili and three eighty acp that you just put all those put them all, you know, so they're all facing upwards and you'll spot the shorties fast. So Phil, good news. You are absolutely correct. I won't take credit for it. I'm passing already, lock and load, die bushing. The outer portion that has the I'm gonna call it the female of those tea slots that you drop in in turn is one in a what is it? One in a one a quarter one eighth one in a quarter twelve thread, which is the exact same size as the larger die Threadbush. That's that's what I have heard at one point. But I hate to say. We're in business, I can do that. I hate I'll make that'll make load development easier. Yeah. I hate to say, like, oh, yeah, this is double the way it is if I don't know for sure, but I had heard that. I just pulled up our CBS's website on the rock Trucker, as well as Hornety's website on those replacement die bushings, because they are aware item. Eventually apparently, Oh, Raggle just I don't know if you'll be able to see they're not. Raggle just sent me this. Oh that's a solid op. That's yeah. That that that's a broken de capping pin. I mean that that's a butchered boogered up something or the other. M oh, let's see here. But yeah, mixing and matching similar brass, I mean that's it's a venial sin. It's annoying, it can be easily fixed, and it you should definitely locate that problem before it gets into your chamber. Optimally, one thing that I would recommend you learning is so your shell plate for whatever size cartridge is going to fit multiple calibers, yes, know what those calibers are for any given shell plate, and managed a nine milimeter three eighty will fit in there, but it won't feel run. Imagine my surprise when I first started reloading three to three o eight Winchester and realize that forty five ACPs the same the same shell plate. It is it is thirty odd six three oh eight forty five acp, same shell plate. Before we move on, we do have a pole. I like these poles. They're fine. Here's a poll for y'all. What is your greatest reloading sin complete with cheeky innuendos. Yeah, y'all understand it. It's it's a contractual thing. So there's not one for not enough lube, two for too much bang, three for putting things where they don't go, and four for reloading forty cow or three eighty acp because if you're doing that, I wish you would stop. Look, if it's for a Walter, I will allow three eighty acp. If you are not James, if you are not Bond, James Bond secret Agent double O seven, then it's still not allowed it. Everyone needs a suit gun, in my opinion, and that's a great suit gun. It conceals very well. It's classy. You whip it out of a party, people aren't gonna get as mad. The movie's proven, all right. Me and Nick have voted. If y'all would like to vote, you could put a one, two, three, or four in the comments section of whatever platform you had to watch. And I'll leave this up for a little bit before I drop it because it's impinging on my face and it's just a little bit frustrating. But I'll impinge it upon my face. We can. I can scoot it over there. Great success, great success. I'm pinched upon my head, all right. I like it. So I feel like this is going to be a good general This causes lots of other problems changing your procedure for no good freaking reason. Nick, Have you ever violated your normal sop for reloading for some crazy ass reason, just like I always do it this way, But this one time, I'm going to mix and match things just for no reason, and that causes a problem. So I have found what tends to happen is if I set up to do a batch of precision rifle rounds, a family member will show up at my house in the middle. Of me doing that. An't matter when I do it, somebody's going to show up and knock on my door for reasons. Typically, my procedure for that is I will put the powder, take the powder out of the powder thrower, dump it back in the kit, in the jug it comes from, seal that, and then walk away because at the very least I know what powder it is. For sure, I know what powder it is, then, because it's in the right jug. Not having problems. One time I did not, And so I came back downstairs a few hours later after they left, and there were two jugs of powder sitting on my bench, and there was powder. In the powder measure. Oh and some flake powders look remarkably similar. Huh. So the powder and the powder measure got dumped into a solo cup. That solo cup got dumped out into the garden. I don't know what it was. It was a fair amount of powder, felt very wasteful, but I couldn't tell the difference. Not worth playing with. So my my version of this sin raggle. Oddly enough, I was able to vote, and Nick was able to vote. It's just not taking your vote, and I'm not sure why, hm hmm, but it. Is conspiracy. Your your FBI handler decided that you've had enough fun for the night. Apparently. I wonder if I can vote number one for raggle. I tried that, huh oh because interesting. Yeah, anyway, it's big sad. We'll figure this out eventually. So my version of this big screw up was traditionally I do I do all of my powder charging, like immediately before the bullet goes on top of the case, before it goes into the press. This one time, I decided to do something different for no damn good reason. Uh. Several friends of mine do this thing where they put all their cases into a loading block and they into every one and then they they look at it afterwards, maybe take a picture for Instagram to make sure they're all charged, and then and miss any And I decided to try this one time. And guess when Phil made his one and only squib load in his entire history of reloading, missed one in the trailer. The one time I decided to charge every single one of them and then check with a goddamn flashlight to make sure that they were all charged. And still screw that up. Wow. And ever since then, we don't do that anymore. We put the case underneath the powder throat, we go click click, We put the bullet on top, it goes in the case, it gets smashed together. We are not deviated from that procedure. It works well, it does cost problems. We're not doing this whole cute Instagram look cute reloading block thing. We're not doing it anymore. I mean, I'll use reloading blocks, but I ain't trying to charge fifty cases. And then. So I was taught to do it the opposite way you do it by an old time reloader. And the way he taught me was when you prime the case, the case goes primer side up in the reloading block. When you then take it out charge, the case goes open side up. Then every case that is right side up will be charged because it's upside down when it's just primed right side up when it's charged. Now, however, you're gonna. Do it, stick with your system, because it doesn't really matter which way you do that. It only matters if the chain and causes a problem, which incidentally was also the thing we talked about last show, where I was like, yeah, that one time I decided that I didn't need to let my cases air drive for twenty four hours. Four hours was going to be plenty. Yeah, that was a nerve made a change from what was obviously working just fine for no reason. Earth then laziness and. Impatience and you know it bit me. Okay, So I would just say that once you once you get into a groove, once you establish a procedure, if you're going to change it, change it for a reason, like change it because something works better, or change it because I did this one time. It's not sufficient, But know the reason you're changing it, and make that change intentionally. Like if I had always reloaded the way Nick's describing, I'm sure it would have been fine. But for some it's the habit you built. But for some reason, trying to change that habit just on the spur of the moment that bit me. And I don't know how I The only thing I can figure is is that I just somehow missed a case and then somehow missed it again when I was checking all of them, and drop. There's most interesting thing that can happen when the human eye is looking at a pattern film where it's expecting to see brass case powder, brass case powder, brass case powder, brass case powder. And if you get into that habit and you're not intentionally looking, your brain will just go It's a brass case. It must it'll fill in the blank right. This, incidentally, is the reason why in my in my day job, in my career, I'm notorious for using conditional formatting in Excel spreadsheets. Changes what changes the background. You can do all sorts of stuff with it, like change background color, change the font, change all sorts of stuff. But the point is is that I have very lengthy, multi tiered, like whole list of conditional formatting. That way, if any of these conditions are met, it lights up the sell and red. So you've got it. You've got a white sheet like I don't do a lot of color with one red one. And here's the thing is, I don't do a lot of color for I don't. I don't. I don't make my Excel sheets pretty. I don't give a shit. I make them very plain, very functional. It's lots of lots of white fields. And you know, maybe I might bump up the the weight of the gridlines just to make it a little more reasonable, but I make it easier to read for certain things. But people in my organization are to know I am notorious for using that conditional formatting to blast to sell red. Because if you not only if you're just scrolling through. But if you have if you have some if you're on some of my larger spreadsheets that have like nine hundred, one thousand rows of data and twenty or twenty five or thirty columns of data, then I like, But then I like to use the filters and filter on color and if I get if if that if that filter on color returns one single red, I know I got a problem. I know where it is. I know we need to go figure out what the problem is. But that's I mean, there are tools in the reloading world that can help you avoid this mm hm. But my tool is like just stay, stay in that workflow, grab the case, charge bullet, to the to the press, and as long as I have that going, the other thing I do is it's like this isn't so much a don't change your procedure, but this is like a meeting. Is if my wife or daughter walk out there to talk to me about something while I'm doing it, I will intentionally stop where I'm at. Like, if if all I need to do is press the bullet, I'll press the bullet and then I'll stop. But if I get to a stopping point and I stop what I'm doing. I do not whether it's a personality thing or whatnot. This and this don't work well at the same time. So if I have to have a conversation with somebody, I stop what I'm doing. With anything that is precision driven or safety driven, that's probably a wise way to go for solving the issue of too much or too little powder or misspowder charge in. A progressive press. Phil if you heard of a powder cope die, I did not know that that was the thing that I've heard them called powder cops, but cop cope, however, you want to pres same difference essentially what it is. There's a little washer over ring or colored stripe on a little probe inside the die, and when you run the press to the up position, that colored line should be at a specific point at the top of this die. I'm going to be getting one or building one for this reloading press here because I have been very fortunate with this powder thrower. It throws very consistently. But any mechanical system can be can be susceptible to failure or creep over time because it's just just a threaded locknut. That's all it is that keeps that powder measures set to the specific measurement, and if you're doing many, many cycles in an hour, eventually it is gonna creep. And I think that'd be a wise investment. They're like forty bucks. I mean it, really, it seems wise to prevent what it is a event because. You can't You cannot reliably in this press that I have see the powder that has been thrown, but you can tell there's powder in there, but you can't reliably gauge the levels like you can with a single state, where you just you're looking at each case. The bigger problem isn't so much that individual press. It's a numbers game. It's like discussion you and I have all the time about human error. If your error rate is like one hundredth of a percent, yeah, if you load ten thousand rounds, you're gonna screw one up. It's a numbers game. It's it is purely It's like the opposite of accuracy by volume. It is inevitable failure by virtue of volume. So that's what I always tell everybody. I'm like, if there's something you can do in your process, a piece of equipment, a procedure or whatever that helps decrease the reasonable helps decrease the error rate, that's good. Just accept the fact that. The AIRR rate will never be zero and you are going to screw one up one day. But like the NASA analogy, you want the script to happen on the bench, not in the chamber. So anything you can do to increase your quality control is a really good idea. Raggle, what's my powder dispense method? I have a just our CBS. What do they call their their powder throw the uniflow I think it is, yeah, but they have. A brand name for it. I want to say it's uniflow, Yeah, they do. So the one tip I will give about hang on a second individually wage one or volumetric powder throwers. So here here's the thing. When I first started reloading and still to a degree like with my three away with with rounds that I know are capable of a very high degree of accuracy, I will still go that extra mile of like throw a charge that is intentionally half to three quarters of a grain two light, and then I'll get the powder trickler out and trickle up to you know, trickle up to what I need to be at for for a lot of my rounds. I will not go that extra that extra step of like the powder trickler. What I will do a lot of times is I will set the volume metric to throw what I want to throw. I will throw ten. I will throw ten charges into a pan. Take your weight, divide by ten. If I'm averaging exactly where I want to be, I roll them. And then what I do is is that every five to ten cases, I will I'll take a case, drop it on my on my powder scale, I'll drop it on a scale, I'll tear it, I'll row charge, put it back in the scale, and just check like one every five, one every ten. But the other thing I did a long time ago was two things that made my particular power throw much much more accurate or much more consistent. First of all, is that at least with our CBS, and I'm sure the other manufacturers are the same. But I'm the Green Kool eight guy. They have two different drums that you can get further power throw. They have the rifle drum and the pistol drum. The pistol drum is more than freaking plenty to load. Five five, six, Yes, I would agree with But here's the thing, and I've I've come around to this way of thinking because when the last time I reloaded three to eight, I swapped out to the bigger drum, I did all that nonsense. But I think what I'm gonna do this time is I'm just gonna take the drum, the pistol drum, the smaller diameter drum, and I'm gonna have the charge weight throw it twice because what I discovered, what I discovered, especially because I'm trickling those up to up to where I need to be anyway. Yeah, especially because you're trickling. And I would say that's not it. But the other issue, the other thing of it is, and the reason why I like that pissed that pistol drum I keep using air quotes for the audio listeners is small volume drum. Yes, because it's a because it's a smaller diameter, But the height of that chamber is the same. I find that because the diameter of the chamber is smaller, especially with very small amounts of powder like four and a half grains from a nine mil or five and a half grains from a forty five acp, it is much much, much more consistent than the larger diameter drum. And because of that, if I have the choice between throwing that throwing two charges that each added together equal that larger charge I need, or switching out to the bigger die or the bigger drum, I just use a smaller drum throw two charges. So I have. Two different style of powder measures. Both are volume metric. One is the type that you have, which is a cylindrical piston that is driven forward or backwards by a screen. I call it a drum because that's it is. It's drum shape that they put the The mind has a quick. Change thing for it. And then I have one of the old leaf style volumetric powder throwers, where you've got a large, a medium, and a small different almost like a spacer that you move back and forth. I have found that on the newer style, which is on my hornity press, the newer style cylindrical s whatever you want volumetric powder thrower. Those I have found crunch less powder and bust less large grain powder than the old style leaf spring type. I have not noticed a difference in consistency, but I do know that if you bust up those powder grains you get slight different burn rates and I've noticed that with this powder measure, I don't seem to have as much inconsistency in my in my velocity on my precision rifle rounds as I did with that old style powder thrower. And I am using the same IMR forty sixty four powder with forty six, the same lot of primers, and forty. Sixty four tends to be fairly susceptible to getting crunched like that because it's it's a stick powder. Yeah, it's fairly long, thin grain stick powders. But the air thing, the air thing, and this is something I encourage people to think about. The air thing that I found made my powder throw a lot more consistent because I started noticing that when I had the hopper filled to the brim, and when I had the hopper down about an inch of powder showing, the chargeway was wildly different because you had more because the powder throw was full, you had more pressure on the top push down into that. Do you not have an equalizer baffle in that? That's what I was going to say, adding that silly, silly looking little baffle. It looks like a bent potato chip upside down with two holes in it, yep, I didn't put angle side up. Yeah, I didn't think there was much to them. I am a die of the wool convert I think it ought to come with the freaking powder throws because it does well. Mine didn't, yours did, did not. Hi, everyone i've even I've ever bought, even like my fifty year old lineman, all had those. Well, I'm going to say that if you don't have one, go get one, and if you do have one, make sure you use it. And the other thing is like just in with with that. I find that as long as I refill the powder throw, when the powder gets when the powder gets down to like the very top of that baffle, that's when I refill it. And as long as you keep the powder between full and the top of that baffle, I mean I am within a tenth of grade high er low where I'm aiming. I would say that I have found and this might just be the powders I'm using, I need to keep about yay much powder above the top of that baffle. For whatever reason. It could be the humidity, could be the static electricity caused the powder or not want to flow. But if I get down below about an inch and a half two inches above the top of that baffle. I get a little. My charges seem to be light, not a lot, a couple tenths of a grain, not nearly enough to make a terrible difference, but it's a difference. Yeah, all right, so charging forward, charging pun intended wrap in the primer pocket. Yes, you and I have talked about this before. Pretty easy remedy, if I'm being honest. Usually you can just like take the case and tap it on the tapping reloading press a couple of times and that'll shock loose whatever's in their worst case scenario. You just get a universal decapping pin or a straight pin or something and just punch it out. But so I went ahead and I bought one of the Dylan versions of that that decapper that you have. Let's bring a loaded decapper. Oh my god, is that nice for decapping cases. Love it. I used to wet tumble before decapping just because I decapped in my resizing Duy, I'm now going to run all my. Cases through my press with my case. Feeder to decap all of them, just using it like a single stage, but rapid firing cases into it with the case feeder. Because I can deprime. About five hundred cases an hour with this now, which is fantastic. That's nice. Yeah, so I'm gonna do that then run them through my wet tumbler so I don't have crap in my primer pockets anymore. Yeah. But like I said, I just I try to order these in such a way that it was like from the from the from merely annoying all the way to moderately dangerous. Yeah. Next up, too much powder. Does everyone here have a bullet pollar of some kind yep? Okay, so I use kinetic pullars. I know a lot of people prefer the colid pullars. There are pros and cons to either. I will just say this much though. If you have a kinetic polar, you got the little plastic hammer that you put the bullet in, you whack it on something that pops the bullet out. I'm gonna encourage you now to go buy another one and put that one in the drawer someplace for when the. First one will break for no reason. Bruh. One it was. It was a gives the last one of the last times I was reloading before I put everything up for a while. I think it was chilly and maybe the plastic got cold, and it was several years old at that point. But like, I whacked that thing on the freaking concrete floor and I felt plastic shards on the side of my face. That the whole, the whole literally the whole head sheared off, the handle, the whole bottom just exploded. The piece that holds the case rim that was actually still intact, but just I mean, it exploded everywhere. So then I had the problem. They will do that eventually. Yeah, So then I had the problem of all these I had a couple of bullets left out of the batch that I was pulling. It was it was five five six actually, and. So there's a fair amount of neck tension there. Yeah. Well, you remember how we were talking about the load for WC A forty four that I developed. Well, the the load wound up being the starting charge. So I had a bunch I had to pull, and after pulling down most of them, I smashed my hammer and then I had a few left and rather than leave those rounds just lying there because my OCD kicked in, I did it. I pulled out the poor man's bullet puller, which is what you do when you don't mind just strowing the bullets. You get a leatherman and a bench fight well leathermen ice scripts you put a bullet in your press. I'm assuming this will work with anything, but it works really good in a single stage. Pull your die out the top, run the bullet all the way up, clamp your vice grips onto the bullet, and then just run the press the other direction. They'll just pop the case right off the bottom. So one thing that I found works really great for that, if you happen to have a drill press with a vice in it, you can just close up your three jaw drill shock and then just wheel the press up pulls a bullet right out of the case. Works great. Yeah, Ragel is saying, don't hit it on concrete. But here's the trick. You're right, the four by four is softer, so it won't shatter, but the four bys often the four by four also has give, and it's that shot that it's that sharp shock that helps pop the bullets loose. So you know what that means, Phil, you need a nanvil. I mean, I eat frankly. I used to whack it on the bench vice because it's got a big big steel pad on the side of it, just for hitting stuff. I guess, well, that's not what that's for. That's what it's going to be used for. That's not what that pab is for. It works. Oh god, it's not a hardened flight your machinist. Your machinist, I'm accoon ass I realized, But that's not what that part of your vice is. Fine, that's what I've been using it for for about forty three years now. Good lord, did did I just tickle utism a little bit? Well? You know, I have a very nice antique cast iron ivice right behind me that has one of those big nice cast iron plates. Are that's not what that's I have. A very cheap, shitty bench vice. Yeah, oh, trying not to turn into Yeah, Nick is not trying to turn it into a hand grenade, not yet. Uh so. The the only other alternative I will offer is that I actually ran into a person that had a pair of plyers and I forget what it was, it was some it was some bullet he had to pull down very very often, and. He actually took and. Took took the took the hook, the uh the plyers and drilled a hole that was like just slightly smaller than the bullet, so it was almost like he made his own one you know, fits one size collet polar basically that makes sense. Yeah, but I don't encourage you to ruin your bullets like that, especially if they're really nice match bullets. But for fifty five grain you know, hornity bulk jacketed bullets, I wasn't. They can probably go back in after you hit them with a file. Yeah, okay, Next, okay, this is where things start to get a little oof, no loo, big oof stuckcases. And just to remind your body, the pole is still running for anybody wants to join it. One is not enough lube, two is too much bang, three is putting things where they don't go. Four is reloading forty or three eighty. And if you don't like you, I don't know why you're here. So Phil, you want to learn some material. Science, lay it on me. Is this about Is this still about the the the anvil? No stuck cases. We're on the stuck cases in a chest freezer. Now, okay, all right, So. Carbide and steel they have rates at which they shrink. They are not the same. If you have a stuck case in a carbide and steal die. Do not do what I'm going to tell you right now, because that carbide could crack. If you have a rifle die that is non carbide, then you have a stuck rifle case in it. Chuck that bitch in your chest freezer and wait till tomorrow. The brass will shrink more than the steel and you will have an easier time getting that stuck case out. That makes sense. Do not do that with a carby die. Carbide does not shrink nearly as much as steel, and you will put a ton of extra pressure on that carbide. Insert not saying it will. But it could crack that carbide. That makes sense. So at this point I will offer I'm assuming everybody has seen the special thing that they make to remove a stuck case from a die, right, you mean a quarter twenty socket ed cap screw and a space out washer. Well, they actually sell such a thing specifically for that purpose, for way more money than what you're describing. Yeah, it's like seventy five dollars. I made one for like three dollars forty at Ace Hardware. Yeah, I removed a tap I had in my tool box. I removed a stuck case and it costs me exactly zero. So I'm not this is not the preferred method. Nick might develop a twitch from hearing this, but I'll tell y'all. So I ended up in this situation where because I changed my process for no damn good reason, I somehow managed to skip the lube before I put a five five six case into a five five six die. Got a stick every time. Yeah, I realized my folly as I was, you know, expecting a nice easy lube, and it just went and it just it. Bound up very quickly and very aggressively. Like when it stopped, it was like slamming into a brick wall. Brass don't like. To get pressed without louis, no, no, no, no, lots of things don't like to get pressed without loube that that's definitely a thing. So what wound up happening was in an effort to save my reloading afternoon, because this is like the first case of. The day, that's all about, right. Yeah, So what I did was I realized that the problem is I have this brass case and it's in this die, but there's really nothing like the dehapping rod and the stem that bell mouse and everything that's really not hung up on anything. It's just the case in there. So what I did was was with our CBS dies, and I'm assumed you could do this with most of the others. I unscrewed, I left the seating, I left the seating stem in. I undid the jam not on the top, and I took the bushing that positions the seating stem in the die, and I unscrewed that off the top of the stem, while leaving the stem in the case. Then I very strategically like tried to get this of this menagerie to where What I did was I took the shell plate and I turned it so that I was able to pull the shell plate forward off the ram while leaving the case in the in the in the press. And then I took a block of wood and put it on top of its seating stem and got a hammer and tap tap tap tap, and used the seating stem to drive. Well, but here's the think of it, because it probably it worked perfectly, and because it only worked though, because the decapping pin was all the way down in the flash hole. So what I was doing was I was taking the very bottom of that that expanderball that doesn't usually contact anything because the neck is so much harder, and use that to tap the shell out the bottom. It's not that it's not the preferred method. It's kind of redneck. It's not a great idea, but in a pinch, it can work. So those are typically so. The expansion dye is usually the expansion bulb on the end. That's usually a hard and steel component. The threaded rod above it is usually not. And where you can get in a little bit of trouble with that is you can bend or deform that threaded rod a bit. If you are a handy guy, like I know you are a phil do you not have a steel punch set laying around in your garage? I do, so why not just grab a steel punch that fits down the hole and use that? Didn't think about it, now you will. Tunnel vision is a thing. Nick, Oh, it absolutely is. I mean they also do make that, and you guys have all seen it. I made it on a lathe. It it's basically a little cup that fits over the end of the case. You put your screw down in there after you've drilled and tapped the bottom of your case, and you just wing that set that socket head caps go around till it pops the case right out. Either way it works. Smacking it out sometimes with the wooden doll. Works if it is just a steel dye. Chucking it in the freezer can sometimes free it up after a couple hours. But but the key is lubier goddamn cases, so it doesn't become a problem in the first place. Unless it's pistol brass in a car by die, then it doesn't matter. Yeah, I've literally never stuck a pit. I've never stuck a case and a car by die. I have had. I have had it happen once. I've had it happen one time. What happened was the rim on the nine millimeters case was so abused that the rim ripped off that that I could see. So it was a ripped off rim, not a stuck case, and I was able to just gently with a wooden doll pop that thing. Right out of. Yeah. So I was about saying it shouldn't have been bound in there too too badly because carbide is so slick. It wasn't. It was just that that case had been reloaded too many times. I don't even know how many times. It probably was right on the edge of the point where it would start splitting the case wall or getting a rim case had separation. It was a very abused pistol case. Remind me about this conversation in one more one more banner, because I don't want to get a meta order now partially processed, but lost in the sauce. Has everyone here ever done something really dumb, like you leave stuff out on the bench? Are than powder? We've already covered that, But you leave stuff out on the bench, and you think to yourself, I will remember what was going on here when I come back to it later or tomorrow or whatever. And then by the time later comes, it's like three weeks and two home improvement projects, and you know, super flu meteor strikes, something happened, and you've totally freaking forgotten what the hell is on your bench, where it came from, what step you're on, or anything else. So as you guys can see, there is a cardboard box on the stool over my shoulder full of nine millimeters pistol brass halfway through being processed. What you can't see is the pink index hard that is sitting on the top of that case. That says exactly what stage of the process that that is in for exactly this reason. Yeah, I have three different boxes of nine millimeters pistol brass scattered and a plastic tray full of stuff drying scattered around my basement right now, all exceptionally far away from each other, all labeled at exactly what step in the process they're in for this reason. Yeah, I did something kind of Still, I've done this some version of this silly shit on multiple occasions, where like I was looking at this coffee can of brass and obviously it it wasn't It didn't have spent primer in it, so we weren't at step one, and it didn't have a live primer in it, so we weren't at step like the the almost you know, we weren't ready to load. We were worth somewhere. There's somewhere in between, and I know that the steps are like decappid and then you know, like wet wash it and then bell mouthed and then prime it. But we're between, We're somewhere in the middle. This is less of an issue with my pistol cartridges, and it's even less of an issue with actually no, it's more of an issue with my rifle cartridges, it would be more of an issue this extra stuff because yeah, well I also especially with five five six, because I have the extra steps of like I'm running every single case through the primer pocket swedge, even though once you swedge it once you shouldn't have to do it again. And I get that, but I have so much range brass coming in and out of like my process. I just decided years ago I was gonna swache every single pocket, so I know they're all swage, I know it's all done. I trim every last one of them. Like that's just kind of my guarantee that I take all this range brass and when it goes through the intake, it comes out the airside consistent. And the only way to have that level consistency that I was comfortable with was it all goes through the same process no matter what. The only thing I'm not really picky about is my revolver brass, even though I do trim that. But it's because once I intake that brass and I've trimmed it all to length, it's revolver brass. It's gonna come out of the cylinder and go right back into the range bag and come home like I don't. It's it's not like you're picking up Lucy's off the ground and who knows what got mixed in with that, Like I ended up with some fucking five to seven brass the other day for no reason. Remind me later and I'll send you an article about reloading that stuff. Not that I encourage you to do it, but it's interesting. It's an interesting science experiment. I don't have a five to seven nick probably never. If you owned a five seven, I would advise you against reloading. This is purely just for the interesting Ali bruh. Remind me as soon as we wrap, I'll send you the article. Yeah, it's I would love to read that. I will have time to make. It's interesting side note and science experiment. But after having read through it, I would never try it myself. Like the juice just just does not seem worth the squeeze to me. Maybe I'll just scrap that. I have the so looking for somebody that does reword it. Raggle, I mean, I trimmy is not my favorite thing to do, but it is an evil It isn't is an evil necessity? Yeah, it exists for a reason. Yeah, all right, I got two more things. No crimp, no neck tension, round will not chamber plunk tests. So there's a couple of things going on here. Over the course of my reloading career, I have had an instance where I had a whole batch of forty five ACP that would not chamber in my nineteen eleven to say, it's frickin life. Come to find out later I had not. I had not crimped those rounds. Oh, you just kind of straightened the case out. Yeah, So because I hadn't crimped those rounds. Now, fortunately you're talking about a straight wall case. So there's bookoo neck tension even without it being crimped. But because it wasn't crimped, it just did not want a fully set in that tight ass chamber. It would I mean it, dude, it would stop a sixty to then in shy but bigger than hell. I kept having issues with this one badge of ammo. I made several hundred rounds where if you plunk tested a bunch of those rounds, I mean like every third or fourth round would stand proud of the chamber. So what I did was I finally sucked it up. One day I lit a cigar. I just committed myself to the fact that I was going to go through this aggravating bullshit to find all this this suspect AMMO, and I took my I took the barrel out of my nineteen eleven, put it in my pad advice just. To stand it up, and used it like a chamber gage. And I dropped every single bullet into the into there, and I pulled out every single one that wouldn't just drop in to where the case head was like flush with the barrel hood, and then every one of those I went right back to my forty five ACP seating dive. I took the seating. Stem out and I just put the first one in, ran it down until I felt it engaged, the taper cramped, put it down on a half turn, and just taper cramped every last one of them. It's usually all it takes. It's quarter to a half. Yeah, that's that's all it took to fix. But that is one of the things that a failure to crimp your rounds will do is it can cause in a straight wall case, it can cause that round to fail to chamber. I find that in nine mili it doesn't seem to give a shit, but it's because it's a taper case. If it seats, you can, Yeah, you can get assuming you take the bell mouth out. You don't really have to crimp much on the nine mil in my opinion from my testing, I've never had a problem with neck tension on nine mil. I have had a problem with neck tension on my on my thirty odd six, So I. Have had a problem with neck tension on my nine mil. Really, yes, I had a small badge of nine milimeter that I thankfully I caught and cold and fixed that. The neck tension was so woefully inconsistent that some of these bullets you could set some of these cartridges, you could set the bullet back with your thumb. I still have no freaking clue how I pulled how I pulled it off. I don't. I mean, I wonder I'd be curious to throw on my chrometer on those bullets and see if there were a couple of thoul under speck. I don't know, but I know that every last one of them I did exactly that, took the seating stem out, ran them back through the taper crimp, fixed them just fine. I've never I've never previously this had an issue where like neck tension was that out of whack on a nine mil round that you could set the bullet back that easily, but it scared the crap out of me. So I pulled all those bullets and fixed them. Fortunately, that was that happened right as I bought my CZ scorpions. I was like tooling up to load a bunch of nine millimeters because I've got, like, you know, all of a sudden, I got ten thirty round magazines to fill. So thankfully, it was really easy to go back through all those magazines and be like, y'all, y'all are about to get a little bit extra attention. We got to catch this before you get too much further prowtext and saying don't forget about separation baskets for range brass. Yes, and actually I've got right here. If I can get this to share the damn tab. It will not. So a company called shell Sorder. Ah, the browser doesn't want me to share the screen. A company called shell Sorder, Shellsorder dot com, you can find them. Stewart turned me onto this for sort of range brass. There's three baskets and then a plate to separate out three eight ACP stuff. Fantastic, save yourself a shitload of time and drinking three beers on the couch where you stare at head case stamps so great idea. I should have bought them when he sent me the casings instead, I handsorted it it all. I won't be doing that again. I got addressed Raggles question. He was him and Stewart were talking about I crimp forty and Stuart said taper cramp and Ragle said, is a milt into the seating die? Now Stuart answered this, but I thought it merited a little bit of a discussion. I think so, I'm Stuart says, many are some not. I'm not honestly familiar with any die that does taper cramp that doesn't have the taper cramp built into the die itself. Although Stuart's been around since Like Stuart Stuart was sweeping the shop at John Browning's shop, so like he probably knows something. There are diye sets you can buy that do not have that. Yeah, in the same die. They will have a separate die and it is labeled crimp die. Yeah, like Lee's factory crimp dies. Correct. But I usually you have to opt for that. If you go and you buy an RCBS die set for forty five ACP, or a LEE set or alignment set or a redding set, just about all of those will come with a taper crimp in that die in the seating die. I've not seen one that didn't, that was not explicitly marked, and an extra die in the set and considerably more money. Yeah. Now, I will say that like for the only factory crimped ee I purchased was for three seven and not any well, And the reason I bought it for that one cartridge was because, like revolver cartridges are roll crimped, not taper crimped, and a roll crimp traditionally is a fair bit more exuberant than what you're trying to get with the taper crimp, especially with a Magnum cartridge, So instead of doing this, you're doing this. So because of that, I opt for that factory crimped die. But I had that lee factory crimpt die mixed in with an RCBS set, So all I did was I just backed the seat back the die body up like one turn, and then put the seating stem in the same amount. That way, your taper crimp isn't engaging on the top of the case. So raggle to answer your question, like, unless you're in that special that's special little edge case where your your your taper crimp dye is the taper crimp sets not built into the seating die. You control that by how far down into the press the dye is screwed that it's a it's a ring inside of the die, and when it contacts the top of your case, it just very gently like takes the bell mouth out. And then once you get that set, then your seating dye goes up and down to adjust to the seat and depth of the bullet. M Yeah, if you have if you have that die set too tall, then you you miss that. You're just you're just not You're just not taper crimping at that point. Although I will say which. Is okay, I mean certain rounds you want that, like my my precision rifle rounds for my thirty six, I have a factory crimped die for because that's what shot the best. Now, I will say this much, and someone out there is going to get irrationally annoyed at this. I actual league take for five, five six, and I really only do this with five five six, but I intentionally back my die out further than it needs to be so that I don't I don't taper cramp at all. I screwed the seating depth I screw. I screwed the seating stem down until I get my bullet to the right height. I load every one of my rounds in that loading session, which usually I got three loading blocks or fifty rounds each, I usally load one hundred and fifty rounds in a way. I seat every one of the bullets, and then I back the seating die out, screw the die body in, and then in a second step, I taper cramp every last one of them. Okay, it works just fine, foud. What I found was that I was getting less consistent seating depth when I was trying to taper, cramp and seat in the same step. I had not had that problem in my rock, chuck or press. But I do not reload five five six. Yeah, so it could be something with your die set for five could be the. Case the head stamps that I suspect that the bigger because this and the only place I really observe this to this degree is five five six, and I suspect it's just down to the fact that I'm mixing so many different kinds of range brass. So a very probably a very small dimensional difference in the thickness of the neck will cause that will cause that neck tension to tighten up faster. Yeah, I mean we're talking. About and then your bullet won't seat the same. Yeah, You're probably still within You're probably still within safe phenomenal, I would bet, but you're probably just not where you personally want to be. Yeah, So that is that is a way that you can you can use. You could reconfigure the dye to do the seating and the crimping in two different steps, if you don't want to go spend the extra money on factory crimp die. Personally, a factory crimp die does a better job in my opinion than the the crimp ring built into most of your dies, and I prefer it for revolve rounds because with a round, I'm gonna get really aggressive with that roll crep, especially for magnums. But if you want, if you want an intermediate step between the way the dive is built to be used, where you you seat and cramp in the same step and go into a factory cryp die like that is an intermediate you can just all. All it means to me, though, is is that I don't I don't lock down the lock with the I don't lock down the lock rings on any on My seating dies. They're always set up. I set up that locker, that that that seating die every single time. So sure it takes an extra minute or two. But that's also why it doesn't bother me to have to set them up, because I'm doing it every single reloading session. Anyway, maybe I should. Do some five five six reloading just to play around with it and see if I get a similar result in my rock chucker with my five five six. Die set and you can't interred and to see what you get and ragle. I have powder primers and I've got everything to do it. I just don't bother because I have I can't really go shoot ars anymore, and I've got I think last time I checked, like three hundred and eighty pounds of. Five to five six. You need that Mossburg Patriot in five A. I know I need. I need something in five five six that I can shoot. What about the fight light lower can't? I hate your state so much. Can't because so it's if the upper has a flash hider or a barrel shroud. I don't know, man, We're not We're not quite sure. The gun stores aren't quite sure. There was a gun store around me locally that was selling many fourteen ranches, but those many fourteen ranches had a flash hider on them, and another many fourteen ranch had a threaded barrel, but it was a compensator on it, and that was fine, but the flash hider wasn't. Nobody fucking knows, dude, I just this this state, dude, Oh hear you. I'm honestly, I'm halfway considering buying a five to five six bolt gun in a Remington seven hundred chassis so that I can use it as a five five six trainer for my thirty hot six, which I'm considering rebarreling as a six y five six because I hate money. That'd be interesting. Oh oh it would ragless. What kind of CRYMP does the factory crypt I do? It depends, So it's not the fact, it's not it's not that the factory crympt eye uses a roll crimp or a taper cramp. In fact, that different cartridges use a roll crip or taper crimp, and whichever whichever one the cartridge you bought that factory cryptive for uses the factory crympt. I will apply correct I think of only guy, Okay, there's just one one, last one, last one, mix and match data. Bad, don't do Yeah, Nick, have you ever committed this sin? I have not committed this sin, but I have watched somebody do it. I have definitely exceeded recommended safe specs with some of my rifle loades, but you did so intentionally. I have. I have definitely applied bullets very much not intended for three hundred Win mag that are the same diameter as three hundred Wind mag because they're. Thirty caliber bullets. They're m two ap polls. They're not meant to be loaded in a three hundred wind mag because they're one fifty five or one fifty eight grand I can't remember which off top of my head. So they're very light. So you have to use an incorrect powder. But if you're doing that, if you're going to do that, you need to be extremely cautious and ideally learned from other people who didn't blow up their gun and then start at the bottom of the load data and use velocities to try and figure out when you're getting up to pressure curves that are dangerous. So I'm going to tell this story, and I have my father's permission to tell this story. He gave me permission years ago. I whip it out every now and then as a caution the ultimate cautionary note. This is how my dad unintentionally upgraded from Smith Weston shield to a Gen two shield. So bear in mind that, like my personal thing is is that as evidence by when we did the recipe book show Nick, you probably notice I don't have a ton of pet loads. No, like usually one maybe two, one, one or. Two per cartridge. I load lots of them. I have lots of those bullets on the shelf. That's just my thing. I find. I find a load I like, I stick with it, and I don't like the color outside the lines much. My father, on the other hand, he's a tinkerer. He's he's retired. That's where you get dangerous. He's retired now he has lots of free time. He's a range officer at our local gun range. All of his gun buddies are out there, and that's what these old farts do is just tinker because it's what you do in your retirement. And he I, he accidentally conflated nine hill data for two different grain weight bullets. So if I recall correctly, he took the he took a heavier bullet. I want to say now, I don't want to misquote. It was either a one twenty four grain and he used one to fifteen data or it was a one forty gun. Yeah, it might have been. I think it might have been one twenty four to one fifteen because he tends to like the one is. A lighter grain weight bullets powder charge it will create too much pressure with the heavier bullet. But also if you seat that heavier bullet to the same ol as the lighter bullet, not only have you wildly exceeded the grain weight of the bullet that's supposed to be in that case and you have way too much powder, but it's in way too small of a combustion chamber because the bullet's way deeper than it's supposed to be, because the bullet's a lot taller because it's a heavier bullet. And that's kind of the way bullets work, is that a bullet is a certain diameter kind of governed by what cartridge is. So it's heavier. The bullet itself has to be longer. It's only so many, only so many ways you can make a bullet heavier when the diameter has to stayed the same. Yeah. So this is why heavier bullets and rifles perform better at longer ranges, because you have a better ballistic coefficient due to more mass behind the bullet. It's really so so what my father unintentionally did was he swapped in a one twenty four grand bullet for one fifteen grain data see to that bastard, to the shorter ol and through the heavier powder. Now I don't think he was throwing. A max charge. Oh probably not. You wouldn't have to. But it didn't matter because it was still like he had this data and this bullet, put the two together, and he got about three of them out of his barrel before he heard a much louder bang than he was supposed to. The magazine shot out the bottom of the gun. He had powder burns on his right hand, threw the gun down on the bench, did lots of use, lots of mechanic vocabulary. If you've ever heard that, and the gun was locked up solid. So this is this is where we had the conversation about like use the pen as a death gates to see if we had a live round chamber or not. Thankfully we didn't. And then when we got the thing home, we chucked it up and we chucked the slide up in a pad advice and literally took a hammer and beat the freaking gun apart to get just get this thing apart. Yeah, that's a problem. Yeah, the frame swollen, the guns destroyed. There was molten brass just showered all throughout the inside of it. I have to say, though. Well engineered gun, it blew out exactly where it was supposed to down the maguell instead of shredding his hand yep. The fantastic There was literally a hole in the case web pointed straight down into the magazine, right right where the right where the chamber doesn't support the round. That's exactly where you wanted to do. So Smith and Wesson built that gun very robustly. It failed exactly in the safest way human possible. My dad wasn't injured ear than his pride, but he immediately tore down two hundred and fifty rounds of ammunition after that mm hm, and the gun was a right off. Oh yeah, but that is like that that. Sent it to Smith and Wesson for failure analysis. Tell him what you did. Their engineers would be interested to see it, I'm sure. Yeah. Well that's that's why in the uh, in the poll that I'm going to show the results for, I'm gonna go ahead and stop it. It was split evenly. One vote for not enough Lou, one vote for putting things where they don't go, and one vote for reloading forty and three eighty, which. I'm pretty sure was Stewart it was, but I think he has all of the calibers. Yeah, but the one thing which lot but the one vote that didn't get counted was raggles, and that was two for not enough loop, which would have carried the day. But that's why I put putting things where they don't go in here, because it wasn't just mixing up two different cases. It was also if you mix a match of data, if you lose sight of what you're doing, if you if you color outside the lines, or if God forbid, you do that thing where you're like, well, I mean, I've got this powder, and it's not exactly the right powder, but it's pretty close. It'll be fine. Like the reloading recipes, the reloading recipes are all developed by a company who has lawyers on staff and all those engineers and all, yeah, they have engineers. But my point is this is that all those lawyers signed off on the idea that if we put this book out into the public, we're not going to get the crapsuit out of us. So understand, someone did a lot of work to make sure that the lawyers. Gave two thumbs up on this. And if you start thinking you're smarter than all of those engineers and you're more risk averse than all those lawyers, you're gonna be wrong. Every time. You're going to be wrong. Yes, so just take it as a cautionary note. My dad's okay, he went right back to reloading bench. He has not committed that sin ever since I took it as a great cautionary note. I mean, I've I've never had a QC failure like that, but it made me redouble my efforts not to. But my dad, my dad has always encouraged me to share that story with everybody because he doesn't want someone else to hurt themselves if that story would save them the pain. You know, this is not something that happened to me. This is something I saw happened at a range on a three gun match day. Phil. Do you remember when three hundred blackout got got real quick? Do I know where this is going? You know exactly where this is going. Three hundred blackout mag got loaded into a five to five six chamber day. I take it the results were not not not desired. The upper detonated ouch. So, for those of you that don't know what the calibers mean, five five six is a twenty two caliber round. Three hundred blackout is a thirty caliber round. That's there's one hundred thousands different. Most of that bullet, it's about nominal. Four point three away. But I get that the year you're like eighty thousands different. Most of that thirty caliber bullet ended up in the barrel. It did. There was very little of it left in the chamber. All of the case, the bolt, the fire control group, the upper, and I believe the lower was damaged as well. This is one reason why I never personally gotten into three hundred blackout, because number one, I can't have suppressors here, So there's really no good reason for me to shoot a three blackout. And number two, I saw it as. A potential source of problems for my non gun associates, Like we've all got buddies that come out with you once a year to the range, right, And if I've got an ar mag here, and I've got an ar mag there, and one's got three hundred blackout and one's got five to five six, and I've got a not gun friend on the range, Gosh, that seems like an easy source of error, even if you tape the mags, no matter what you do, it just it was something that I didn't. Personally find a benefit to Raggle. I know, I need to move really really do. Wraggle's all saying he's seen the results when the upper doesn't detonate, I have to and I refer to it is. Stretches the bullet out like twice as long. It's super aggressive bullet swaging. Yeah, this super aggressive bullet swaging. See the problem, Ragal is all of our and I've said this before on the show, all of our families here. My brother lives in Wisconsin, one of my wife's sisters live in Wisconsin. If we do end up going anywhere, it will probably be slightly north till Wisconsin where suppressors can be had. The politicians aren't his chicagoy, but they're starting to get that way because of Milwaukee and Madison. Anywhere any state you move to that has a major metro area or two major metro areas that are comparable to the rest of the state's population is gonna become very fucked for two a very quickly. We've got three, maybe four of them, depending on what your definitely yeah, major metro is. Yeah, Doc, scary guy moved to Wisconsin. You have your answer. Yes. And then we come to the fact. That I've got a sweetheart mortgage on a hell of a deal on my house, and to get this house there, my mortgage would triple golden handcuffs, Right, I got it. Well I can't. I just flat can't afford. I can't afford my mortgage. Look, there's a whole bunch of it. It's just not gonna happen. Okay, rago is saying Shreveport would be five. I'm thinking would Shreveport, Lafayette, New Orleans, Baton Rouge? Which one am I missing? I mean, Alexandria is not not what I would call major metro, and Lake Charles is like a speed bump before you get to the Spin River. Major Metro is just major metro for your state. Like he's saying, like he's including Lake Charles, which I mean, that's Lake Charles is a lot bigger than it used to be. I'll give you that. But yeah, they're he and I are talking about the same thing. Like the major metros really do screw up a lot of these really nice states. They do. And I get what Doc saying. You know, sometimes you have to just eat that pill and go. But if it's. With what my career can earn and what my wife's career can earn, tripling our mortgage will never be doable. It just won't so until we can find a place that is within a reasonable budget because I am not making myself house poor. I like my hobbies. I like getting to go to the range. I like being able to go on a couple vacations a year and have a well funded retirement because I do intend to retire someday. But you mean before noon on the day you die, I. Mean ideally, probably pretty close to it, though, because I'm com I feel compelled to be productive, and the thought of not working makes me feel physically ill. Yeah, so I will eventually probably need to retire for medical reasons, because you know, you get old, that shit happens. What are you gonna do? But I probably would not willingly retire. I keep reminding my parents that the opposite of getting older is not staying young forever. It's not getting older. It's just that that is the other op Yeah, yeah, getting older is getting older is not any fun, but it's better than the alternative for most people. Yeah yeah, I mean, at least when you're getting older you can still have pizza and a couple of beers with your buddies. You know, when you're dead, there's no more pizza or beer. Oof. Right, all right, So is there any other reloading sins to toss in here at the end? Have you broken your press handle off yet? No? I've done it twice, both of my so not my hornet. My RCBS press handle has broken once. My old lineman handle broken ones. Both were used, both were heavily used before I got to them. Stress fractures are a thing. If you guys aren't a machinist here's what you're gonna do when you break your press handle off. You're gonna go down to your local bakery. You're gonna buy a dozen donuts. You're gonna take off work at nine am on a Friday, and you're gonna show up to a local machine shop. You're gonna walk in the door, and you're gonna ask the boss, Hey, I got this. I need this thread in whatever size it's gotta be. Do you guys have a few minutes, could you throw that for me? I'll make it with your time and offer donuts as a sweetener. Now, if you happen to walk into our loading dock and the boss doesn't noticed, that's definitely getting done while we're on break, while we're eating the donuts. If the boss notices, we'll probably do it like an hour later, but it'll get done that day, especially for donuts. So what I'm hearing is that donuts are excellent social lubrication. Oh. Absolutely, you can get a lot of work done at a machine shop for donuts or free coffee. No that that that seems fair. I'm trying to think about reloading mistakes. What have we done that we haven't talked about breaking your bench because you were. Trying to reload three hundred wind mag dies on a lineman press and the seat press just goes thick. Haven't done that? Have heard it or have heard of it being done. That's why I got the rock trucker because I cracked my linemen. Seaframe presses are not as rigid. Yeah, this is true. Oh m hmm. It's not what I would call a mistake, but it is an interesting little footnote. Since we were talking about three hundred blackout earlier, have you ever seen what happened? Okay, so what do you think is the proper order to size a three hundred blackout case? In you? Do you cut it first, then run through the size and die, or do you size it and then trim off the excess? I would think if you're gonna trim it first, you would trim, size, trim because when you move that brass, you're gonna end up with a different length at the end. Then you trimmed off because the material has to go somewhere. Well, if you size then trim, you wind up with the funniest looking three hundred blackout case with like an erection on the mile. Yeah, yeah, a mile of extra case. At the end. Yeah, see, I would probably if I was gonna do it, I would probably trim size trim. I would trim to the plus size it and then trim to exact size if I was gonna do that. So a buddy of mine actually made himself a little just it's literally like a little a little miner box, and he drops his case in, he chops, just goes and chops all of them to approximately the right dimension so he could run through the size and die. And then after that's done, he runs them all through a world world's bout his trim or to final trim. That makes sense. But he did tell me that he did that one time just out of curiosity. He just ran a full length five five to six case in that three hundred win, that three hundred blackout die and had about that much that much of a twenty two caliber neck poking out the top. Nice. Yeah, all right, Well, I don't want to belabor this. We always end up doing like an hour and a half show when I'm trying to keep it under an hour. It's fat. Even when I. Think it's not going to be a long topic, it doesn't matter. It's fine. Okay, Well, those are all of our reloading sins. Shall we give the list there's a sneak peek into what's probably happening next week. New tools, so yes, new toys. So I am holding in my hand for the for the audio listeners, a ham radio. I don't have a hand radio license. I'm a GMRS guy. But BeO Fang recently came out with the new UV five R minis, and even though they're teeny tiny and they feel kind of funny in the hand because they're so goddamn small, I decided to pick up a pair of them for two reasons. First of all, because these have AM, which means they have their airband capable, and I'm an old aviation nerd, so that's something I wanted to have. That's the capability I wanted to have, especially for like air shows or hanging around the local airports, just be able to listen on tower frequencies. But the other reason was the one thing that has frustrated me about some of my GMRIS radios is that even though MYRS exists and it's a license free channel band, you can't you can't access with a with a with a locked up GMRS radio. You can with this and that really is a lot of the long and short of it. So what I'm gonna do over the next week while I'm away for work is get the programming software, give it a try, set these things up as GMRS radios with Merge channels with the AM bands on the local tower frequencies. Spend some time playing with these things because I will be within spitting distance of Barksdale Air Base in North Louisiana, and uh, we might be I don't know if it's gonna be a whole episode or just a footnote, but we're gonna talk about kind of how I how I liked these things for next episode, a little. A little field tests and reports. Yeah, because I don't. I don't. I don't hold it against anybody that does like unboxing videos, but I don't like doing unboxing videos. I like to talk about things after I've had some time to play with them and learned them and learn the ends and the outs, and like, for me, a lot of a lot of what I focus on is like user experience, So I'm going to be super critical of like how it feels in the hand, or how it's balanced with a big old long whip in tent on the topic because it's so small a light, I'm going to be focused on things like how aggravating is the programming software to use, or how hard is in the programs through the face plate. It's the usability of the item that catches my attention more, and that's a lot of what I'm going to be focusing on. But my hope is that because like this, this when it hit the market, kind of became the new hot Ham, you know, cheap Ham radio. So I'm curious to see how I like it for my purposes. Seeing how up to this point I've been, I've been pretty heavily invested in GMRS radios. Ay Man, you know, that's one thing I've never liked about on boxing stuff, because number one, you don't. Have any time on the item. Yep, you just don't, you know, I have been. I have been fighting with myself on whether or not I should buy a small bench top hobbyist mill, because I have droll press, I've got a bandsaw, I've got the lathe. A lot of things be easier with the little hobbyist mill, and every goddamn video I see about these hobbyist mills, it's like an unboxing video and they're like, oh yeah, it's got this, it's got this, and it's got this, and it's got this, and the they never cut anything ever. Suspicious. Yeah, and it's always oh yeah, precision Matthews sent me this thing, or Grizzly gave me a great rate on this thing. Like, throw a three inch shell mill in it and whack some p twenty some half hard semi stainless. I want to see if the head breaks off. Well, that is the one thing I say about this before we wrap this up. Like personally, if I ever get like a discount on a piece of equipment or firearm or something like that, I'm very open about that. Nine times and they usually are nine times out of ten. I pay full freight for my stuff because this channel is too damn small and nobody gives a shit to give me free anything. Those those radios were purchased off of Amazon, So if they're trash, it's gonna be the exact same trash you would buy if you'd bottom off Amazon. Ragle Tmulath. Two problems. One it's not made of cast iron. Two plastic gearbox oof note, Well, hear me out. There's a good reason why that's not necessarily horrible. If you're a new person to running lathes and you are using power feed or you are threading, you can do damage to the motor if you lock that shit up at full at full rpm. Those plastic gears on those ship box layer it's that you get from Amazon. Whether it's a whether it's a Grizzly, or whether it's a tam Moose special, it will strip the gears before it screws up your motor or it screws up your power system. But then you're stuck trying to get a new plastic gearbox or plastic gear But. You can that lay. There is a flat belt drive direct to a motor shaft and cast iron bulgears. If you lock that up, it will slip that belt before it strips the bull gears. If you have the V belt pulley version of this exact lathe and you lock it up, it will strip the bull gears instead of spinning the V belt ouch. So if you are in the market for what i'm gonna call hobbyist great equipment as far as laithe mill whatever, first off, by the biggest one you can and I mean that by like cutting volume and horsepower and power rating like the power draw that your house will support by the biggest one you can get. Because number one, the weight of the castings gives you better consistency in cuts heavy or light, because the heavier the casting is, the more rigid the machine, the better it cuts. It's just that's just the way reality works. Number two, don't buy a hobbyist machine. Go on Facebook, Marketplace or Craigslist, or find obituaries for machinists and check their fucking garage because you can probably get a south Bend like mine for between a thousand and four thousand dollars, depending on how well equipped it is and how good a condition it is. Those Amazon or Timu machines, they're almost about one thousand dollars. Their swing is half of what the swing of this lad is. This is a ten inch swing. Most of those are five to six. I've got a three foot bet on this. Most of those are eighteen inch or twenty inch beds before you account for the tailstock. So look for used industrial grade equipment. This is a toolroom lathe, so yes, I can't swing a twelve inch piece of steel in it. You don't want to if you're learning anyway, But you will get more value per dollar out of used old cast iron. Then you're gonna get off of those those I would say, hobbyist great equipment, most of those most of those things they really only are good for plastic, for turning plastic or wood or is this sing will turn harden tool steel if if you really want to, we'll. Call that good advice. But let's go ahead and wrap this up. It's nine o'clock at night. I don't have work tomorrow. You do have work tomorrow, but I have a long day of house tourists to get get ahead of. Good Lord before well, Gilly and I have a we have classes to teach on Saturday for our local mutual assistance group, and then Sunday, i'd like to spend some time with the family before I have to blast off out of town for a couple of days. So, you know, yeah, but nice anyway. Hopefully I get a chance to play with that radio, and we'll talk about that. Next week, and maybe something else. I don't know, we'll see, We'll see talk to you later. Bye guys. Night un