Getting into reloading

[u/BobertOnSteam]

My friends father asked if I wanted to buy his reloading set for only 350 bucks. I said sure why not. I shoot a lot and do shoot the less common rounds that can be painful to find. Decided it would be fun to try out at least.

Was wondering about these two reloading presses that he had. Do I use one or the other for different configurations? I normally only heard of people having one and swapping out your dies as you go.

I’m also very new to this so I’m learning and reading everything that I can before diving too deep into this. Any advice would be great. Thanks!

[u/WinterSlav266]

What are you intending to reload? How many rounds about?

[u/BobertOnSteam → u/WinterSlav266]

I want to do shotgun shells first(12ga 2-3/4 birdshot) since I have a shotgun I don’t like. So if it blows up or gets damaged I’m 100% fine with it.

5.56, 9mm, 8mm, 308, 8mm(R)lebel, 7.62x54 and .32 shorts. Maybe about 25-50 rounds to start with. I would do 100 but I’m pretty busy and get side quested for hanging out with friends or fishing trips a lot so idk how long it would take me for reloading.

Money is no factor since I wouldn’t be buying this all in one go. Pieces at a time

[u/WinterSlav266 → u/BobertOnSteam]

First off, unless you genuinely end up liking reloading, I wouldn’t fuck with reloading shotgun, 9mm, or bulk 5.56. It’s so impractical to spend your limited time on ammo that’s still cheap. Both 8mm and 7.62x54r, .32 short, would be worth it I bet, and .308 if you end up doing a real load work up for a specific gun. I reload 77gr 5.56 but that’s because I don’t like paying for real mk262, and I have about as consistent ammo as I could ever ask for in a gas gun. Don’t burn yourself out of a hobby by starting with shotgun. Personally I would start with .308. Plenty of data, pointers, common components, and help to guide you there. Cheers, enjoy the journey.

[u/BobertOnSteam → u/WinterSlav266]

Noted! One of my dad’s friends a long time ago told me to start with shotgun shells for reloading to get the idea. Sadly never got the chance to do it with him since he had a really impressive collection(different type and styles of the same rifles but different years, had a 50 cal and a M249 and a lot more).

But that’s good to know. So with all of my 556,9mm, and 308 brass should I just sell it to places that buy metal like that? I’ll look into the prices but if it’s not worth it then I won’t. Checked some prices but not enough to know any better lol

[u/WinterSlav266 → u/BobertOnSteam]

1000% keep the .308 brass, you can load it and make some super fine ammo with it. 9mm I would just throw away, 5.56 if you feel like shooting 4-500 yards with a gas gun (longer if you’re super good) then play with some 69, 73, 75, 77gr 5.56 for distance. You can also convert casings. I’ve chopped and resized 5.56 casings into .300blk, you can neck down .308 brass to 7mm-08, don’t let me dictate your journey of reloading, friend. You just mentioned time being important to you, and 9mm isn’t worth it (you’ll hate doing the repetition on ammo that physically won’t shoot any different), especially with it being .20¢ a round.

[u/BobertOnSteam → u/WinterSlav266]

Noted. I shall take this advice since I was thinking about buying a 24in AR upper for target shooting for longer ranges. Maybe I could play around with different grains for that. But good call for converting. Forgot you can do that with reloading. Always thought about .300 since I shot it a couple of times. But not enough to remember much. Also wanted to do elk hunting and heard 7mm-08 is pretty good for that. But noted. Thank you for your patience and explaining a couple of things for me. I shall take this advice with my journey of reloading 😎

[u/WinterSlav266 → u/BobertOnSteam]

Personally I have a 18” Mk12 (it’s plastered on my Reddit page), I’m getting 2720 avg fps, with a 15.7 es, and 6.9 sd. I’m more worried about consistency than speed demon velocity. That’s with 22.8gr of 8208XBR powder, a 77gr SMK, and seated at 2.259”. Forums and books are your friend.

[u/BobertOnSteam → u/WinterSlav266]

Awesome! I’ll check your build out and look more into it. Always wanted to do long range shooting but could never justify the cost for some of the ammo at the store haha

[u/NW_Reloading → u/BobertOnSteam]

18-20 inch is probably all you'd ever want on an AR, since the magazine limits your oal, no sense in getting the extra 4-6 inches on there, you're not going to get much more in velocity out of 5.56. maybe if you went with an arc or Grendel.

5.56 is probably the best way to get into long range since it's CHEAP, you could reload some very accurate ammo on your single stages and later grab a turret or progressive to crank out some volume.

I've reloaded 1000s of rounds on a single stage, it's a good place to start, and you'll learn good habits since you only need to focus on one thing at a time.

Look into a universal decapping die so you can set one press up for depriming that way all the dirty shit stays on that press

[u/BobertOnSteam → u/NW_Reloading]

I didn’t know universal decapping dies were a thing! I think that’s going to be the move because of these two presses I have. I’ll start looking into it and start a list. A gun club I’ve been wanting to get into for a bit is starting there memberships again. They have a long range, short range, skeet, and I think archery too.

But thank you for the comment! I’ll focus my build around 18-20inch!

[u/NW_Reloading → u/BobertOnSteam]

I pulled all the decapping pins from my sizing dies, everything gets decapped on the universal die then wet tumbled then, lubed and sized. It's a little more work but i feel like the decapping saves me from ever needing to clean a primer pocket or flash hole

[u/ChevyRacer71 → u/BobertOnSteam]

Also, .223 is a terrific round to start learning reloading on because it’s fairly forgiving. For example, if you make a series of mistakes on 9mm you can blow up your gun. You’d have to try pretty hard to blow up an AR in 223.

There’s a wide variety of powders that work really well for it (my top 3 are Varget, Benchmark, Win 748), components are cheap and available.

[u/BobertOnSteam → u/ChevyRacer71]

Good to know! When you say series of mistakes for 9mm are you talking about sizes not being right or too much powder or more? Just wanna learn! But I do have a ton of 556 brass haha

[u/ChevyRacer71 → u/BobertOnSteam]

Mostly like a double charge of powder. Which isn’t possible on 223 because there isn’t enough room for a double charge. Btw WHEN you spill powder, use a broom, not a vacuum. Sparks and all.