If you are a serious shooter, reloading your ammunition makes a lot of sense. For starters, it means you will rely less and less on what few boxes of cartridges are left on the shelf at your local sporting goods store. While the start-up costs can be more than the price of a new Glock, there is no doubt that you will save money in the long run. Saving money is a good enough reason to get started for most, but another benefit is that you can make more accurate cartridges than the mass-produced products you get off the shelf if you pay attention to your measurements.
Self-reliance, saving money, and improved accuracy are all attractive reasons to start reloading, but it is also just fun to do and gives you an appreciation for what goes into a modern cartridge. To help you get started reloading on your own, I am going to go through the whole process from A to Z, explaining what you need to do at each step and the equipment you might need.
Although before we start, here is an exhaustive list of the gear I mentioned throughout the article:
- Reloading Handbook
- Wet Tumbler / Dry Tumbler
- Loading Block
- Reloading Press
- Specifically Sized Shell Holders
- Cartridge Specific Die Set
- Case Lubricant
- Digital Calipers
- Case Trimmer
- Chamfer & Deburring Tool
- Primer Pocket Reamer
- Primer Pocket Uniformer
- Flash Hole Uniformer
- Primer Tray
- Primer Tool
- Powder Measure Assembly
- Powder Scale
- Scale Weight Check Set
- Powder Trickler
- Powder Funnel
Cartridge Research
The first step to loading a particular cartridge is your research. First off, you came to the right place for a reloading guide (right here!), but for cartridge-specific information, you should stick to a reloading manual. A manual, like the Hornady Reloading Manual, will have all you need to know about a given cartridge, including measurements and known safe powder loads to use with your given grain of bullet. Long story short, you shouldn’t reload without a manual.
You will need four main things to make a cartridge: a casing, gunpowder, primer, and of course a bullet. Sourcing these components is important. You should shop around so you can lean into the biggest benefit of reloading, saving money. You will want to make sure that all of your selected cartridge components play nicely together. The biggest thing to check is your gunpowder. Powder can vary from cartridge to cartridge, and it can be an important factor for overall cartridge accuracy. So if you are just starting out, stick to what is recommended in the manual while you are figuring out the process.
Another part of the research is sourcing the equipment you will need. Of course, you need the basic reloading gear that you will use time and time again, but you also need cartridge-specific gear. For any given cartridge, you will need a die set, which goes in the reloading press. You will also need a shell holder that works with the die. Some cartridges can share the same size shell holder, but every cartridge needs its own die set.
Case Preparation
The first step to reloading is case preparation. You have the option of buying brass that is ready to be reloaded already, and that may be cost-effective if you want to make a large amount of rounds. Although this hobby is called “reloading” not “loading”, you’ll likely be starting with dirty brass that has been fired. In that case, your brass needs to be cleaned before you can use it.
The easiest way to clean brass is with a tumbler. You can get a wet or a dry tumbler, but the big idea is that you put your brass inside it with a coarse medium, and give it a few hours. Entire articles have been written about wet vs dry tumbling, but in general, dry tumbling is best for your brass.
Before you use your brass, you will want to wipe it with a simple cloth and inspect it. If there are any nonuniformities or damage, that case may not be fit to use and it should be discarded. After you are done inspecting each cartridge, it is good practice to place them in a holding block. This will keep them clean, and make keeping track of them easier as you progress through the next steps.
Reloading Presses
You will need a reloading press going forward, so let’s cover those quickly. There are a thousand different individual presses out there, all with their caveats. Although there are three main types of presses you can get: the simple single-stage press, a turret press, or a progressive press.
Single-stage presses do one thing at a time, with one die. They are simple, and often the most precise, but have the highest workload. Turret presses are just a step above single-stage presses. They still only do one stage at a time, but they hold multiple dies, making switching between them much faster.
Progressive presses hold multiple cases at once and advance the reloading process for each of them every time you pull the lever.
In general, while the first case is just getting loaded, there is a case getting deprimed and sized, one getting powder added, a case seating a bullet, and a finished cartridge getting ejected. They do not all have the same number of stages, some have as few as four, and others have up to seven. Progressive presses are the most complex, and also the most expensive. I recommend a beginner go with the single-stage press. This will be the cheapest option, and get you most familiar with the entire process.
Depriming & Resizing Cases
To start resizing and depriming the cases, you will want to lubricate them. Spray them liberally with some case lube. You don’t want them dripping wet, but wet enough. This lubricant is going to keep the case from being stuck inside the die once you run it through your reloading press.
To start depriming and resizing, load your resizing die into your reloading press. Then you will use the shell holder to sit your clean and lubricated case into the press. Then all you have to do is pull the lever, and the press will do the work! After this step, you will have a resized case that no longer has a spent primer.
Trim, Chamfer & Deburr Your Brass
After you resize your brass, it may be longer than the manufacturer’s specification. Using your reloading handbook, look up the manufacturer length for your given cartridge’s case. You will want to keep a pair of calipers handy so you can make precise measurements.
If a case is longer than the specification recommends, then you will need to put it in a case trimmer. You can adjust a case trimmer to the exact length you need, and run all of your brass through it, just make sure to keep taking measurements and checking the setting on the trimmer.
Once you have your brass trimmed to the correct length, you will want to chamfer and debur it. Chamfering removes the sharp edge from the inside of the neck, which will help us seat our bullet later. Deburring removes any sharp edges or leftover material on the outside of the neck, and this is going to improve cartridge feeding in your firearm. You can use a single handheld tool to do this, simply called a chamfer and deburring tool.
Straight Wall Mouth Expansion
If you are reloading a straight wall cartridge, you need to add one more step in, expanding the mouth. This is going to make it easier for the usually large and flat-based bullet to be set later. Your die set should come with an expander die if you need to use one. All you need to do is change out your resizing die to your expander die, set the shell back into the case holder, and work your reloading press again. Then the neck of your cartridge will be ready for a bullet! Although, there is still plenty of work to do before we get to that point…
Reprime The Casing
The next step is to reprime your casing. However, before you put a new primer in there, you will likely want to clean the case a little more. There are two parts to clean, the primer pocket, and flash hole. The primer pocket is where the primer sits. You can use a primer pocket uniformer to flatten that area and make sure the primer will sit correctly. You should not have to remove much material here. If you are reloading a cartridge that has a military crimp, you will need a primer pocket reamer tool to remove it.
Then, you will want to clean out your flash hole. This is the small hole that allows the primer to light the gunpowder. You can insert a flash hole uniformer tool through the neck of the case, and give it a few turns. Again, we are not trying to remove much material. You also may not need to work the primer pocket or flash hole if you have relatively new or clean brass. It just depends on how particular you want to be.
Now it is finally time to prime your case! You can do this a few different ways, with a primer tool, or with your reloading press. Either way, you will want to put a bunch of primers in a primer tray. A primer tray will help you flip your primers right side up, and feed them to you one at a time. If you are going to use a primer tool, your primer tray connects to it and you never have to touch a primer. You just simply sit your casing in a shell holder in the tool and work the lever.
There is a benefit to using your reloading press to reprime, you do not have to buy a primer tool! You will have to manually sit a primer in the press, then slightly raise the lever up to drop the primer down, sit your casing in the case holder, and then pull the lever back down to make the casing and primer one again. Some people like this better than using a primer tool, but manually placing primers is a no-go for me.
Load The Gunpowder
Now we are ready to start playing with gunpowder. You will want to check back with your reloading manual to ensure you have the right type of gunpowder for your given cartridge, and that you use the correct amount of powder. Using too much powder can be dangerous, and using too little powder will hinder performance. Keeping a funnel and scale handy would be a good idea during this step.
One product you are going to want is a powder measure. This holds your powder, and you can set it to release a certain amount each time. This way, you only need to weigh out your powder once (but check it periodically) and you are good to go. Get an initial charge weighed on a scale, and then feed it back into the powder measure and run a few cycles to make sure everything is working correctly. To help you get your measurements right, you may want to pick up a powder trickler too. This will help you add small amounts of powder without accidentally dumping too much in your powder pan.
Once your powder measure is set up, you can work it load by load, using a funnel to get the powder into each case. Your cases should still be in a loading block, and you will want to keep them there so they do not fall over and spill.
Seat Your Bullet
The final step is the most important, seating your bullet! You will start by changing out your reloading press to the seating die. You just want to barely thread it into the reloading press, then place a case in the shell holder, and work the ram. Then you can thread the seating die farther down until it contacts the mouth of the case. Then you will want to tighten the seating die down with the lock ring.
Next, you will want to loosen the lock nut on the top of the die and loosen the bullet seater plug enough to not seat your bullet too deep. Then you can put a bullet in your prepared case, and work the ram up into the seater die.
At this point, you will want to check your reloading handbook for the correct length of your overall cartridge. Then you will have to measure your cartridge and tighten your bullet seater plug until you get the correct length. Take it slow, making minor adjustments each time; it is okay if this takes a dozen tries to get it right. Once your length is correct, tighten the lock nut to secure the bullet seater plug.
One trick is to use a factory round or a previous reload instead of a new bullet and casing, and work the ram up and lower the bullet seater plug until it snugly touches the bullet. Some minor adjustments may be needed, but this will speed up the process.
If you are reloading a cartridge that requires crimping, you will likely do that after seating. They make standalone crimper dies, but there are also combo seater-crimper dies. You will want to make sure you get the crimp grove of the bullet even with the case mouth when seating. Then, start loosely on your crimp die. You can tighten it in small steps. Continue until you have a well-defined crimp along the crimp groove.
And that is it! By now, you should have at least one fully reloaded cartridge. The rest is just rinse and repeat. There are hundreds of ways to configure your setup and adjust your process, and no one way is the correct way. Just keep practicing and focus on quality over quantity!
