Rifle Reloading… just thinking aloud

I’ve been keeping up my daily ritual of reloading every morning. I did bump it up to 200 rounds a day, and that’s made a big difference. Doesn’t take much more time out of my day, but is making everything go well… twice as fast as before. I’m out there almost every morning, and at this rate I reckon I’ll be done reloading all my 9mm components by end of August or so. Then a brief stint to get all the .38 Special I have loaded up. And then… rifle loading.

Let’s go back to February 2010 and look at my long term reloading plans. I am sticking with the goal to get a lot of 9 loaded up.

The thing that’s different? Back then 6.8 SPC wasn’t in the picture, but it is now. Now that I have it, I’m not sure I’ll bother with .223 because I was wanting .223 for hunting and well… 6.8 is filling that role. However, loading for 6.8 is a LOT more expensive. And I must admit, after all the failure and problems I had before with rifle reloading, I’m a little gunshy and unsure where to go. I think the biggest thing that got me not just the frustration factor but the cost involved — those Barnes Bullets aren’t cheap.

Was it the single-stage press and inconsistency there? Was it the recipe? Was it the way the bullets were being seated or crimped? Was it just me? I don’t know. Too many factors to consider. And now, I’m going to load on the progressive press. foo.c’s zombie loads were done on his Lock-n-Load progressive press and they came out excellent, so I’m hoping for greater consistency due to that factor.

Still…. I’m not sure what I should do. Should I start loading some .223 plinking loads? I’ve got a bunch of brass and bullets (.223 55grain FMJ’s) and usable powder (e.g. Ramshot TAC). Loading them could help me shake out any process issues (resize, deprime… might even set up the single-stage to do that; brass prep (trim, clean/ream primer pockets, etc.); prime, powder, bullet; skip the crimp for now). Plus help me gain confidence in loading, after the prior fiasco. I’d have to shoot these with irons, but if I could get a group doing 0.5″ at 50 yards, that’d be bueno.

I may do that. Then after that, do some 6.8 plinking loads, because it’ll be a little cheaper and I want plinking loads anyways. Then finally move to those Barnes 95 grain TTSX bullets and make a hunting load.

Probably what I’ll do. I’m really excited about it and kinda want to get done with the handgun loads so I can get to experimenting.