Cartridge Disassembly

E

Eddiejoe

New member
About a month ago, we moved into a home that had been previously owned by an avid shooter and reloader. He left behind a TON of supplies. He also left behind some completed .270 Weatherby Magnum rounds. I haven't counted them yet, but I'm guessing around 100.
I don't think I want to risk selling them as is, since I cannot speak to any specs - powder charge, how often the cases had been used, etc.
I suggested to my wife that, since we have alllllll these rounds, we should buy a gun to shoot them with.
That didn't fly, so someone suggested disassembling them and selling the cases and bullets separately.

Is this a complex process? Is it something best left to experienced reloaders? I hope to learn to reload as soon as the house is a home, but it is a lower priority.

I would be grateful for any advice.
 
The simplest although not the fastest way is with an inertial bullet puller.
https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1012714588?pid=215517

Insert cartridge, whack on a hard surface until the bullet comes out.
Discard powder - pour it out in a narrow train on bare ground and ignite one end. It is not really good fertilizer.

That will leave you with bullets and primed brass. Can you sell them for enough to pay for the puller? I don't know.
 
Even Weatherby doesn't make the 270 wm in too many guns these days--if it's original Weatherby ammo (made by norma I believe) and has for example 150 partitions--that is excellent ammo and you should have no problem finding someone who'll buy it. If it's homemade mystery meat and you have no way of verifying what it is (might be worth trying to contact the reloader) then yup I'd salvage what I could. I hate initertia hammers, a bullet-pull collet die is the much better way to go.

Your wife is being very unreasonable to not see the best solution is buying a rifle that can fire it.:D
 
If it's hand loads with no data for the load on the boxes pull it.factory should be good to go. Collet pullers are the way to go if your doing more than 10
 
Shadow9mm said:
If it's hand loads with no data for the load on the boxes pull it.factory should be good to go. Collet pullers are the way to go if your doing more than 10
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This is the answer you seek.

I'd dump the powder. The bullet and primed brass can be used or sold as components.
 
Thank you everyone! It looks like the boxes are marked with at least bullet weights. I'm still going to try and separate the components. A single-stage press was left behind, as well as primers, powder, cases and bullets for 357/38.
 
I don't know about the Hornady one, but my personal experience with the RCBS collet puller is that it works like crap compared to an inertial puller such as the Lyman orange hammer.

The RCBS collet puller I have often lets bullets slip out, even when as hand tight as it gets. Regular handloads with jacketed rifle bullets, not crimped, works ok. Anything else, and it either takes multiple tries and the use of a wrench and cheater bar (and sometimes a hammer) to grip tightly enough to pull a crimped or military sealed bullet.

And forget about using it for lead slugs, if you want anything but scrap lead for the casting pot!

The hammer puller works on everything ( centerfire, NEVER use it for rimfire rounds!!) and doesn't damage or mar the bullet,

Yes, its slower than the collet, when the collet works right, but my experience is that the collet often doesn't and the hammer always does.

I broke down about 400 milsurp .308 rounds without any issues, took an average of 3-5 wacks. More time was spent getting them into and out of the hammer than actually pulling bullets.
there is a knack to using the hammer correctly. Doesn't have to be swung hard, just quick, with a snap, and a hard stop at the end. Wood is too "soft" and often so is concrete, for best results. I use the iron top of a woodstove (COLD StOVE!:rolleyes:) works well for me.
 
I've used both the kinetic and the collet and haven't had very good luck with either one. Spoiler alert---my own d=mn fault!

The RCBS collet didn't work very well and I assumed (and still do) it was because I didn't know what I was doing. I had less than 100 rounds to disassemble but I wanted to broaden my horizons so I bought the collet. I believe if I had to use it a lot I'd get better at using it.

there is a knack to using the hammer correctly. Doesn't have to be swung hard, just quick, with a snap, and a hard stop at the end. Wood is too "soft" and often so is concrete, for best results. I use the iron top of a woodstove (COLD StOVE!) works well for me.
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Go back and read the above quote again if your using a kinetic. The kinetic puller has never worked well for me (I suspect I now know why) but I lent it to a friend once and he had no problem with it and when I asked him how he was using it he said he was hitting it on an anvil (!) in his shop. I had alternated between my wooden workbench and the concrete basement floor. In the future I will try something harder.
 
DaleA said:
I had alternated between my wooden workbench and the concrete basement floor. In the future I will try something harder.
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Having enough space to follow through also helps. Almost anything on the "floor" is awkward.

I found that the 4x4 supporting the corner of a work bench worked better than the top of the bench itself.

And then actually hitting. The plastic most of these are made of makes one think "I can break this thing if I swing too hard". So you don't swing hard enough.

FWIW the collets suck trying to pull cast bullets as the lead deforms. So inertial may be the only way if you want to reuse the bullets. But then you can recast mangled lead...
 
I've always smacked my bullet puller on the "anvil" on the back of my bench vise. Best results from using something with NO give. Steel, concrete, etc.
 
Eddiejoe said:
Thank you everyone! It looks like the boxes are marked with at least bullet weights. I'm still going to try and separate the components. A single-stage press was left behind, as well as primers, powder, cases and bullets for 357/38.
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Pull them and toss the powder.

If all you have is bullet weight its a hard no-go.

At a minimum I would want bullet weight, Powder, and charge weight. I would pull 2-3 and check bullet weight and charge weight on the scale, and make sure the powder looked like the right powder .

when I load ammo every box gets labeled
Date
bullet and weight
powder and charge weight
primer
COL
brass head stamp
velocity
times fired

I want to know what I loaded a year ago. exactly what it is.

I would not trust those loads for anything. pull them. toss the powder on the lawn. save the bullets and primed casings.

If your getting into reloading, I would get a collet puller. I have pulled a good bit of 9mm with an inertial bullet puller and it is an unpleasant and tedious process. pulling with a collet puller is much much better IMHO and it worth having.
 
The Hornady collet puller works excellent. I’ve pulled down way too many bullets in several calibers with only one issue over the years. I did have some problems with some round nose Hitec coated bullets in 9mm. They were seated to the point that not enough of the flat bearing surface was exposed and the collet couldn’t get a good enough grip on them due to their slippery nature, so I had to use the hammer on them. One thing I do to make using the hammer easier to use, I put the shell in an appropriate size normal shell holder instead of using the PITA collets that come with the tool.
 
The Frankford Arsenal inertia hammer has worked fine for me whenever I've had to pull bullets. I use it with a small piece of railroad rail on the corner of the bench. A sharp whack or two usually works fine.
If you don't know the type of powder used, I would discard it and salvage the bullets and primed cases.
 
The Hornady Cam Lock collet puller is lightyears ahead of the RCBS type. I've pulled 1000s of rounds of deteriorating 308 ammo with mine. Just a few seconds each. The camming action of the handle gives its collet a much tighter hold on a jacketed bullet than I was able to get trying to sprain my wrist tightening the RCBS handle. The only drawback is, as 44 AMP points out, lead bullets are too soft for the collets to grip without distortion. Lead still requires an inertial puller.
 
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