New Reloader

Congratulations and welcome to the addictive world of hand loading. Your obviously excited and enthusiastic about this and that's a good thing, but I'd like to make one strong suggestion. Always start low and work your way up, don't just assume it's safe to start in the middle of a suggested load. I know it's a pain, but it's all about being safe. This isn't just for your sake, but also for the safety of the guy standing next to you at the range. It's best to start off establishing safe loading practices from the beginning. Your in the right place to learn and there are some extremely experienced, knowledgeable, and helpful people hear. I too have the Lee LM and enjoy it most of the time. While it can be a bit quirky pretty much 95% of the time when having problems it's been user error, at least for me. If I can give you some hints to make it easy I'd suggest the three main areas to watch are these. First, as soon as you see the primers have run low enough you begin to see a gap in the viewing slots of the primer chute, refill the tray. Second, watch the last case dropping from the case feeder, sometimes the last will flip on its side and jam things up. And third, just monitor everything and keep things from running too low, powder, bullets, primers, and cases. For me the best improvement I've made is to get the roller handle from Inline Fabrication, it really helps things to just run a little smoother.
 
New member here, but have been reloading for a few years. Like most have posted Site group is not good to start with. I made that mistake when i started reloading. i wish that i would have do a lot more research before i bought it. I have a friend that says you don't save money reloading, you just get to shoot more for the same price.
 
Got to go out to the range today. Everything went really smoothly.
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Great. XTP's are rather pricey. Otherwise, I'd suggest loading 100 more of the same and go shoot those.

Aside from my suggestion, what is your next step?

(I probably should have read post #36 before posting that ^^^ :D.)
 
I ordered 230 gr FMJ 500 box from Precisiondelta , very nice bullet , great price & a nice group of people to order from . I shoot a mild load with them , easer on the gun for practice . Nothing better then shooting your own loads . Remember to clean & lube that bad boy after every range trip . Take care of it it will take care of you . Be Safe out there .

Chris
 
Manuals: Any manual is better than no manual.

Lymans is ok as its general, but I prefer two that I feel are go do.

Sierra or Hornady: Those offer a wide variety of bullet types and wide variety of powders that performed at least decently with those bullets.

The upper loads will be for the worst case bullet type (pressure) of the lineup.

Always keep your old manuals. Some powders get superseded or dropped that worked fine.

No manual is the best, each has some aspects of it. Lyman is good because its so broad and they do show pressures. Its not my go to but I have an old one and a newer one. The old one had better background data on ballistics. Find one at a garage sale and snag it.

While other manual are fine, none has the breadth of bullet types Sierra and Hornady provide.

I have no issue using starting data from either one for any other mfgs bullet.
 
I need to get a new Lyman. I have my dad's old Lyman 44 (1967) and Lyman 48 (2002). I will do comparisons between the two and usually go with the notes my dad wrote in the Lyman 44 or go to his notebook if there is any question about an older load.

I also have a Hornady 4th (early 1990's) and Speer (2006)manual also. On anything new I first look at the bullet mfg and then powder web pages for the most current info. After that the Hornady and then Lyman 48. The Speer gave me more questions than answers - it is probably going to go away when I get a newer manual.
 
The Lyman #48 is the same data that's in the #50. There are none of the new Hodgdon powders in it. If you want mine I will sell it to you for $25. Basically brand new.
 
I bought the rCBS automatic case prep center it's a little expensive but it is a great tool to have makes reloading a lot more enjoyable. And paired up with the electronic powder despenser you can crank out some serious rounds
 
Get a reloading manual. Always take a load from the manual. Remember: Start low. Work up. You will find a sweet spot the rifle likes. For sure never take a load you saw on the internet.
 
SigFan54, thought I would pass this along, Cabela's has a sale going in a flier. Primers 15% off and in stock X-treme bullets 20% off.
 
Lyman has the most cast lead bullet loads of any of the manuals. I'm trying to figure out where all the advertisements are, not in the data. Hornady and Sierra are nothing but commercials for their own bullets as they only show Hornady or Sierra bullets which is fine if that is what you load.
 
The Lyman advertisement I found was in the reloading instructions in the front of the manual. My other gripe is yhat the load data has not really changed and new powders are not listed. It's like they copied and pasted from the last manual. Some of the minimum loads seem higher than they should be. When I cross check load data from powder sources they have big differences.
 
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