HOW 2 MAKE BULLETS

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GENERAL TERMINOLOGY

Terms you'll hear a lot:

"WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT THIS?"

If you don't consider labor to be part of your cost analysis (or you have an extremely efficient setup), reloading can produce significant cost savings
compared to only purchasing factory ammo. You can make obsolete military rounds or unorthodox loads with different projectile weights. For some who
decided to standardize on a newer calibre for their firearms that's in high demand and low supply, reloading can often be the only way possible to
resupply. It reduces pollution (especially if using reclaimed lead) and lets you be in charge of every possible step in QC- for better or for worse.
In general, loading for rifles is much more annoying and time intensive versus pistols, both due to labor via brass prep and because the mean engagement distance with rifles means certain things need to be done much more scrupulously and consistently to ensure accuracy.
The one saving help is that it's nearly impossible to throw a "double charge", aka PISSIN HAWT with a rifle round because they tend to use 80%+ of the case's volume in powder, whereas pistol cartridges often only use half or even less of the case's volume.
You will feel it if you seat a bullet on an overfilled casing.

The minimum recommended tools for reloading are:

If you're intending on re-using fired brass, you'll also need the following:

"OKAY HOW DO I DO IT"

Below is a written overview of the process, but I would strongly suggest you watch a YouTube video or take a reloading class. Classes can make things seem overly complex, so don't feel like you need to buy everything all at once. I don't have any recommended comprehensive videos for this, sadly, as I took a NRA class for this in-person.
Reloading content on YouTube is horribly, horribly tedious as the bulk of people who make videos for this stuff are not particularly adroit in concise speaking. Set to 1.5x speed. The video I've linked is pretty good, though it does not cover cleaning/processing fired brass. The gist of the overall process goes as follows;

RTFM


Get a reloading manual. They don't cost much and you can use old ones because the tolerances for cartridges don't change once they're listed with SAAMI or whatever other organization. The standards for 9mm Luger chamber pressure have been the same since 1903. You have zero excuse not to own a manual. Read the manual. Cross-index the manual. Pick a load out from the manual and stick to it until you're knowledgable enough or have spare fingers or a lead sled, a gun you hate, and a long string. The three major things you'll be regularly checking are case dimensions, cartridge dimensions, and powder loads- while most manuals will suggest specific pairings of powder and primer, primers (as long as they're the right size) are usually interchangable and only present minor differences in velocity. Primers should not be sourced from weird European post-Soviet countries, Turkey, or South American countries. These are all notoriously inconsistent and may produce hangfires, slamfires, or other sorts of mischief in your gun. Stick to CCI, Winchester, anything from the competence belt of North/Western Europe (Teutonic/Nordic autism sphere and adjacent countries) and maybe Aguila if you're feeling a bit randy.

BRASS PREP


Brass prep is the single most time-consuming process in reloading and much of it comes from processing fired/"range" brass into something you can use. This is motivated primarily by two factors; cost savings and having brass fire-formed to your rifle's chamber. Those interested in the former will be dismayed to find how much cost goes into preparing brass while those interested in the latter already know what they're doing (or are about to have a very bad time with their semi-auto precision rifle). If you are using virgin brass, you can skip all of these steps unless you want to double check consistency; in this case, you'd run the brass through your resizing die and maybe chamfer/deburr the neck.

For those trying to fix old brass, if you aren't annealing your brass (see "EXTRA STUFF") the first step is removing the primer. This is generally done with a resizing die, which is a very stout metal tube attached to the reloading press. Using mechanical advantage (a lever) you press the old brass into the tube, which has interior dimensions replicating* the dimensions of the cartridge you're loading for. This resizer has a dull metal pin and ball attached that pushes through the mouth of the case so it doesn't get squished and the pin knocks the primer out of the bottom before pulling back up and out. Resizing brass is easier for straight-walled cartridges like most pistol cartridges or "cowboy ammo" like .45LC, .45/70, etc.; if there is a bottleneck to the case it is generally much more violent. You will need to lubricate your cases before running them through the die, but overuse of lube will cause a vacuum effect in the top of the chamber and you'll have a stuck case. I recommend Imperial Sizing Wax which is made primarily of lanolin, a natural wax secreted by sheep- it's why the sheep aren't itchy despite being covered in wool. Clean your dies frequently- I try to run brake cleaner through mine on a ~200-500rd basis depending on lubricant needs, DO NOT OIL THE INSIDES OF THE DIES- and only apply sizing wax in extremely sparing amounts to the body of the case, never the neck or shoulder.

The next step I like to do is cleaning the brass. This is necessary for multiple reasons; accumulated filth (carbon/lead buildup from burnt propellant, dirt from the ground, cheeto dust) will reintroduce itself to your gun's mechanical components if not removed and can negatively affect external case dimensions, along with potentially obstructing the flash hole in the primer pocket leading to a potential failure in a round to consistently burn its powder. I prefer to use an ultrasonic cleaner because it presents the lowest risk of exposure to lead during the cleaning process- a vibratory tumbler inundates the air with lead-laced dust and a rotary tumbler's media, usually steel pins, will accumulate the same poisonous buildup over time. The best actual cleaner would be a vibratory tumbler, but I don't want to buy new pins for every cleaning.

Now that your brass is clean enough, you should double check the primer pocket. Most military brass has primers crimped in place which means the actual hole you've got to pop the primer into once you're repriming is extremely tight- this won't do. Part of a brass prep tool set will include a de-crimping tool that looks like a two-stepped Philips screwdriver; you run this through until the interior "circle" of the primer pocket's gone. Failing to do this will result in some ass-puckering moments when you try to force one of those pressure sensitive high explosive primers into a hole it doesn't fit while you point a pressure containing vessel at your head. Skip the terror and do it right the first time. You can also use a primer pocket scraper (flathead screwdriver looking thing) to get rid of any black gunk in the back of the pocket; this should be done if it's particularly filthy as it can negatively affect the primer's ability to stay in its pocket, along with possibly obstructing the touch hole.

Final step - neck work. Part one is brass trimming; not strictly necessary if you want to measure every case with your calipers and see if it's in spec, but that's annoying and leads to inconsistency = bad accuracy. Use a Giraud Tri-Way trimmer if you want to do it right, otherwise you can use one of the drill press set and forget neck trimmers off eBay. If you are a masochist you can use one of the micro lathe hand crank neck trimmers; they are unsuitable for bulk work (50+ cases) but can handle any brass whereas the pre-set trimmers are cartridge specific. I generally trim brass to 0.02 in (.5mm) shorter than the SAAMI dimensions because brass tends to grow during firing; as it's pressed to form the chamber it gets thinner as it squeezes out. Trimming shorter means it'll eventually grow to its proper length and gives wiggle room for tolerances- shorter will still feed reliably, but longer may not. Once the neck's trimmed, if you don't have a Giraud you will need to chamfer (add a slope to the inside of the case neck-> \ / so the projectile can go in easier) and deburr the case neck.

PRIMING


Priming is pretty straightforward. You use a device called a hand primer which looks like a sideways pizza cutter; this is where the primers are loaded into the tray. The weird ripple pattern you see in the primer tray causes the primers to flip bottom-up when you shake it around gently. If you're using the hand primer I recommended, you'll attach the included shellholder and set the depth with the little spinny dial- because primers come in small/large sizes, there are two different pusher arms and heads used for either. If you don't have the correct pusher, it'll either totally fail to set the primer and jam up your tool or push it in with inconsistent pressure and potentially discharge the primer. Note that there is no way to "safe" a primer; soaking in oil or leaving them in water don't do anything. Enjoy your new hazard. Either way, once you've loaded up a 100 box of your preferred primers you simply squish them into the primer pockets with your tool. If you don't have a tool that can set primer depth, just try to be consistent with how much pressure you apply with the tool; their use is much like a handheld lemon squeezer. The primers shouldn't need a ton of pressure to seat and once seated, should be flush or slightly recessed with the back of the casing; sometimes you'll see a circular indent on the primer face. This means it's a bit too deeply seated but won't cause reliability issues.

If your primer feels like it's got a ton of resistance going in, it's probably because the casing was military brass and didn't have the old crimp removed and beveled. Use your decrimping tool on the brass if you can still remove it from the shell holder and it'll pop in easily- if the primer's already partially set inside, you're fucked and just have to force it all the way in until you can remove the brass. If the corners are slightly chewed up but the primer's seated flat it'll still go off just fine, but if it went in sideways or upside down you've got to trash it. If the primers completely fall out and won't seat, it means your brass is too heavily used and the primer pocket's loosened up beyond the point where it can be used. In common parlance, your brass has had a wild youth and is finally ready to settle down, so you should do the right thing and cut it in half with a dremel before beating it senseless with a ball-peen hammer (so you don't mistake it for good brass in the future). If you are of a more merciful bent, cases like this are good for setting bullet depth on your press or making dummy cartridges in case you're so cheap you don't want to pay for a five dollar snap cap and instead want to risk NDing into your wall because the dummy rounds you made are near identical to live ammo.

(SOMETIMES OPTIONAL) FLARING


Most straight-walled cartridges need a little extra help to drop in a projectile. You often don't chamfer or deburr these cases as you ideally want the thickness of the brass to be consistent through its whole length; remember, cartridges grow as they're fired, so if the neck is thinner than everything else by too much you're in trouble. Sorry if you already did this to your 9mm brass, but take this as a lesson to read the instructions completely before starting a task. This is most relevant to older cowboy cartridges and pistol calibers as the brass is generally not put to super high pressure along with having a good amount of support in the chamber, meaning you can completely skip most stages of brass prep with them. However, nothing in life is free, and if you try to seat a projectile without flaring out the neck, you get this:
44 Winmag accident Highest quality round from Turkey

Not good. This happened because the round pushed into the case walls and under the pressure of a hand press, it crumpled the brass. To avoid this, we use a flaring die that slightly increases the diameter of the top of the casing just enough to guide the round where it needs to go instead of giving it extra resistance at the case neck. Lee flaring dies will be hollow and that's because they expect you to charge the round as you're doing this, though their suggested method, powder dippers, aren't efficient or scale up to batch production (they can be quite consistent up to 1/10th of a grain if you have good technique).

CHARGING


Time to throw the powder. This stage will have you moving from your press to your powder measure and is the second most irritating step if you are not doing things with caution and diligence. Start by picking out a powder charge from a reloading manual (suggestions provided earlier- you can also use the loads I've posted at your own risk). Pistol powder and rifle powder are not interchangeable and have different thresholds for danger; most pistol rounds will use between 3-6 grains whereas intermediate cartridges like 5.56 clock at around 20-26 grains and full sized rifle cartridges are anywhere from 35 to 50 or more. Pistol rounds will rarely fill the entirety of the case's volume with powder; if you shake around a typical 9mm round, you'll hear the powder shifting inside, whereas most rifle cartridges tend to use the majority of its volume. This is important for two reasons. One, your sloppiness in consistently measuring a charge poses a significantly higher risk of injury with pistols. Being off by 0.1 grain won't kill you, but it'll present a much larger difference when it's 6.8 grains vs 43.1 grains. Two, it is nearly impossible to throw a double charge into a rifle casing without noticing something's off. A double charge with a pistol round may not even give a tactile difference when seating the round; if you don't catch it visually prior to putting the projectiles on the casings, you probably will seat it without noticing. With a rifle round, it'll overflow out the top and make a big mess and if you're still so stupid that you don't notice this, the powder will get compressed when seating the round (assuming you can even put the round into the case neck that's totally topped off) and you'll feel a crunch. Smokeless propellant isn't sensitive enough to go off from something like that, but it's possible that you may pop the primer out from internal pressure.

PROJECTILE SEATING


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OPTIONAL POST PREP


crimping sealing polishing

I AM POOR AND LIVE IN A DORM/APARTMENT/BARRACKS/DRAIN OUTLET

If you are a punished poverty servant the cheapest SUGGESTED setup would be a Lee hand press set, a Lee breech lock die set(which usually comes with load info- projectile manufacturers will also often post loads on their sites), and an inexpensive digital scale meant for reloading use. This setup requires you to purchase primed brass, which is typically "pulldown" ammo taken from military surplus. Getting this would cost about $200 in 2023 USD and buying primed brass comes at a premium over preparing your own brass + priming it, along with the loss of quality control in identifying source of primers- but if you're just loading bulk range blaster ammo you don't care. The Lee sets come with "powder scoops", which are comically sized little yellow scoopers like you'd see in a Happy Meal. They work for volumetric measurement of powder, but to load ammo consistently you'd need to get an actual powder scale (or use powder that "meters" well, aka is granular enough that its volume is consistent with a certain weight). With this setup, you'd only be charging the powder by scooper-ing into a pan that's been tared with your miniature digital scale and seating projectiles into a primed casing- a two step operation. It'd work decently well for most straight-walled pistol cartridges and you could probably do .223 with this as well, though I wouldn't expect to get better results than 2-3 MOA M193 loads. The only major drawback is that the breech lock dies won't work with a regular single stage press that doesn't use the proprietary thread thing, so your dies will be forever mated to your hand press.

If you aren't constrained by space, it'd be a better idea to purchase a used single stage press, powder throw, and beam scale off eBay; reloading in the US has been well-known for over 80 years and the underlying technology behind assembling cartridges has been essentially unchanged (in this form) well past a century. Reloading presses are insanely durable and short of being left in a salt water tank for two decades you can be pretty sure they can't be damaged or destroyed even by the most idiotic reloader. I would not suggest buying used dies, though, as those are very damageable by skilled and novice loaders alike. You should be able to buy a decent old press for around ~$60 and the scale + dies shouldn't be much more than $70 combined, giving you a setup that'll be good forever.

How does the price per round even in this reduced form stack up versus commercial ammo? Let's see-

XXXXXX Primed brass Projectile Powder Shipping Total cost Commercial ammo
9mm 124gr HP $97.49/1000 $240/1000 $32.49/1400 ~$50 (hazmat) ~$.42/round ~$.50-60/rd
M193 spec 5.56 $142.28/1000 $98/1000 $148/1037 ~$50 (hazmat) ~$.44/round $.63/rd

The specific load for 9mm was 5.0 grains of CFE Pistol/Auto Comp using 124gr JHPs, giving around 1120 FPS out of a 4" barrel. The 5.56 load used 27.0 grains of CFE 223, pushing 55gr HPBT cannelured projectiles out to around 3200 FPS out of a 20" barrel. As you can see, the cost saving is there if you're loading higher quality ammo than bulk pack 55gr/115gr range blaster ammo. Most states in the US do not regulate purchasing ammunition components so ammo can be produced basically anywhere- in places like California, for instance, you have to ship ammo to a FFL first. I personally wouldn't suggest trying to make cheap stuff with cheap equipment (as fingers are expensive), but if you want that sweet sweet MK262 or your super FBI hardcore tactical 62gr bonded for $.65 per round, it's hard to beat a reloading setup. Even a poverty one.
Now if you want to be a REAL psycho and load rounds as cheap as humanly possible, then you can use the "classic loader set" which inherently comes with a die, decapper, bullet seater, and all that stuff for a whopping $40! You do, however, have to seat the bullets in the casing by hitting them with a hammer and you'll never load precision rounds, but the west wasn't won by cowards
if you're actually going to do this, please get the digital scale too so you don't throw a squib or grenade load...

THE THINGS THEY DON'T EXPLAIN

FATIGUE MANAGEMENT


Reloading is a physically strenuous task, believe it or not. This strain is localized entirely in your hands and sometimes in your arm if you're working a press. Holding brass in place or manipulating it while machining individual pieces with your various brass cutting tools becomes extremely tiresome especially if you're doing a variety of operations in the same day. Once your fingers are gassed out, your ability to keep tight tolerances slips and you end up causing more errors than otherwise. It's extremely important to avoid putting yourself into a situation where you end up with a repetitive motion injury from constantly pinching and squeezing brass under tool use.

The first step to avoiding fatigue is to rest as much as possible- try to be as physically lazy as you can without skipping steps. If you're prepping brass and using tools you tend to lean forward- try to avoid this by sitting instead of standing. Rest bones, arms, elbows on tables and brace against things. Drop brass into collection boxes rather than expend fine motor fatigue by trying to place things precisely. Avoid directly cutting or modifying brass by hand when you have power tools; nearly all steps of brass prep can be done with a power drill or drill press instead of your hands, so let the machine tire out instead of you. Try to avoid freely supporting tools in your hands when you can rest them on your legs or on a table. Every little bit helps and the more fatigue you're able to avoid, the more efficient your reloading setup will be and you'll be able to actually load more ammo.

EXTRA STUFF

Other things that may be important later if you decide to get further into reloading would include an annealing system, case gages [that's how they're spelled], a case neck trimmer, an electronic powder dispenser, a progressive press, an electrically powered press station, a bullet casting system, a pressure tester for your press- in short, you can waste an endless sum of money buying crap you'll use for 20 rounds while still flinching after the second trigger pull.
As someone who's purchased a lot of this stuff I can share what was useful for me and what wasn't.

CASE NECK TRIMMER


Brass trimming is done to bring the case OAL down to normal specifications. You can trim a case to be shorter than normal spec if you like, usually by ~.01-.02 in tolerances. The reason you'd do this is because cases expand when fired; the pressure squishes them to match the chamber of the gun they were fired in and the only way out is down the barrel.
So, most cases will grow a little bit every time they're fired as the brass from everywhere else in the case is forced out through pressure. This is problematic because it will sometimes render a case out of spec, potentially causing dangerous overpressure issues (as the gas can't escape down the barrel as easily if the casing is obstructing more of the barrel) or more likely causing feeding problems in the gun. If you're lazy like me, you trim down by .02 or so and call it a day. I will always post my case OAL with my handloads and you may find they deviate from SAAMI spec because of this personal preference. Trimming brass isn't always necessary if you're using once-fired brass and rarely needed for new brass, but you should always check the case OAL with your calipers before loading.
Usually, straight-walled cases such as old school "revolver rounds" and pistol rounds like 9mm luger, .45 ACP, 10mm auto, .40 S&W, etc. won't need trimming as they barely expand during the firing process, but most rifle rounds outside of super low pressure stuff will need to be trimmed at least once.

There are three main options for brass trimmers - a universal trimmer, a caliber-specific trimmer, or a tri-way power trimmer. Universal trimmers are basically a miniature tabletop lathe that's either hand cranked or chucked up on a drill. They can accomodate any caliber but are slow, fairly expensive ($130+ ish), and not suitable for batches larger than 50-100 pieces of brass. Doing any reloading work by hand will get you extremely fatigued very quickly- if you can get a powered tool, always try to do so. A caliber specific trimmer is generally an end mill bit attached to some sort of contraption that simulates the neck and chamber of a cartridge; you attach it to a hand drill or more suitably a drill press and push brass cases into it until there's no sound of metal being removed. These will hurt your hands over time, especially if you don't wear gloves, but are significantly faster than a universal trimmer and can be cheaper- the cheapest ones I've used were off eBay and clocked at around $30 per. If you only load one or two rifle calibers this is a decent alternative. The last and best option is a Giraud Tri-Way trimmer- these are also caliber specific but contain a storage reservoir for holding brass shavings so they don't get in your everything at the workbench and on top of that they will deburr and chamfer the case neck as part of their trimming operation, saving you a LOT of time and muscle strain. They're $100+ per piece but if you actually are trying to churn out large amounts of brass, it's totally worth it.

BRASS ANNEALER


An optional but recommended first step for bottlenecked cases is annealing. Annealing is a means of reducing the brittleness of your brass. When a cartridge is fired the brass is forced to expand to fit the chamber it's in; when you resize it it is forced back to normal dimensions. This mechanical work on the casing causes it to become increasingly brittle from work hardness- think bending the neck of a teaspoon or a paper clip back and forth, over and over. Eventually the metal will snap and if this happens in your chamber, this leads to a particularly nasty jam. However, by re-heating the brass to a high temperature you break down the chemical process of work hardness which will not only make it easier to re-size your brass but ensures that it'll last through more firings without case neck separation due to the material being restored to its earlier malleability. There are two common means of doing this; the torch method or the induction method.

Torching (torch-ering) brass involves using a heated gas torch like a propane or MAPP torch and giving the neck of the case a once-over while rotating the brass. This is the cheapest method and is extremely straightforward; cook the brass until you see the inside of the neck change color to a more reddish-orange, make sure to rotate it while you do so, drop the brass into a bucket of water. You typically wear welding gloves and handle the brass directly while doing this and if you've read the "fatigue management" section of this, you can already tell that this method will be good for maybe fifty, sixty pieces tops before you start to wear out. Hand methods for brass work can be consistent if you're consistent- it's not impossible, but consistent in a single period of work versus consistent over years is a much harder target to hit. There are more refined means of using torches to anneal brass; a popular device looks somewhat like a lazy susan and spins the brass around on a rotating table while the shellholders themselves spin as the bits of brass pirouette around a pair of tirches, but these devices are very expensive.

Induction annealing uses an induction coil to heat up brass extremely quickly. This is the method that I use because the setup cost isn't very high and can be built to high consistency if done right. "Building" a brass induction heater can easily be done by rigging up an off the shelf auto shop induction heater used for freeing stuck bolts onto a relay-controlled timer. I didn't invent this myself, having copied the following video to build an identical setup. I use different widths and overall lengths of coil for different calibers, but because my two main standard calibers that I have to go out of my way to fuck with are .308 and .223 I haven't made any more than two. These are also the only calibers I actually own brass trimmers for. You could anneal straight walled brass if you really wanted to, but the main utility comes from being able to reduce the extreme strain that bottlenecked cases go through as part of the resizing process.