When it comes to handloading ammo for a precision rifle, I know shooters who live for the hunt. There are guys at my club who have shot out more than one barrel looking for the ultimate load. They do test after test and never settle on a load. They’re always looking for the one that’s just a little bit better. That’s fine if that’s what trips your trigger. (Bad pun was intended. Sorry.)
But, that ain’t me. I don’t like shoots ‘n ladders or endless testing. I’ve developed loads for rifles for half a century and have gotten pretty good at finding a good one fairly quickly. I suppose I maybe could squeeze out another tenth of an inch off my 100-shot average, but I like to get to the long-range shooting part.
For my precision rifles, I find a load that works and quit looking. My guideline is if I am getting ½ MOA pretty much on demand and an occasional group that is close to half that, I’m done looking.
So, I’m assuming that you have all that out of your system and have a load that you likeand now it’s time to fill the coffers with ammo.
I use this process for a lot of precision rifle cartridges from .223 Remington through .338 Lapua. If you’re looking for a deep dark secret, it’s not here. Like most things in life, it’s all about attention to details and perfecting the basics.
Good ammo starts with the case. There have been rumors of one case brand being far better than another floating around the shooting world for as long as I have handloaded, which is a long time. But they have never been proven true to me. Sometimes a bad lot shows up, but usually any brand name works pretty well. The key is to stick with one, not mix and match. In these days of shortages, we can’t be fussy anyway. Which one? The one you have.
My .308 Winchester and .300 Winchester Magnum loads use Federal cases. For the 6.5 Creedmoor – the precision rifle cartridge I load most – I use mostly Hornady brass. They invented the cartridge and besides I shipped a few thousand empty cases home from a shooting school I attended some years back. I had a double knee replacement that winter and spent much of the recovery time prepping brass. As they say, I am set for life on that one. I also use Hornady cases for my 6mm Creedmoor. This is a rifle I built before the cartridge was introduced. Hornady had the only ammo for a long time, and I ended up with a lot of once-fired Hornady brass. For precision .223 Remington, I like Nosler brass. It goes on, but my decision was always based on what I had the most of at the time. What I’m saying is simply that I don’t think it matters much if you prep the brass before loading.
The trick is to have the brass all the same brand and style and, if possible, from the same lot. You can weigh each case to cull out any outliers.
I prefer once-fired brass that was fired in the gun for which I’m loading the ammo. The brass can be reloaded again of course, but this article is about the treatment I have for the first time loading the case.
If the brass has been fired in the rifle for which I’m loading, I neck size my brass with a neck sizer die. If the brass was fired in another rifle, I use a case that has been fired in my rifle to set the full-length sizing die to just kiss the shoulder. That way any case that wasfired in an oversized chamber will be sized to fit in my gun – at least in terms of headspacing. This technique is acceptable to use for future loading if you don’t have or want to buy a neck sizer. It’s probably the standard today for long-range rifle shooters as I think neck sizing has fallen from grace a bit.
Any new brass is run through the adjusted full-length sizing die. This fixes any bent mouths or other defects. The shoulder will probably not be contacted this time as new brass is likely at the short end of the tolerance. The only way to fix that is to load and shoot the case. The next time the shoulder will be consistent with that rifle.
Unless it’s new, clean the brass. Dirty brass can damage the sizing die and cause other problems. Then resize it and clean it again to remove the lubricant. I’ve tried most of the new approaches to cleaning rifle brass, ultrasonic, stainless-steel pins, etc., but I still like ground corncob in a vibrating cleaner the best. I might be an old boomer stuck in my ways, but I like to think it’s the voice of experience.
Use dial calipers to find the shortest brass case in the lot. Assuming it is shorter than the maximum length allowed, set the case trimmer to just kiss the case mouth enough clean it up. If it’s long, trim to the suggested trim-to length. Then trim every case to exactly that length.
I once paid a high school kid very well to trim cases, but he quit after a day because it was boring. It’s not my favorite thing either, but it’s necessary.
If you are a volume loader, the Dillon Rapid Trim Case Trimmer is the best way I have found to do this hateful chore. I keep mine on a Rock Chucker press that is dedicated to the trimmer. Because it indexes off the head of the cartridge case rather than the shoulder like some other power trimmers, the consistency is excellent. Remember, consistency in all things is the key to accurate ammo.
The case mouth must be deburred inside and out with a small bevel placed on the inside edge. I find that the primer cups are often not consistent. Ream the primer pockets so they are all exactly the same depth and are square on the bottom. I think this makes a difference in accuracy. If a primer is not seated with all three legs of the anvil supported with equal pressure, there will be a decline in accuracy and an increase in standard deviation numbers. Speaking of that, perhaps the most important tool you can have is a chronograph. The new Garmin Zero C1 radar is the Cat’s Meow! Simply the best I have tried.
The next step is to ream and deburr the primer flash hole to a consistent size. If you have premium cases with drilled flash holes, you can probably skip this step. Most cases,though, have the flash hole punched through and will require a little clean up for the best results.
All this can be done with hand tools. If you are only loading a few rounds, that’s fine. But if, like me, you’re loading several hundred rounds at a time for each of several rifles,electricity is your friend.
I have an antique RCBS Case Prep Center that is as old as Methuselah. It grinds, squeals,and sounds like a broken transmission on a ’68 Volkswagen, but after an estimated trillionor so cases it doesn’t owe me anything. This multi-station power tool can do everything needed at this point to finish with the case prep. It will debur outside and inside of the case mouth. I use the 22 degree VLD cutter for the inside work to put a slight bevel inside the case mouth so bullets will seat without shaving. Then I ream and deburr the flash hole. I flip the case over and end with the primer pocket reamer. While you may need to trimand deburr the case mouth again after multiple loadings the flash hole and primer pocket are one and done.
So now the case is ready for loading. All this handling means each case has beeninspected multiple times and you should have found any defects.
I use a hand-held priming tool because it gives me the most control. I seat the primer until I can feel it firmly against the bottom of the primer pocket. Too much pressure can crush the primer and break the compound inside, and too little results in high primers.
I like to weigh every single charge of powder. For many years I used a scale and a powder tricker. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach as it’s just about foolproof, except it’s a bit time consuming.
Electronic powder charge dispensers changed everything once they became mainstream.The trouble with any electronic dispenser I’ve tried is that they are slow. I spend far too much time waiting for the thing to finish. Over the years I upgraded when the newer models came out. The old one just sat on a shelf unloved, until I found that if I used both of my RCBS machines and alternated they could keep up with me seating the bullets with no waiting. I worried about two different machines dispensing the powder, so I checked and double checked on the charge weight accuracy. I could never find any issues and the charge weights between them stayed consistent and accurate. I calibrate both scales every time I use the machines and I cross check the charge weight with each machine at start up and every 50 rounds.
Once a case is charged, I seat the bullet. After fully seating the bullet, rotate the case 180 degrees in the shell holder and seat it again. This helps correct any misalignment and it corrects any spring back. If you seat only once, the spring back can cause small variances in cartridge overall length, which leads to accuracy issues. By seating the bullet twice with it rotated 180 degrees in between, most problems are eliminated. You can confirm this with a case measuring tool to check for concentricity. To check for cartridge overall length, it’s best to use a die that indexes off the ogive. If you have a consistentproblem, the solution is probably a new seating die. However, that’s rare with high quality seating dies.
The final step is more insurance. I check every single cartridge in a case checker die.With this approach to handloading any issues are rare, but they do happen. This step will find them, as well as allowing a final visual inspection.
I have a few plastic 100-round cases for each rifle that are filled with the ammo. The rest of the loaded ammo is kept in a plastic bucket. The two-gallon size is large enough for most stuff. But if I’m putting up a lot of ammo, I get the 5-gallon Homer Buckets from Home Depot. I stick a piece of masking tape with the load data and the date on the outside. As I use the ammo in the 100-round boxes, the empties are dumped into another bucket and the box is recharged from this bucket of bullets. It’s not that I can’t afford more boxes, (well, maybe it is) but that this method eats up a lot less storage area than stackingdozens of 100-round boxes.
It’s all about the shooting and the joy is in turning all this work back into empty cases.
