Progressive reloaders

[Ammo dump]

Question for you progressive reloaders.
I am getting ready to make the upgrade from single stage to a dillon, all the youtube videos I have watched are showing the process all the way through. Sized/deprime, prime, charge, seat, and crimp. My question is, when do you case gauge and trim if needed? My thinking was to size and deprime on single stage, prep cases and then run them thru the dillon or am I missing something?

 

[jglenn]

pretty much what I do for 308 on my 550

I do use their 1500 Sizer/trimmer to prep the cases.

 

[Kman]

I wonder that myself. I have the Dillon 550, the turret is manualy turned. I can scream through pistol calibers, but rifle has a lot of brass prep so your not going to run through a bunch of rounds until your brass is Prepped. I'm new to reloading, but a single stage is definitely needed to compliment your progressive press. I have a lot to learn, so I could be off base.

 

[gh1950]

You still have to prep the brass before reloading. As mentioned, pistol brass, especially straight wall stuff, is a no brainer because it usually doesn't require prep, especially if you are using carbide dies (and you should).

I still keep a single stage set up, because it's a lot easier checking seating depth, COAL, and all those things, I perfect my load on the single stage, then convert all the measurements to the Dillon.

Honestly, if your are going to just shoot a few, a single stage will load rifle rounds as fast a a Dillon if you count set up time.

 

[Clarke123]

Yep, the truth is that progressives are great with pre-prepared brass ... and that can amount to a bunch of time!
But, if your objective is to "do-it-right", have the best / safest reloads possible; then it is time well spent!
While there are short-cuts to brass prep (like carbide dies), lube is usually still needed (especially for rifle brass)
unless you are Godzilla ... which means you should clean the brass after resizing / de-cap / primer hole clearing.
Then, just a few untrimmed pieces can screw-up your seating and crimping (especially with something like Colt LC)
Being paranoid, I take extra time to manually gauge each piece of brass in a case gauge so as to insure that it all
in a batch are exactly the same length, and that "nothing has been overlooked". Remember, it only takes one mistake to ruin your weapon, or possibly your life!

So, "free" brass sometimes isn't such a bargain! Then again, I still gauge each and every piece before loading it!

My 2 cents worth ...

 

[Nuke And Juke]

I have a LNL and 650XL. Pistol case prep is next to none. If you have to trim a pistol brass, it's probably cheaper to toss it and get anuder.

For riffle, you have to watch specific videos on riffle prep. There are several methods all depending which you choose.

There is the dillon RT 1200/1500 method
There is the hornady LNL pocket swagger
There is the frankfurt arsenal trimmer/swager method.
The Giraud method is also pretty cool but you still have to swage the primer pocket

All depends on how much you wanna spend (which is determined by how much you wanna reload and shoot).

They all work, but it comes down to pennies per round as long as you pre-deterimine how many rounds.

If you shoot 20,000 rounds of 223/556, then spend the money. if not, choose your price entry point

 

[jeep78]

Universal Decapper die, then clean, then size so you are not running dirty brass through your sizer.

On your progressive, you want all your rifle cases fully prepped first. Same for any handgun round that has tight tolerances as to length.

 

[palmettomoon]

I decap, tumble clean (SS pins), full length resize with SB dies (Rockchucker), clean again in corn cob, trim, chamfer and deburr on a Giraud trimmer, case gauge to insure fit, then onto the annealing machine. Only then are they ready for progressive reloading.

 

[ngcsugrad09]

For rifles you're running through two processes on the Dillon.

After you clean the brass, it's mass case luging. For volume stuff like 223 and 308 I neck size and decap in the first station to help with and dented necks and drop the old primer, and then run through the Dillon trimmer on the first run. Because of the trimmer, I've found you get a very tight neck with the Dillon body trim die.

You'll have to clean off the lube, then I'll have a neck sizer or mandrel on the loading head to get the neck tension I want right as I'm loading.

 

[watchingtrace]

On 223 ackley,i neck size only. I keep a side box of brass with imperial on the necks. I run a lubes case through every 5 or so. I deprime , size necks,prime, powder,seat proj,and into tray. This is an ackleyd cartridge in a bolt gun though.