Getting Started Reloading Guide

I like P.F. Chang’s and my favorite dish is the Chang’s Spicy Chicken. I usually order the pork dumplings (fried, of course) and the Spicy Chicken with brown rice. If I could eat that every day, I’d be happy…and probably dead at a very young age. Either way, I actually found the recipe for said dish online a while back and gave it a try. The resulting meal was almost indistinguishable from the restaurant dish and, in the grand scheme of things, was cheaper. The only difference was the extra effort that it took to cook that meal at home, as opposed to driving for a few minutes and ordering it.

If you really think about it, there aren’t many things that you can buy that you can’t make yourself as long as you can get the components of said product. From food to computers to cars, if you have the know-how and time, you can usually save money doing it yourself. You see where this is going? For those that want to put forth the effort, reloading your own ammo can be a very fun and rewarding hobby within a hobby. Not only do you get the satisfaction of using ammo that you yourself made but, in the long run, there is the potential to save some money also.

But wait! There’s more!

Saving money isn’t the only reason to get into reloading, and shouldn’t be. Reloading gives you the ability to customize your rounds to suit your needs. You see, the chambers of a gun aren’t as standard as we would like to think. Different manufacturers have different ideas of how their chambers should be shaped and they do this for multiple reasons. They want to be able to accommodate as many different bullet brands and styles as they can and they want them all to work reliably with their barrels. So if you always use the same kind of powder and the same kind of bullet, you can adjust your press to get more accurate shots than you would ever get from a factory made cartridge.

More on that later, however. Today, we’re talking about getting started and the equipment you’re going to need.

As you can see, there are lots of reasons to reload but there are a few reasons why you shouldn’t. If you’re not big on tedious work, reloading might not be for you. If you don’t like experimenting and quality assurance testing, you might not want to get started. If you’re nervous about being around potentially volatile and poisonous chemicals, just keep buying your stuff pre-made.

Notice also that I haven’t flat out said “it’s cheaper to reload”. In the grand scheme of things, it has the potential to save you a great deal of money but there’s a couple of catches with that. First off, you have to buy a lot of equipment. Depending on how much you shoot and what caliber of bullet, it could be a long time before your savings pay for the initial costs.

For example, I’m reloading .45 ammo at the moment. Now arguably, .45 is the most cost effective of the common calibers to reload yourself. When you reload, it’s also the most cost effective to buy supplies in the 1000 round or more quantity. If I look online, in today’s market, the best price I can find .45 ammo in is $0.58 per round. With the supplies I just purchased (bullets, primers and powder), I calculate $0.20 per round. That’s a $380 savings once I load those 1000 rounds! Also keep in mind, a small bottle of smokeless powder will sometimes last more than 1000 rounds, depending on your charge. If you’re reloading something like 9mm, however, the savings won’t be as drastic but they’ll still be there.

Considering I’ve spent almost $400 on the initial equipment and supplies, it’s going to be another 1000 rounds of .45 before I’ve saved the equivalent of my initial cost. Your mileage may vary but it’s something to keep in mind.

The main thing right off the bat is to figure out what kind of reloading you’re going to want to do. I would highly HIGHLY recommend starting with handgun ammo. It’s the easiest to reload and it requires fewer components when starting out. Also, you’re going to get a lot more use out of handgun brass than rifle brass. We’ll go in depth about rifle reloading in a future guide. For now, we’re going to be talking about handgun reloading.

As far as caliber, well, what handguns do you have the most of? While the press itself can be used for any caliber, things like the dies, plates and feeders are caliber specific.

No matter what, there’s some things you’re going to absolutely need to get started. Yes, I know there are kits out there that advertise “everything you need to start reloading”. Don’t trust them. Even Hornady’s “Lock-N-Load Classic” kit is missing a couple of things that will make your life easier and, more importantly, safer.

So for starters, you’re going to need a press and the necessary dies to go along with it. If you like to live dangerously, you can stop there. I wouldn’t recommend it, however, unless you enjoy replacing destroyed guns and taking trips to the E.R. on a regular basis.

If you want your ammo to actually be usable, you’re also going to need a reloading scale and some gauges. The scale allows you to verify your powder amounts.

Let me back up for a moment…

From this point forward, you’re going to be living, breathing, eating and sleeping “grains (gr)”. A grain, as we explained in the Bullet Terminology Guide, is a unit of measurement equivalent to 1/7000 of a pound. It is a very precise measurement and everything bullet related is measured this way. As an example, the powder I’m using recommends a 6.5 grain charge for the cartridge. That doesn’t mean I’m counting out six and a half little pellets every time I load a cartridge. I’m weighing out 6.5 thousandths of a pound. Needless to say, it’s a surprisingly small amount of powder. A scale that’s made to handle that minuscule of an amount is important. Even though mine is a cheap one, it’s still so sensitive that the moving wind from my ac vent on the ceiling across the room can affect the reading. Some scales have a hood you can place on them to make sure there’s no interference.

A case gauge is also important. It looks like a little steel cylinder and you use it to test out finished cartridges. If you drop the cartridge into the gauge and it fits, you can be sure that it will fit in the chamber of pretty much any pistol out there. They don’t cost much and you should have one for every caliber you reload.

At some point or another, you’re going to want to clean your brass. Clean brass cycles in and out of the chambers better and, if it’s clean on the inside, the powder will burn better as well. On top of that, there’s something about seeing a big pile of super shiny cartridges. The general consensus is to clean your brass every time you use it. There’s a few options for this and each have their own strengths and weaknesses and price tags. We’ll cover those later but for now you’ve got 3 options: a vibrating tumbler with a cornmeal polishing medium, a rotating tumbler with steel medium, and a sonic cleaner. Some methods work better than others. It’s generally accepted that the rotating tumbler with the steel medium is the best. As a good buddy of mine put it once: “I use steel because I like my brass to shine like C-3PO”. Personally, I’m using the cornmeal and vibrating tumbler because that was all I could afford at the moment.

One thing that isn’t mentioned often is the need for a good workbench. The reloading press isn’t something you can just clamp on to your dining room table. It needs to be bolted on to a very stable surface with enough room for the articulating arm to do a full range of motion. Lee makes a small platform that you and bolt to the floor or weigh down. Harbor freight makes some great workbenches for less than $150. If you’re the handy type, you can make your own even. If you’re cheap and lazy, get an old door, attach it to some cheap sawhorses and attach those to the ground somehow.

Safety glasses are also a must. You see, primers are amazingly volatile little things. If you get a good rhythm going and are pushing the handle with the correct force and a little on the fast side…well… sometimes those primers can get in there crooked. Then here comes Mr. Plunger at a brisk page and BAM! The primer explodes on the bench with enough force that it could set off other primers. Then you have all these little pieces of shrapnel flying all over the place. You’re going to have a hard time reloading and then shooting your reloads if you can’t see anymore.

While we’re talking about safety items, latex gloves or surgeons gloves might not be a bad idea either. Lead, mercury, nitroglycerin, bismuth and potassium chloride are present in not-insignificant amounts in the reloading components. Many of those are easily absorbed through the skin. Better safe than sorry, if you ask me.

Last but not least, you’re going to need a bullet puller. I’m not going to beat around the bush here: you’re going to mess up at some point. More than likely it’ll be as you’re getting started. Even long time reloaders mess them up from time to time also. Your primer feeder might get stuck. Humidity might get the best of your powder feeder. Something might slip on one of your dies. You don’t have to throw that cartridge away. Just pull the bullet and start it over. The two main styles is one that looks like a hammer and uses physics to remove the bullet and the other actually installs into your press and the bullet is pulled using the almost same mechanical method that put it in there in the first place. I have the hammer style at the moment but after having to pull about 30 bullets because I found out my powder feeder wasn’t working, I’ll be investing in the other style shortly.

The only thing you’ll need from here on out is the components: brass, bullets, primers and powder. We’ll talk more about those as well as the individual items we’ve covered here in future guides. For now, start pricing out what you need and start thinking about how much reloading you want to do. Those factors are going to really affect what you get from here on out.