Making Time to Reload

One of the most common excuses given for not getting into reloading, is that there just isn't enough time to set aside in order to reload properly. There are a number of steps which absolutely shouldn't be performed while distracted, but the vast majority of the steps are perfectly safe to perform while watching TV, etc.

When I was a boy, my grandfather used to spend his evenings in front of the TV in a recliner, with an old smooth wooden board across the arms of the recliner. He spent his evenings in front of the TV, drinking coffee and playing solitaire with a deck of paper cards.

As an adult, when I watch TV it's usually with a laptop. I've been known to resize brass while watching TV, but processing brass is a time-consuming activity which used to carve a chunk out of my reloading time. While important, brass processing is a more or less automatic process which does not require careful attention. Once you've got a well-calibrated trimmer, operating it requires no great amount of attention.

Thinking carefully about my grandfather's solitaire habit, I realized that there was no reason his kind of setup couldn't be applied to brass preparation. I took a thick board from a construction project and drilled some holes in the center to mount an RCBS Trim Mate manual trimmer.

Speed Considerations

Be aware that this article isn't about reloading quickly. I own thousands of dollars of high-speed, rapid reloading equipment. I've got a casefeeder-equipped Dillon 650, a Dillon RT-1200B trimmer and a Giraud power trimmer for whatever I don't own the Dillon dies for. Manual reloading has absolutely nothing on the automatic machine-driven processes for speed. If you own a progressive press, the main benefit you'll derive from this process is not having to do the brass preparation on your press. This means not reconfiguring your press, and may mean you won't actually end up buying the automatic brass prep gear. However, all of this equipment has something in common: it's loud.

The Steps of Reloading

Reloading any brass requires several steps:

Step	Manual Attention
Cleaning	Unattended
Resizing	Minor
Trimming	Minor
Chamfering	Minor
Deburring	Minor
Swaging	Minor
Priming	Moderate
Charging	Absolute
Seating	Major
Crimping	Major
Tumbling	Unattended

Resizing

Although I contemplated setting up a horizontal press configuration, I opted to use the Lee hand press. Once you've got the dies adjusted correctly, there's no harm in resizing your brass while doing something else. Not only does this provide an excellent workout, but it's entirely quiet.

-- SeanNewton - 02 Feb 2009