Archive for March 2013

Reloading

For the reloading portion of this class, I chose to do 100 rounds of 12ga shotshell, 100 rounds of .40 S&W (pistol) and 100 rounds of .308 Winchester (rifle). I have reloaded pistol and rifle ammunition before so the only new experience was doing the shotgun ammunition. There is a lot of information available about reloading so I am not going into a lot of detail here.

 

For the shotshell, I chose a fairly low charge as I have older shotguns. I used previously fired AA plastic hulls,  WAA12SL wads and a 1 oz. of lead Shot. The powder used was 15.8 grains of Clays and the primers CCI 209SC. According to Hodgdon’s reloading data this should generate 7,500 PSI  and a velocity of  1125 ft/s. I used a MEC progressive press.

Shot shell reloading

Completed 12ga shot shells

A change for me in the pistol ammunition was the use of cast lead bullets instead of jacketed bullets. The load date came from the Lee reloading manual. I used 6.2 grains of Unique powder, and a 155 grain bullet which should give a velocity of 1021 ft/s. I used my own Lee single stage reloading press.

Measuring powder for pistol reloads

Completed pistol rounds

For the .308, I used 44 grains of Hodgdon BL-C2, Remington primers and Hornady 150 BT (Boat Tail) FMJ (Full Metal Jacket) bullets. Again, I used my Lee single stage press to do all the reloading.

Half of the completed .308

I did shoot samples from all of these and did not have any issues with any of them.