Wednesday, January 9, 2019

A productive day


I cut scrubby trees that were just outside the pasture fence. I toppled the trees over into the pasture. The largest ones were about 5" in diameter.

Then I trimmed the poles and tossed the branches back out of the pasture. I dragged the poles over to the garden and left them.

Back to the reloading bench
I am still trying to find the point where my friend's AR coughs up a hairball. If you recall I had a steel, aftermarket magazine in my friend's rifle and it solidly puked at 20grains of H-4895.

I recognized that my data was compromised so I needed to replicate it with the factory supplied magazine.

I was sure it was 20.0 grains or more so I loaded up five each of 21.5gr, 21.0gr, 20.5gr and 20.0gr. The only failure was that the bolt did not lock when the magazine was empty.

Case prep
I stumbled across a thread on the internet

"Then I want to speed up the trimming of 223. I saw this Lee trimmer that goes in a die body and uses my drill. I have an RCBS power trimmer but this looks even faster."

Well, you know I had to check that out. I find that trimming brass is the most tedious part of reloading.

The trimmer loads in a press.
This is a detail of the cutter/deburring head. It can be powered by a drill motor. Available HERE
I am not sure how the system handles the chips that are generated. Maybe the smart money would be to get a cheap press and mount it horizontally and leave the drill motor running continuously.

You gotta love this guy. It looks like he repurposed one of his wife's slippers to be a chute from his prog reloader to his bin of finished goods.

I am envious of this guy's setup. His tool datums off the shoulders of the formed case which is how the rifle sees it. His case trimming operation starts at 3:26. I think the speed would be pretty easy to mimic with these Lee tools even if they datum off the base of the cartridge. Maybe when I get a few dollars ahead...

A trip to the gym
Mrs ERJ dragged me to the gym.

I am decrepit. I could only do 1/3 the number of push-up I was able to do two years ago. Don't ask about running.

I will be a sore puppy tomorrow and Friday.

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