Rifle Gunpowder: Ball vs. Stick

When it comes to reloading rifle ammunition, the first choice to be made is whether to use stick or ball gunpowder. (Handgun ammunition is nearly always ball powder as we generally don't reload for long range pistol accuracy.) What follows is my own opinion, based on my decades of reloading rifle ammunition.

Why Two Kinds?

There are actually more than two kinds of gunpowder shapes, but stick and ball are the most common and effective for reloading. These powders have different burn characteristics due to varying compositions and grain sizes. 

• Stick powder, aka extruded powder, has larger rodlike grains. Think of how a spaghetti noodle is made, but chopped very short. Because of its surface to volume ratio, it needs fewer burn retardants to produce a smooth pressure curve. 
• Ball powder is made up of small, roundish grains whose volume are easily measured. Ball powder has more surface area that stick powder, so to mitigate its faster rate of combustion, powder manufacturers vary the amount of burn retardants to make the powder's pressure curve suit its final application. For an AR-15 this includes a maximum chamber pressure and a maximum and minimum gas port pressure. 

Image found on Reddit

Cost

When I started reloading decades ago, the cost difference between stick and ball powders for use in rifles was fairly close. However, current market conditions have made ball powders the “economy” option. For instance, an 8 lb jug of Winchester StaBall 6.5 Precision Rifle Smokeless Powder is currently $323 at Powder Valley Outdoors, while stick powder costs hundreds of dollars more: Shooter’s World 4350 costs $510 and IMR 4350 costs $462. This is primarily because of exchange rates and import costs. Ball powders are manufactured in the United States by the St. Marks factory in Florida, as well as around the world, such as Ramshot TAC from Belgium. 

However, stick powders aren’t manufactured in the United States at this time. The IMR line of powders comes from Valleyfield in Canada, and Shooter’s World Powders comes from Lovex in Europe. Other European powder companies include Norma, Vihtavuori, and more, and the Hodgdon Extreme line comes from ADI in Australia. 

This means that prices on stick powders will always fluctuate quite a bit with exchange rates between the Dollar and the Euro or the Australian Dollar, but only some ball powders will feel the impact of exchange rates. Exchange rates aside, the cost increases due to “supply and demand” seems to hit all powders equally. 

Accuracy

While ball powders are generally more cost-effective, stick powders tend to be slightly more accurate. The accuracy improvement isn’t  enough to matter for hunting, but may be just enough to score a few more points at shooting competitions.

For hunting, you want a rifle that will consistently place five shots under two inches at 100, and ball powders can easily achieve this with a standard workup. I know that a two Minutes Of Accuracy rifle and ammo combination sounds pretty lousy here in these days of “Sub-MOA Guarantee!” written right on the box holding your new rifle, but hunting bullets are designed for controlled expansion to provide good terminal performance, whereas match bullets are designed to make nice round holes in paper. In other words, they’re just built differently, so it’s useless to compare their performance. If your rifle can hit two MOA all day long with your hunting load, then you can make a “boiler room shot” on a deer out to 300 yards with confidence. 

Temperature Stability

Stick powders will generally be more temperature stable, meaning they exhibit less velocity shift with ambient temperature changes than ball powders. 6.5 StaBall is advertised as temperature stable, but in testing I found that it had significantly more velocity shift than Hodgdon’s H4350. However, 6.5 StaBall is more temperature stable than Reloader 15, a stick powder used in match ammunition, including M118LR sniper ammunition for the Department of Defense.

Final Recommendations

If you’re just starting in reloading, I recommend beginning with an economical ball powder as it’s easier to use with powder measures to get consistent charges. I’d be very surprised if you didn’t end up with a load that can consistently put five shots under 1.5 MOA after a normal load workup.

The time to spend the money on a premium stick powder is when you start winning competitions and still want to get better, or you’re going on that “hunt of a lifetime” in Africa or Alaska where you want your ammunition to perform more consistently across wild temperature swings.

Converting 7.62x51 brass to 6.5 Creedmoor

I shoot a lot of 5.56x45mm and 7.62x51mm ammunition. The 5.56 is mainly used in Service Rifle Competition (although I compete less than I used to), and the 7.62 for hunting because it’s still very economical to handload and will reliably kill any large game in North America.

Years ago I put together a Swedish M41 sniper rifle clone for NRA Vintage Sniper matches, and got into the “6.5 bore” that way. A lot of my friends in the service rifle boards were extolling the virtues of the 6.5 Creedmoor as an excellent deer/antelope/competition cartridge, and I decided that if the price was right I’d get one. 

However, due to contentious American politics combined with the COVID pandemic, both ammunition and reloading components have been “scarce.” For my birthday two years ago I bought a 100 round bag of Starline brand 6.5 CM brass, which eventually was used building a hunting load for an Army buddy because he couldn’t find commercial hunting ammunition for less than 4 dollars per round going into that year’s deer season. I put together a basic load with a 139gr PPU brand soft point, IMR 4064, and Winchester primers, and that ended up printing five shots under an inch from his hunting rifle. He was tickled pink, and passed my “reloading recipe” on to his brother so they can replicate it in the future.

Unfortunately, that left me with no 6.5 CM brass (a truly first world problem if there ever was one), since I started getting into the caliber at a bad time. I did have bags and bags of spent 7.62x51 brass waiting to be processed, though, I figured I would give converting some into 6.5 CM a try.

I crushed and ruined a lot of cases. Despite being very similar in dimensions, this isn’t as simple as turning .30-06 into 8x57 or .30-06 into .25-06. You always pay for an education — sometimes with tuition fees, sometimes with time, and sometimes with ruined supplies — but the education and skills you get from that payment are worth it. What eventually worked with the highest conversion percentage, is this process:

1. Clean the cases
2. De-prime the cases
3. Anneal the necks with a small propane torch
4. Remove the expander ball from the resizing die
5. Lubricate the cases
6. Slowly size down the cases in a single stage press (this is where you’ll crush shoulders if you don’t have enough lube, or have too much lube, or go too fast)
7. Add the expander ball back into the resizing die
8. Lubricate the inside of the case necks
9. Run the cases back through the resizing die enough to set the neck size to 6.5 mm (do not fully run them up since the necks are way too long at this point, you just need to open them back up enough to use the trim tool in the next step)
10. Trim the resized cases (I use the Lee system combined with a handheld drill, works just fine)
11. Deburr the case necks (inside and out) with a chamfer tool
12. Tumble to remove the lube
13. Anneal the case necks

Note: depending upon your rifle chamber, you may need a neck turning tool to decrease the outside diameter of the newly sized brass necks for safe operation at this point. I found out this brass worked fine in the LR-10 6.5 CM upper, but the necks were just a smidge too thick for the Ruger American Predator to chamber easily. Trust me that you don’t want any interference between your case necks and the chamber, as that mechanical squeeze massively increases chamber pressure. If your loads were close to top end, you’ll experience blown primers immediately.

In the end, I have 48 6.5 CM cases with the headstamp “FC 11” indicating their military surplus origins. It would have been an even 50 except I crushed a few cases learning the ins, outs, and feels of making a process that works with my tools. I also have nearly a hundred more with LC headstamps of various years which is enough to develop a decent hunting load.

The benefits of this conversion is that generally American military surplus 7.62x51 brass is consistently high quality and built to last being cycled through automatic firearms. The downside is that you often get reduced case volume because the brass is on the thick side, but that only matters to people who are looking to maximize velocity. With a 6.5 CM, or 7.62x51 for that matter, velocity is much less interesting than accuracy. If you can accurately put the bullet where you want, you can put meat on the table and score high in matches.

Now, do I recommend you go out and buy a 500 lb lot of 7.62x51 brass and do the conversion on your single stage press at home? No. In fact, unless you already have the 7.62 brass and a lot of time to do the conversion, I wouldn’t recommend conversion at all. Supplies are coming back in stock and I purchased 150 spent casings of “range brass” that netted me 104 Hornady brand 6.5 CM brass and 20 Federal brand which ended up on a buddy’s desk (hand loaders stick together!). 

I do however recommend that you run through the process enough times so that if you have to do it in the future, you can, while knowing how your dies work. The worst thing that could happen is breaking your tools without a way to replace them, in an economic disruption, while trying to learn a tricky conversion. Maybe the next “contentious political season” will cause another market disruption, and I’ll spend my weekends converting brass because I that’s the only way to have brass to shoot.

Tools Used
Press: RCBS Jr. Press (built in 1967 and still working, but nearly any press will do)
Dies: Hornady 6.5 CM dies, Lee universal decapping die
Lube: Hornady One Shot
Trimmer: Lee case length gauge and lock stud system, Ryobi brand cordless drill to spin them
Chamfer Tool: Lyman VLD chamfer tool
Case Tumbler: Lyman brand
Neck Turning Tool: K&M brand

Note: you may need to do a final sizing with a “Small Base Resizing Die” if your chamber is on the small side and the original 7.62x51mm brass was fired through a machine gun with a generous chamber; I found that about one in five converted brass had difficulty chambering in the Ruger American Predator. 

I use RCBS Small Base dies when this is necessary for my 5.56x45 service loads, and so I picked up a set for the 6.5 CM. They make chambering a cartridge from the magazine a breeze, and if you reload for a “gas gun” you’ll eventually need a small base die set to avoid chambering issues on the firing line. I don’t anticipate needing to use the SB dies for any of the loads shot solely in the Ruger since the cartridges aren’t being extracted under pressure, and so the Hornady dies will do the bulk of work for that rifle.

Reloading: Brass Cleaning

One of the things I mentioned in my reloading overview post was starting with clean cartridge cases. The importance of using clean brass cannot be overstated.

When fired, the inside and outside of a cartridge case is covered in gunshot residue (GSR). Gunshot residue is primarily the result of incomplete combustion of smokeless powder, possibly combined with any lubricant used on the bullet or in the bore of the gun. If fired in a semiautomatic firearm, the case will also pick up grit and debris from landing on the ground. 

All of these contaminants are much more likely to damage your reloading dies by scratching their insides, and they also increase your chance of getting a case stuck. This means that your cases need to be cleaned well. Luckily for you, there are several ways to achieve this goal.

L-R: Dirty; vibratory cleaned; wet cleaned cases

The most common type of brass cleaning equipment is the traditional vibratory case cleaner, which is made up of a bowl that contains the cleaning media and the brass on top and an off balance electric motor underneath. In operation, the motor generates vibrations which propagate through the bowl, causing friction between the media and the brass, scrubbing off contaminants.

 

Vibratory Case Cleaner

These cleaners are sold either on their own, or as part of a kit that includes a media separator. (An even simpler media sifter is also available.) Speaking of media, there are two types available: corn cob and crushed walnut hull.

• Corn cob media is softer and generally less expensive. While it doesn’t clean as efficiently as crushed walnut hull, it does produce shinier brass. 
• Even though the price for corn cob media is fairly reasonable, blast media is basically the same thing and can be found for an even lower cost.
• Crushed walnut hull media is more aggressive in cleaning, but doesn’t generate as shiny a finish. However, it is usually more expensive than corn cob. 
• Lizard litter for reptile terrariums is generally the exact same stuff, but at a lower price.

Brass polish can be added to either type of media if shinier brass is desired.

Corn Cob (L) and Walnut (R) cleaning media

An alternative that’s been getting more popular over the past decade or so is wet tumbling using stainless steel pins as the media. The canister is loaded with brass, water, pins, and any additional cleaner (I use a couple tablespoons of dish detergent), then put on the base unit which rolls the drum for a set amount of time agitating the contents and cleaning the brass. This can produce brass that is nearly as clean as unfired, factory-new cases.

Wet Tumbler with Stainless Steel Pins and Magnet

Separation of the stainless steel pins from the brass is a bit more involved than with the dry media system, and a magnet can be very helpful. The brass and pins will also require a drying stage, either by letting them sit out to air dry, or run through some form of heated drying system.

A tumbler style brass cleaner for use with either dry or wet media can also be made at home. There are a variety of designs, such as this one; other designs use a robust electric motor (like those found on treadmills), a five gallon bucket, a gamma seal lid, and a few other components.

Hopefully this information is interesting and useful to those of our readers who are considering getting into reloading, are new to reloading, or even those who are already experienced reloaders.

In the meantime, keep your powder dry and your brass clean.

Cartridge Conversion

Returning to my series on reloading, another concept in this area is modifying one cartridge case into another chambering, perhaps even a brand new one.

If the result is a brand new case design, it’s called wildcatting. Many commercial cartridges we know today started their lives as wildcats, including the .22-250 Remington, 7 mm-08 Remington, .300 Blackout, and others. In some instances, the wildcat cartridge was developed in cooperation with commercial industry, such as the .357 Magnum, .44 Magnum, .221 Fireball, and more.

The conversion process can be fairly simple, or it can be considerably more complex. It may involve necking the parent case up or down for a different diameter projectile, moving the shoulder forward or back, changing shoulder angle, adjusting case taper, trimming case length, modifying rim dimensions, or any combination of these steps. A good general guide can be found here.

L-R: Original .223 case, resized case, cut and
deburred .300 Blackout case (streaks are from case lube)

I’ll start with one of the simpler conversions, .223 Remington* to .300 Blackout. 

1) Sort, deprime, and clean the brass.

2) Resize the case. To start this step, I apply a dab of case lube to the first case, then run it into a .300 Blackout sizing die.  This can take some force, so I use an O-Frame press as they’re stronger. 

Not every case needs to be lubed; I’ve found I only need to apply it every three to five cases with carbide dies.

3) Once the cases have been run through the .300 Blackout dies, they need to be rough cut slightly oversize. I use a small chop saw I bought at Harbor Freight.  There are jigs available to hold and position the cases on the saw bed (like this one or this one), but I made my own out of some scrap wood and a couple of brass screws. More recently, I 3-D printed a trim jig for more precision.

4) After the cases have been rough cut, they are trimmed to final length. Again, there are several different tools available for this step. I like the Lee Precision trimmer that can be used with my drill press, and each cartridge has its own Case Length Gauge and Shell Holder.

5) The final step at this stage is deburring and chamfering the case mouth. I use a classic RCBS hand deburring tool. Once this is done I clean the cases in a vibratory tumbler with corn cob media to remove the lubricant and any brass shavings.

6) In this particular conversion, there’s an optional step that can be done before sizing; in other conversions, it’s an absolute necessity. It’s called annealing. Brass work-hardens and becomes brittle with use, and case conversion can heavily work the brass. Annealing reduces the chance of cases splitting during the conversion process and can also increase case life as well.

For those interested, there’s a discussion in the Reloading section on AR15.com on making your own DIY Annealing machine.  I haven’t done this yet, but it’s on my list.

Once the brass is converted to .300 Blackout, it can be shot and reloaded multiple times.  If and when the case finally fails, it’s usually due to the case neck or mouth splitting due to work hardening. At that point, the brass can be discarded, or it can be trimmed and sized further to be used in .380 ACP handguns.

Converting .223 Remington to .300 Blackout is one of the more simple and straight forward case conversion. A much more involved one is converting 24 Gauge Magtech Brass Shotshells to .577/450 Martini–Henry; here is a good video of the process.

That conversion requires multiple sizing and annealing steps due to the considerably more significant changing of dimensions and therefore increased work hardening of the brass.

For other conversions, it may be necessary to redimension the case rim or extractor groove.  This is best done on a lathe as the amount of material to be removed is precise, and if the rim needs to be made thinner, material is generally removed from the inside of the rim, by which I mean the portion of the rim opposite the case head.

Obviously there’s much more to this topic then I can cover here.  If the idea of converting one cartridge case to another interests you, there are a number of resources available both in print and online. The two I reference the most are Cartridges of the World and The Handloader's Manual of Cartridge Conversions.

Case conversion is an excellent way to not only get some older firearms shooting again, but is also a great way to learn more about the family relationship between some otherwise very different cartridges.

Have fun, and safe shooting!

* 5.56mm cases can also be used, but they have two additional concerns. The first is that the primers may be crimped in place, and removing the crimping is an extra step. The other has to do with case wall thickness: since the case length is trimmed back significantly, case wall thickness may become an issue when the new case neck is formed. This can increase neck tension which can lead to increased pressures when firing.

Chamber Casting

The purpose of making a chamber casting is to get the internal dimensions and learn information about a firearm chamber. This information includes: 

1. Does the chamber have any damage or excessive wear that might cause function and reliability issues?
2. What are its chamber measurements for optimizing reloading?
3. Which details are needed to make a custom bullet mold?
4. Does the marking on the barrel match the actual chamber on a used, and possibly modified, firearm?

Since it's nearly impossible to measure the inside of a chamber with conventional tools, standard procedure is to make a chamber casting that results in a negative impression of the chamber and is much easier to measure. These measurements should be the same as the inside dimensions of the chamber.

The most common material available used for making a chamber cast is sold under the trade name Cerrosafe. It’s an alloy of bismuth, lead, tin, and cadmium and is available from Brownells as well as other vendors.

The most important attributes of chamber casting metal are:

• A low melting point, generally between 160 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit. 
• It  must also shrink slightly as it cools for ease of removal, yet an hour or so after casting it returns to its cast size for accurate measurement. 
• When employed properly, it’s nearly infinitely reusable.

An ingot of Cerrosafe, as sold by Brownells

Making a chamber casting is fairly straightforward, but it does require some preparation and care:

1. Make sure the barrel and chamber are clean and dry.
2. Remove any parts, such as the bolt, that would prevent easy access to the barrel. If possible, remove the barrel from the gun.
3. From the muzzle end of the barrel, insert a patch jag with a snug fitting patch to form a plug for the casting material. The plug should not be too snug, or it could complicate removal, nor too loose as that could allow casting metal to leak past. Ideally, the plug should be positioned no less than an inch or so past the start of the rifling.
4. Place the barrel in a secure fixture, muzzle pointed down.
5. Once this is set up, heat the casting metal in a small ladle. The cast iron style ladle that’s used for bullet casting is ideal. An electric hotplate or small gas torch are good heat sources.
6. Note the time, then carefully pour the molten casting metal into the chamber, using a metal tube or funnel if necessary. Fill the chamber to just above the edge, but not so much that it spills over since this can make it difficult to remove the casting.
   
   

   

   Pouring the chamber casting

   
   
7. If too much casting metal is added, just invert the barrel and heat it with a heat gun until it comes out. This won’t harm the metal of the firearm, but may damage a wood or plastic stock, so be careful.
8. It usually only takes a few minutes for the chamber casting to cool sufficiently for removal. Look for the metal to dull as a sign. 
9. Once the casting metal has firmed up, carefully push the chamber casting out from the muzzle using a cleaning rod or a brass or wooden dowel. If the casting seems to stick, strike the base of the rod or dowel with the palm of your hand. It should only take a few gentle blows to loosen.
10. Take care that the chamber casting doesn’t get damaged during removal. Have a soft pad, such as a folded towel, in place to catch it. 
11. Remember when I suggested noting the time? Wait at least one full hour after casting to take any measurements. This allows the chamber casting to return to as cast size.
12. If it’s necessary to keep chamber castings for later reference, make sure they’re clearly labeled regarding the source firearm and stored in a container that will protect them from damage. Brownells offers a selection of plastic tubes and caps that will work well for this purpose. If there’s no need to save the casting, it can be re-melted for the next chamber cast.

A completed chamber cast, showing the case neck and rifling

While making chamber castings isn’t an everyday skill, being able to determine specific details about a firearm chamber can be extremely useful. It's another tool skill to keep in your toolbox skillbox.

A Primer on Reloading

While metallic cartridge reloading has been covered before on Blue Collar Prepping, it’s been a while. This post isn’t going to be an in-depth discussion of all the details involved in the reloading process, but rather more of a general primer. I’ll go into more detail in future articles.

For the record, if anyone claims reloading will save you money, they’re trying to sell  you something. Reloading simply enables you to shoot more for a similar expenditure. For example, if I’m spending X amount of dollars on practice ammunition, that money would go much farther if spent on reloading supplies.

Equipment

The equipment needed to start reloading need not be either extensive or expensive.  A basic single stage press, dies, shell holder (if it doesn’t come with the dies), powder measure, and calipers are really all the items needed to begin.

A set of reloading dies with shell holder

Nor does a reloading setup have to take up much space.  Aside from the press itself, all other components fit in a small tub which can be stored in a closet when not in use.

Consumables

The consumables used in reloading are brass, bullets, primers, and powder. 

• Brass can be saved as it’s shot, and straight wall pistol brass can be reloaded many times over. Ask any friends who don't reload to save their brass for you; the calibers you don't shoot can be traded with other reloaders.
• Cast or plated bullets are less expensive then jacketed and are fine for target shooting. 
• Primers and powder can usually be sourced at a local gun show or retailer. If not, then they’ll need to be ordered online. This will be more expensive because of the required hazardous materials fee, which is generally twenty dollars per order.

To reload metallic cartridges, certain steps must be taken. Starting with a clean fired case it needs to be de-primed, resized, flared or belled, primed, powder added, bullet seated, crimped, and finally checked.

A series of cases from start to finish

 

The Reloading Sequence

I’ll review each step in turn.

Depriming is the removal of the old primer so that the case can be reused.  Depriming may be done before or after case cleaning. If done after cleaning, depriming is combined with resizing of the case. If depriming is done before cleaning, a universal depriming tool is used.  This is like a standard depriming die, except it only pushes out the old primer and doesn’t touch the case itself.

Resizing is done after the case is cleaned to prevent damage to the case and die from small particles of dirt and debris. Resizing squeezes the case back to starting size based on recognized standards.  These standards are maintained by the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute or SAAMI.

Case flaring or belling is a slight widening of the case mouth to ease insertion of a bullet.  Jacketed and lead bullets require different amounts of case flare. This step can occur before or after priming, and can also be combined with powder dispensing.

Priming is the insertion of a new primer in the case.  This can be done either on a press or with a hand tool.  Regardless, pay special attention to make sure the primer is seated properly to prevent potentially dangerous issues.

Next is dispensing powder.  Always check the chosen powder in at least two recent reloading manuals for a starting load.

A powder scale and dispenser

Bullet seating is, as the name implies, placing a bullet in the belled mouth of the case and pressing it in to the proper depth. Overall Cartridge Length (OAL) is an important measurement made with a caliper and compared with the entry for that cartridge with that bullet weight and style in the manual.

Crimping is the removal of the flare that was added in an earlier step.  Depending on the type of cartridge, either a roll crimp or a straight crimp will be used. Roll crimping curls the case over and slightly into the bullet to help hold everything in place.  This type of crimp is most commonly found in revolver cartridges. Straight crimping is more common in cartridges designed for semi-automatic pistols and irons out the crimp, so the case mouth is parallel with the bullet.

At this point the cartridge is complete and ready for firing.

Testing

Testing is recommended whenever assembling a new load for the first time, or when using once-fired brass that wasn’t shot from your firearm. This testing can take the form of measuring with calipers, using a chamber gauge, or something called the plunk test.

The plunk test consists of removing the barrel of semi-automatic pistol, holding the barrel muzzle-down, and gently dropping the loaded case into the chamber. It should seat to the proper depth with no effort and make a soft “plunk” sound as it drops into the chamber. When you invert the barrel, the loaded cartridge should drop straight out with no sticking. If it doesn’t seat to proper depth or sticks on removal, it means the cartridge is out of spec and may require die adjustments.

If the idea of reloading ammunition is of interest, but there’s concern about making a large investment in equipment up front, reloading equipment can be found used either on various firearm discussion boards or online auction sites.

Since many people are more visually oriented, I created a series of videos that cover the reloading process.

Bullet Casting 101: Alloys

Back in 2015, Ray Davies wrote an excellent guest post on the basics of bullet casting. Since it’s been a while, I’d like to review this topic and go into more detail. 

While detail-oriented, bullet casting isn’t especially complicated, or at least doesn’t have to be. As with reloading, casting bullets may not save us money, but it should allow us to shoot more for the same amount of money spent.

 

Bullet Alloys

Bullets are one of the consumables in ammunition reloading, and are possibly the most expensive after the brass cartridge casing. They are generally made up of either a lead core surrounded by a copper alloy jacket, or unjacketed lead alloy. 

Unless we’re shooting a black powder firearm, we really don’t want pure lead; it’s too soft and at even moderate handgun velocities, the bullets will smear and deposit a coating of lead inside the barrel. The best alloy for bullets is mostly lead with small amounts of tin and antimony added. Arsenic, copper, and silver have also been used in bullet alloys, but tin and antimony are the most common.

The addition of Tin (atomic symbol Sn), between two and five percent, aids primarily in reducing surface tension which improves mold fill-out as the molten metal will more closely follow the contours inside the mold. Antimony (atomic symbol Sb) added in the range of three to six percent is used to improve the hardness of the alloy, which aids in creation of bullets that retain their structural integrity when fired down a barrel.

Wheel Weights
One of the best starting alloys is clip-on lead wheel weights that used to be found in every tire shop and garage in the country. Sadly, many states have banned the use of lead wheel weights and most are now steel or zinc.

Important Note: 

Lead and zinc do not get along! 

Even small amounts of zinc can contaminate the mix, rendering it unusable. 

A box of clean wheel weights.

An easy test is to scratch the weights with a pair of side cutters. If they leave a nice mark with little effort, it’s lead; if they barely scratch the surface, it’s probably zinc or steel. Put them aside, and you might be able to bring them to your local scrap yard.

Clip-on lead wheel weights already have about half a percent of tin and around three percent antimony in their makeup. These can be used as-is in low pressure, low velocity handgun loads such as .45 ACP; however, fill-out and bullet hardness may be less than desired.

More Sources
An excellent source of tin and antimony is pewter -- real pewter, not food-safe pewter found in restaurant supply houses. Pewter is mostly tin with some antimony, and adding a small amount of pewter to lead can greatly improve both fill-out and bullet hardness.

Pewter: a good yard sale find

Another good source of bullet lead is found in range backstops, so ask range management about the possibility of scavenging some lead from the backstop. Many ranges have contracts where the backstop is cleaned every so often; if your range does this, see about getting in touch with the lead removal company. A couple of five gallon buckets of range lead can go a long way.

Important safety note:

Do not ever use lead plates from old car batteries! They can release fatally toxic gasses when melted. Avoid them at all costs.

There are other sources of bullet lead, but I think you get the idea.

References

There are many commercial sources for reloading both jacketed and unjacketed bullets, but one of the best references on bullet casting can be found in Glen Fryxell’s free online book From Ingot to Target (a pdf version may be found here), with second place going to the Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook.

Finally, here’s a downloadable lead alloy calculator which allows you to calculate how much of what metals to add to your alloy for a particular bullet hardness, called the Brinell Scale. It’s a spreadsheet and can be opened in Excel or OpenOffice.

Oddball Cartridges and How to Make Them (Sometimes)

This post is brought  to you by a friend having bought an old German single-shot rifle chambered for 8.15x46R: 8.15 millimeter bore and a 46 mm long, rimmed, case.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMunit07.jpg

No, I'd never heard of it either.

So now my friend has this lovely old boomstick with no ammo to be found for it. The saving grace of this is that it's a cartridge that can be made by taking a cartridge case that's close enough, and using the sizing die from a loading set to form it to the right shape,,, or at least close enough (which I'll explain later).

Making .300 Blackout from .223/5.56
First, I'm going to use a much more simple example.

1) Take a .223 case and trim it.

2) Lube it.
3) Run it into the sizing die.
4) Trim to final length.

(Read this post for a more step-by-step description of the process.)

Family photo:

L-R: .223/5.56 cartridge, trimmed cartridge, resized .300 Blackout cartridge.

For a lot of cartridges, this (sometimes with a little variation) is all it takes... but then you get to something like that oddball 8.15mm. 

Making  8.15x46R from .30-30 Winchester

Fortunately, the recommended case to start with (.30-30 Win) is an easy one to find. But we'll have to do several things to it to make it fit:

1) Cut it to approximate length (a little too long is better than short).

2) Remove any burrs from the new case mouth.

3) Lube the case, both the entire outside and the inside of the case neck.

4) Run it into the sizing/depriming die.

It comes out looking like the picture on the right. ->

That's the easy part, and often the only part. Some cases will need to be trimmed to final length (if they're a bit long) and deburred. After that, they're ready to load. Then, the first time you fire it, the heat and pressure will fire-form the brass to the chamber, and -- since it's a single-shot rifle -- you'll probably never need to resize it again. 

But not here, oh no. Because there was a lot of variation in these rifles, sometimes it needs more steps. 

5) The rim of the case was a little too large in diameter, so it needed to be cut down a bit. In this case. I took a coarse file and, holding it steady, dragged the rim down it while rotating the case to take off a few thousandths. 

6) Try it until it's right. In this case, it reduced the diameter from the standard .506" to .486".

7) At this point we discovered that the rim was a bit too thick for his rifle. To thin it, we used a piece of 220-grit wet-dry sandpaper on a thick piece of glass. Use plenty of water on the paper, work the base in a figure 8 pattern, then turn it in your grip a bit and repeat. (Yes, it's a slow process.) The original thickness was .063"; now it's .040" and the action closes on it snugly.

Yes, it's a lot of work for just one cartridge. We're going to find a small lathe to use, which should make trimming the diameter and thickness of the rim a lot faster. He'll never have a lot of cases, but they should last a long time.


That's the basic course in forming brass for a new use. In some cases, the actual forming is far more involved since the difference between the original case and the thing you're after is drastic enough that the forming has to be done in steps. 

For some old black-powder cartridges, there are companies that make, say, a '.45-caliber basic' case; it's long enough and large enough in diameter that with the correct dies you can form it to a number of different cases. And with most of these being for single-shot rifles, take care of these cartridges and they'll last many firings, so it can indeed be worth it.

The Lee Loader Kit

We have mentioned reloading ammunition in a few posts, and one of the comments we got back was about the Lee Loader series of reloading kits. I started reloading with a single stage press, and still do most of my reloading on that press, but I have been collecting Lee Loader kits for various calibers for “just in case”. I find them on tables at gun shows in some odd calibers, usually for less than they cost new, and they make good gifts for friends who shoot odd guns that are harder to find ammunition for.

What's Inside

The Lee Loader is a single-caliber kit that gives you all of the tools (except a plastic mallet or piece of hardwood) you will need to reload cartridges of that caliber. The Lee Precision company used to make these kits in 110 calibers, but have narrowed their current listings down to the 15 most common (6 pistol, 9 rifle) calibers. Being made of steel, the old kits are still out there and are still usable if you can find them. Lee Precision claims you can load up to 50 rounds in an hour with such a kit. That will take some practice -- I'd say 20 rounds per hour is more realistic for a beginner or someone unfamiliar with the kit and its operation. However, it's fast enough for someone who is reloading after hunting.

One downside to using the Lee Loader is that it does not full-length size the fired brass. This means that it doesn't squeeze the brass back down to standard factory size, so it will be “formed” to the chamber of the firearm that it came out of. The brass will be “neck sized”, meaning the part that holds the bullet will be forced back to the proper size, which is great for accuracy when used in a single firearm. Many precision shooters use specific lots of brass assigned to a specific rifle and they only neck size it when they load. Since the body of the cartridge is formed to the chamber of that rifle, it doesn't have to stretch out every time it is fired and that extends the life of the brass. Lee Precision does not recommend using the Lee Loader kits for semi-auto, pump, or lever-action rifles, which limits you to bolt-action and break-action rifles. Neck-sizing can mean using a bit more force to get the cartridge into the chamber, which you probably won't notice in a bolt-action but might cause a semi-auto to jam.

Here's one of my Lee Loader kits. This one is for the .303 British cartridge, which is what I feed my Lee-Enfield rifle. Since I only have the one rifle in this caliber and ammunition for it is not common in my area, the Lee Loader is a good choice. 

This is an old kit from the 1970s or early 80s, and came in a cardboard box with a styrofoam liner; I think I paid $10 for mine at a gun show back in the day. Newer kits come in a red plastic box with formed holders for the various parts. They are still making the kits in .303 British, and they sell on Amazon for about $30. The older kits in discontinued calibers may be worth a bit more, if you can find them on eBay or at a gun show, but they are the same quality as the new ones.

Reloading Procedure

The rifle kit is made up of six pieces and the instructions are quite well-presented. I doubt any of you would have a problem opening the box and being able to reload a box of ammunition without incident, but here is a run-down of the process.

Before First Use

Before you can start loading, you need to set the bullet-seating depth based upon the total length of a factory cartridge. If you are working to create a load specifically for accuracy in your rifle, you may want to adjust the bullet depth later.

1. Screw the lock nut and stop collar all the way down.
2. Place a factory cartridge on the depriming chamber.
3. Place the die over the cartridge.
4. Put the bullet seater into the die and adjust the stop collar up until it touches the seater, then tighten then lock collar.

Case Prep

1. Check to make sure the case will fit into the chamber of your rifle.
2. Clean the brass if needed -- dirt and grit will damage a reloading die.
3. Inspect the case for cracks and splits, especially on the neck. Discard any brass that is split or cracked, as it's not safe to use any more.
4. Check the primer holes inside the cartridge. If there is one hole in the center of the base, it is Boxer primed and is reloadable. If you see two holes it is Berdan primed and is not reloadable with this equipment. Berdan priming is common in European and Asian ammunition, whereas Boxer priming is the standard in the USA.
5. Check your case length against a new one or with a guage to make sure it isn't too long. After being fired a few times, brass tends to “grow” and may need to be trimmed back to a the right length. If it gets too long the brass may not release the bullet when it is fired, causing excessive pressure and damage to the gun and/or you.
6. Using a pocket knife or suitable tool, chamfer the inside of the neck slightly to ease the bullet into the brass. This only has to be done before the first loading and after trimming.

Depriming the Brass

1. Place the cartridge in the depriming chamber (the small black cylinder). It will only fit in one way, so don't worry about getting it backwards.
2. Place the depriming tool in the case. You can feel the tip of the tool drop into the primer hole.
3. Using a rubber mallet, tap the depriming tool until you feel the old primer fall out.
4. Move on to the next case. Depriming them in a batch speeds up the process.

Size the Neck of the Case

• Place the brass neck down in the sizing die and tap it with a mallet until the head is flush with the base.

Prime the Case

1. Place a primer, open end up, in the priming chamber. (That's the metallic cylinder with the spring-loaded face.)
2. Place the die, with the brass still in it, over the priming chamber.
3. Place the priming tool into the neck of the cartridge and gently tap the end a few times to seat the primer.
4. Move the die to the depriming chamber and tap the priming tool lightly to knock it loose from the die. Leave it there while going on to the next steps.

Add Powder

Each kit comes with a red powder scoop that is sized for a small selection of common powders. Don't substitute powders without a way to measure them. Powder selection and measurement is one of the hardest and most important safety-important parts of reloading!

1. To use the scoop, drag it through the powder and give it one and only one shake to the side to level off the powder.
2. Pour the powder into the open end of the die.

Seat the Bullet

1. Drop the bullet, base-down, into the die.
2. Place the bullet-seating stem into the die.
3. Tap the bullet seater until it touches the die.

Crimp the Bullet

If you're using a rifle with a tubular magazine and have used bullets with a crimping groove (known as a cannelure) or lead bullets, there is a way to crimp the bullets into the brass.

1. Turn the loaded cartridge upside down and insert the bullet end into the of the die.
2. Gently tap the base of the bullet with the plastic mallet or piece of wood until you get the amount of crimp you want.

If you're looking for a way to keep a hunting rifle supplied on a limited budget, a Lee Loader may be a route to explore. As an example:

• My .303 British takes 38.5gr of IMR 4320 powder, something I have on the shelf since it is suitable for several rifle calibers. 
• There are 7000 gr in a pound, so I can get about 180 rounds (9 boxes) reloaded from a single container. 
• Powder is selling for about $25 a pound, so that's about $0.14 worth of powder for each round. 
• Primers are going for about $4 per hundred or $0.04 per round.
• Bullets are variable, depending on weight and design but average around $0.14 apiece. 

Add this all up ,and you can reload a fairly odd-ball caliber for $0.32 a round, or $6.40 a box. Try finding factory ammunition at that price --  or at any price, once TSHTF.

A pound of powder, a couple flats of primers, two boxes of bullets, a Lee Loader kit, a plastic mallet, and a few boxes worth of brass will fit comfortably in a small ammo can or a medium Rubbermaid box. Not a bad way to store a year or two's worth of hunting ammo!

Guest Post: Never Pass Up a Decent .30-30

by George Groot
George is a member of our Facebook Group and has written for us before.

My father still has his father’s 30-30. It is a great rifle, a Winchester built back when that name still stood for something. It isn’t the only rifle being passed down through the family, but it is the one I’m going to share some thoughts on today.

I have plenty of .308s, and have materials to assemble several more, but a heavy-barreled range toy isn’t the same as a utilitarian survival tool. This is where the .30-30 comes in: it’s like the .308's older country cousin. Both cartridges are the same length, but the .30-30 has a slimmer case body, longer neck, and slower velocities. They both take game cleanly, but the .30-30 has the unsophisticated plainness that says "I'm a hunting cartridge", where the .308 has been pressed into service as a sniper round, machine gun round, hunting round, and battle rifle round.

The .30-30 doesn't really do any of that other stuff particularly well, nor was it ever designed to, but it still excels at doing what it was designed to do, which was to give sportsmen a cartridge that could be loaded with smokeless powder and cleanly take big game at moderate ranges.

Hunting
The .30-30 is a good round because it doesn’t damage much meat, and you are more than likely going to be killing small game or domesticated animals for protein than you are going to live off venison. There are many more pigeons in the world than deer; squirrels, too, for that matter. The .30-30 handles hunting all the game you have any business hunting inside 100 yards, even elk (although I’d limit the max range to about 90 yards and use 170gr commercial jacketed bullets at max velocity on elk). That isn’t to say the .30-30 is only a short range cartridge -- it truly can reach out and touch things in the hands of a skilled rifleman. However, most people are not skilled rifleman able to routinely hit the target beyond the point blank range of a rifle.

Shooting
I have a lot invested into the .308 Winchester, but I wouldn’t want to carry any of my current .308 rifles with me all day. They are big and heavy, with significant recoil compared to a .30-30. I have plenty of .223 options, and while a few are of the “light and handy” variety, they aren’t cast bullet friendly (yes, you can get an AR to shoot cast bullets, however it’s not for the faint of heart). And while I wouldn’t recommend the .30-30 for competitors (unless you are shooting in the Schuetzen game or some silhouette game -- fine and worthy traditions in their own right), I would rank it tops for preppers.

Now this isn’t to say that the .30-30 is the perfect caliber for every job. If you plan on having a Mad Max style end of the world as we know it (the Somali civil war being a relatively recent example), then an AR or AK is probably a better choice, although having a .30-30 you can shoot well is probably a lot better than having an AK that you can’t. But if your end of the world is more The Postman (Patagonia during the Argentinian collapse being a recent example), then a .30-30 has the social value of “I’m armed, but not looking for a fight” that an AR or AK doesn’t necessarily have. Whether or not such social niceties have any bearing on your situation is beyond my speculation, but in the world where people associate lever action rifles with hunting and semi-auto carbines with fighting, it might be useful to be seen as something other than a fighter.

Reloading
The .30-30 was a handloader's friend from the beginning, because the twist of the rifle barrels is usually 1:12, which is good for cast bullets (they don’t like to be spun too fast) and since most .30-30s are lever action, flat-nosed wide meplat bullets that have good terminal effects on big game are extremely appropriate. The smaller case capacity also uses less powder than a .308, In addition, .30-30 brass is plentiful and cheap and there are many inexpensive .30 caliber cast bullet molds, so everything here points to good cost savings.

Now here is the downside to reloading a 30-30 is that you are going to have to do the workup to get a load that shoots well in your rifle. With cast bullets this can sometimes be a challenge, especially since the recipe that works on your buddy's Winchester .30-30 with ballard rifling may not work on your Marlin 336 with micro-groove rifling. Every barrel is different, so every load workup has to be done for every rifle, and your loads which shoot great in your rifle might have terrible accuracy and in your buddy’s rifle.

Also, getting free or cheap lead is becoming more scarce, so if you don’t have a ready supply of it, then maybe casting your own hunting bullets isn’t for you. But if you can find a decent source of lead for a price you can live with, 100 pounds should yield around 4,100 bullets (170 gr weight).


,30-30 lever rifles are light, handy, won’t wear you down after a days worth of carry, and are a very utilitarian tool. Even normal carbon steel lever action rifles have been going strong for a century plus now with a simple routine of cleaning and oiling. For a “carry a lot, shoot a little” rifle, there is a lot going for the humble .30-30.