Giraud Power Case Timmer - WIN!
So I reload .223 ammo for quantity. I do not handload for accuracy. I do not care about bullet concentricity, run-out, land depth, or checking every powder drop. Not that there is anything wrong with accuracy, to the contrary. If you want small groups, you have to care about all of the above. I am going for bulk, not accuracy. Hey, if I miss a varmint, I just pull the trigger again. 1 MOA is plenty good enough.
With that said, here is my reloading routine:
Of all those steps, 4 is the most time-consuming. Steps 5 & 6 will give you hand cramps after just three hundred rounds. Those three steps combined take about 3 minutes per case. So when you are reloading 5,000 rounds, this takes a lot of time. I'll do the math for you, that's 250 hours. Thank goodness I have help!
[ As an aside - the longest bit used to be Step 7 when we had a single-stage press. We reloaded 3k rounds on a single stage ONE YEAR and I vowed NEVER to do that again. The next year I bought a Hornady Lock-n-Load 5-stage auto-progressive press. Step 7 is not my limiting factor anymore. ]
As I was lamenting this fact to a friend / co-worker, he suggested the Giraud Power Case Trimmer. This little unit cuts, chamfers and deburrs in ONE step. Now it ain't cheap - to the tune of $500, but let me tell you, mine arrived today and it is worth Every Penny!
Set-up could not have been any easier. Take it out of the box, plug it in, and check overall case length. My unit was a bit short at 1.743". I am after a 1.750" OAL. So I backed the nut off a little, checked again, moved again, checked, and all was well. Bam! Up and running. By "well" here, I mean that each cut case did not differ by more than 0.001". Think about that, the average human hair, or even the thickness of a piece of paper is 0.004". That's plenty accurate enough for me and my reloading.
I went ahead and ran 100 pieces of brass through this little pencil sharpener-like device. It took 4.2 seconds per case - and this was while not rushing trying to set a world record. I just cut my reloading time by 42X. I'll be able to cut, chamfer, and deburr 5k pieces of brass in less than 6 hours! And the nice bit is, the cases come out already chamfered and deburred. This unit is GENIUS!
How it works: The trimmer uses the case neck to determine length. Just grab a case and shove it into the "pencil sharpener" using nothing but your hands. Buzz. 4 seconds later and the case is cut, chamfered, and deburred - ready to load. Wow. Search YouTube if you want to see one of these things in operation. You see the clear plastic sheath around the gold trimmer? That is the catch for all the cut brass. This unit also operates in the vertical or horizontal position.
I tell you what, I love this thing! I cannot say enough good about it. Kudos to Giraud!
So now my slowest step has become #2 - resizing the spent brass. Anybody got some suggestions for how to decrease that time? I don't know of any. But if they exist, I would like to put them into play. I'd rather shoot than reload, but it is a small price to pay for all the fun we are going to have...
You might be asking yourself how in the world can I go through 5k rounds of ammo in a year. Ha, we do it in a week! Our annual prairie dog trip to New Mexico. Four shooters and ten million prairie dogs. It ain't that difficult. We could probably go through more if it weren't so cost prohibitive.
With that said, here is my reloading routine:
- Clean spent brass so as to not dirty up the resizing die
- Resize brass using case wax lube
- Clean brass again to get wax off cases
- Trim cases to length
- Chamfer for ease of bullet entry
- Deburr
- Reload
Of all those steps, 4 is the most time-consuming. Steps 5 & 6 will give you hand cramps after just three hundred rounds. Those three steps combined take about 3 minutes per case. So when you are reloading 5,000 rounds, this takes a lot of time. I'll do the math for you, that's 250 hours. Thank goodness I have help!
[ As an aside - the longest bit used to be Step 7 when we had a single-stage press. We reloaded 3k rounds on a single stage ONE YEAR and I vowed NEVER to do that again. The next year I bought a Hornady Lock-n-Load 5-stage auto-progressive press. Step 7 is not my limiting factor anymore. ]
As I was lamenting this fact to a friend / co-worker, he suggested the Giraud Power Case Trimmer. This little unit cuts, chamfers and deburrs in ONE step. Now it ain't cheap - to the tune of $500, but let me tell you, mine arrived today and it is worth Every Penny!
Set-up could not have been any easier. Take it out of the box, plug it in, and check overall case length. My unit was a bit short at 1.743". I am after a 1.750" OAL. So I backed the nut off a little, checked again, moved again, checked, and all was well. Bam! Up and running. By "well" here, I mean that each cut case did not differ by more than 0.001". Think about that, the average human hair, or even the thickness of a piece of paper is 0.004". That's plenty accurate enough for me and my reloading.
The Giraud Power Case Trimmer
I went ahead and ran 100 pieces of brass through this little pencil sharpener-like device. It took 4.2 seconds per case - and this was while not rushing trying to set a world record. I just cut my reloading time by 42X. I'll be able to cut, chamfer, and deburr 5k pieces of brass in less than 6 hours! And the nice bit is, the cases come out already chamfered and deburred. This unit is GENIUS!
How it works: The trimmer uses the case neck to determine length. Just grab a case and shove it into the "pencil sharpener" using nothing but your hands. Buzz. 4 seconds later and the case is cut, chamfered, and deburred - ready to load. Wow. Search YouTube if you want to see one of these things in operation. You see the clear plastic sheath around the gold trimmer? That is the catch for all the cut brass. This unit also operates in the vertical or horizontal position.
I tell you what, I love this thing! I cannot say enough good about it. Kudos to Giraud!
So now my slowest step has become #2 - resizing the spent brass. Anybody got some suggestions for how to decrease that time? I don't know of any. But if they exist, I would like to put them into play. I'd rather shoot than reload, but it is a small price to pay for all the fun we are going to have...
You might be asking yourself how in the world can I go through 5k rounds of ammo in a year. Ha, we do it in a week! Our annual prairie dog trip to New Mexico. Four shooters and ten million prairie dogs. It ain't that difficult. We could probably go through more if it weren't so cost prohibitive.
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