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dicehorn

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Everything posted by dicehorn

  1. dicehorn
    RCBS Powder Flow Holder Got one of these useful tools? Always a pain to screw the Measurer in having to turn it God knows how many turns to get it tight, then the same amount to undo it. My solution was to take a round file to the holder and file off the aluminium threads (3 minute job). Now my measurer simply drops into the holder and the nut is tightened up to make it secure to the holder.
  2. dicehorn
    Yes Cliff, we are certainly dis advantaged compared to 'normal shooters' !! Actually I do shoot shotgun both eyes open and having known my eye problem for many years have adapted to knowing that birds on my left need little lead but birds on my right need a heck amount more lead - birds overhead have to be aimed well to the right to make contact - sounds bizarre but I originally found that with one eye shut with a shotgun I lost the perspective of distance. I occasionally shoot on the commercial shoots where our birds are extremely tall but on a good day can shoot better than 3 to 1 - when
  3. dicehorn
    Something Completely Different I was once invited over to a friend's place for a bit of a plink and general chit chat -usually about reloading. He walks down the field to a high (safe) hedge and promptly starts putting up little bits a scrap paper with a red circle in it .............pinned with a drawing pin to a large tree - a tree for heavon's sake. Sorry but I'm not going to let a centre fire loose on that poor tree. All hurt he returns to the tree and impales my target on a convenient blackberry thorn. Needless to say first shot and the impaled target fell out of sight. I assumed
  4. dicehorn
    That's true Geoff for those reloaders that only wish to seat their bullets within 40 thou or so of the lands - I am not one of them so this has never been an issue. From memory, some Tikka mags have little room to manoeuvre.
  5. dicehorn
    The Comparitor If you reload bullets it is essential that all bullets are seated to the same level from the lands (start of the rifling) There are too ways of doing this - one is measuring the whole of the case plus bullet from the headstamp to the very tip of the bullet , the other is measuring from the headstamp to the ogive - the ogive is the datum point on the bullet's surface where the pointy bit ends and the straight bit starts. In my book the measuring from headstamp to tip is ok and you can get by with this method, but the most accurate way and perhaps the most consistant way is me
  6. dicehorn
    The Bore Whilst technically nothing to do with reloading - what is the point of making superb ammo if you are sticking it in the chamber of a dirty rifle? Answer - no point!! I read about people who regularly have to put the first shot on a cleaned barrel into the hedge before they set off foxing - WTF is that all about, then the guy who never cleans it so he does not have to fire at a hedge! I have on many occasions stressed my opinion re bore snakes as only being good enough to keep your trousers up. You buy dies, presses, vernier gauges powder and bullets - all very expensive - s
  7. dicehorn
    Good question Andy! I use all 3 of my rifles in the field - my deer generally no more than 200 yds. Foxes at night hardly ever past 300 yds. But my passion with my 22.250 and 20 Tac is crows, rabbits and magpies out to 500 yds. Yes being able to dope the wind is a real science especially with the small calibres and the only way one can become proficient at that is to shoot paper in varying wind speeds and angles. My need for supreme accuracy that once achieved gives me the confidence to take long shots with a predicted outcome. If for example a rifle will easily group .7" at 100 yds
  8. dicehorn
    Neck Sizing Simple task - screw down the die as per manuacturers instructions and off you go - yup it certainly works. However if you have developed a load that can easily shoot .6" - you would like it to do better but its only a Howa/Ruger/Remmy thats about as much as I can expect. Rubbish ! I had a Remmy in 22.250 that would put 5 shots less than an inch at 300 yds, I have a keeper friend who I reload for with a Tikka T3 with a 16" barrel that would not swap it for a £2000 custom job - he gets pissy if all 5 shots are not touching at 100 yds - believe me any well looked after barrel i
  9. dicehorn
    Hi mate most of the time the marks are on the outside of the firefly lens use a cotton bud made damp then a tissue to dry it. It may not get them off first time but it will work. shootingcharley. Just to add to Shootingcharley's advice - make sure you move the cotton bud across the laser's lens - not in a circle movement. The remedy I previously mentioned (using the rubber from a milking cluster) was to slide it just over the end of your laser to act as a visor to stop rain touching the lens.
  10. dicehorn
    Primer Pockets We all know that it essential to clean primer pockets out to remove the carbon caused by the detonation of the primer. Most will use one of those tools that are composed of around 30 lengths of wire so we can spin it around to remove this carbon. However, were you aware that upon subsequent firings there is always a flow of brass both forward (that's why we full length or shoulder bump) and backwards. The flow backwards is the headstamp being stopped by the bolt face............. however the bolt face has no impact on the primer pocket and so there is flow in this area.
  11. dicehorn
    Record keeping Now for the guy with one rifle this may not seem the most important tip. However, sometimes it is just worth keeping for future reference. I record mine and anyone else's data on a notepad on the computer and save it on a USB pen in case of disaster - I dont write info down on paper - I'm so untidy I/my wife is liable to throw it out. I use the notepad to store all the technical detail about the rifle,bullets used, and the loads that did not work and a brief note why - if I know. Also loads/powders that were pretty good but not as good as my final selection - one
  12. dicehorn
    I would also say your problem is with the Firefly lens - are you getting what is called 'fish eyes' when you look through the Archer. If so, then yes the problem is with the laser. I was always getting this problem until I got hold of the rubber inner part of a milking machine cluster and cut a 3" piece off it to fit over the outlet on the laser. Since then I have changed the laser for a 800IR Nightmaster - no problems when it gets wet - tissue off and IMO works better than the Firefly.
  13. dicehorn
    Mike - if you clean them every time - nothing more complicated than a lint free cloth and using the cloth wrapped around a wooden dowel to clean the die chambers. When I have cleaned others that are black, I use rifle bore cleaner ensuring it is dried off using the cloth. Personally I use brake cleaner for an unstrippable moderator only
  14. dicehorn
    Your Dies How many of you reloaders when reading this can say - "That's what I do every time" ?? I had a reloader phone me to say for some reason the latest batch he had reloaded were all over the place and the previous batch although better were still not where they should be. I asked him to bring some empty cases, powder, primers, bullets and dies over and I would have a look. When he arrived first question was "when did you clean your dies last?" "Cant remember" Took them to pieces and honestly, if I had chucked a handful of grass seed in them I would have been mowing it in 10
  15. dicehorn
    Hi Mike Case separation signs One of the more common reasons for case separation is caused by high pressure due to shooting at max loads, and if someone does not scrub the inside of the neck to remove burnt powder which causes the reloader to put too much pressure on the case to withdraw the expander ball on the decapping rod. The early signs of case separation is a shiny ring appearing on the case about 6 - 10 mm up from the headstamp. Loose primer pockets Are easy to spot. Whatever hand tool you use you will start to notice that the primers become too easy to seat into the pr
  16. dicehorn
    The decapping rod on neck and full length dies If you are the sort of reloader that ejects their spent cases into the dirt or shoves them into your pocket along with keys and other lumpy things so that the necks get dents on the rim, you can skip this tip. Now, we all know that the die manufacturers put decapping rods with that expander in both sets of resizing dies - not a problem as the rod removes the primer and resizes the case on the upward movement of the ram. But when you take into account what is actually happening, you will understand that the upward movement of the ram sque
  17. dicehorn
    Numbering cases I have had people come to me who have started to reload but for varying reasons have asked me to reload for them. They chuck various fired cases at me loose and in boxes and to the question of how many times have they been fired, I get the 'I think that lot x times and that lot y times - not sure about these or those though' Frankly, I usually ask them to put their hands in their pocket and buy some more new ones - but in reality if they knew precisly it could have saved them 60 to 90 quid. I know a lot of reloaders write the info on the inside/outside of the ammo boxe
  18. dicehorn
    Shoulder Datum Bit of a grey area for many reloaders. We accept that when fired a case expands and its limitation of not blowing itself to pieces is that it is confined by being within the thick walls of the rifle's chamber. However, even all chambers in the same calibre have different tolerances as long as they fall within SAMMI spec. So we full length and fire the case and it expands a little outwards, we then neck size and fire again and repeat. At some stage we are going to have too much resistance when closing the bolt (this is where I have pity on the "I make 100 rounds up a time"
  19. dicehorn
    Weighing your bullets Just following on from my previous thread. We open new box of 224 in 55 grain ammo, same make as we used before (whats all this batch number business?) after all, still made in the same factory and they still say 224 on the box. Yup they should shoot ok, but surely at distance a 54.6 head wont have the same POI as one weighing 55.3 gr? So, especially with load development and my search for a level playing field, I usually buy my heads in 400's and make sure the boxes have the same batch number so I know they came from the same machine, and then I set about weighi
  20. dicehorn
    Hi Andy First up - try the Imperial Sizing wax - guarantee you wont go back to what you are using at present. With regard to the 90 degree turning, no I do not, but whether to do that or not may come down to the make of die you use. Neck size only? Yes generally ensures your brass will live a little longer, however there are many rifle chambers that are a little tighter than SAMMI spec and they find that after say 5 firings, they experience tight bolt closure and learn from that that they have to full length or shoulder bump after every 4th firing. For the record I have some 22
  21. dicehorn
    Weighing new cases Why would you do that? After all, no matter what make they are, they are built to SAMMI spec. Well yes they are indeed all the same on the outside and if you were to simply load them up and shoot them they could all well group at .5" or .6" at 100 yds - kill anything. But if you were to extend the range out to say 400 to 500 yds, those groups due to differing weights of the cases could give one bullet (maybe two) that could open the group to well over 9" - not exactly a dead cert on a crow. Brand new out of a bag cases will have (especially with the cheaper makes
  22. dicehorn
    Make your own reloading tray The cost of shop trays are from £8 to £10 a time - thats 200 primers!! Yes I have four of them but in reality all they do is hold your cases upright. My tip is make your own. The piccy below is one of the ones I made - think it took me about 40 minutes - I'm no carpenter! Find a piece of scrap timber For a 40 case holder the dimensions were 120 mm by 85 mm and as long as it is a min of 20 mm deep Draw pencil line 12 mm from top edge along length and do 3 more so you end up with 4 parallel lines length wise Then do the same to make 10 lines. Take a 13 mm (o
  23. dicehorn
    Neck cleaning It is a given that we must always clean the neck of a case after firing. Outside neck - if you tumble or u/s you can ignore this tip. The outside of the neck is the only part of a case I clean to obtain a shine. I simply use the Brasso cotton wool cleaner to remove any residue burnt carbon which I dont want near my dies. Cleaning this will also highlight a problem like a split neck and also ensure that a carbon free neck goes into your die, so it is a two fold exercise. Inside neck. I just use a stiff bristled nylon brush. Yes I know some reloaders will use ph
  24. dicehorn
    New Cases What should we do with our new shiny cases? Some will say - they are Lapua/Nosler, just prime, load and seat a bullet and off you go. Fair enough if you have that much faith in the modern manufacture of cases - go ahead. For me, whether Winchester (bottom of my list) or Lapua (top of my list) I treat them all the same (will write on another thread why I weigh cases) I will uniform all primer pockets, deburr flash holes, full length and trim - tis all about starting out on a level playing field. I have seen Lapua cases that have dented bodies and still worse dents in the ca
  25. dicehorn
    Tumbler or Ultrasonic (my last rant .....I think!!) Now this is just my humble opinion. I must confess I am somewhat perplexed by a certain question that appears on this forum and others - that question usually starts something like 'Tumbler or Ultrasonic?' My question is 'What is the point of a tumbler or ultrasonic?' I've got them both and gave up using them five years ago - I realized I was just wasting my time - and ultrasonic - what a messy business - acid in, cook for ten minutes, neutralize for ten minutes, 10 hours on the radiator, 20 minutes in gas mark 4 or 230c.
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