My brother in law, Steven, has appeared from the United Kingdom for his Christmas visit, so as long as I’ve got cheap, imported foreign labor, I figured it was time to spin up the ammo factory for 2016. Waste not, want not.
First, we had to get the blessed case trimming out of the way. And by “we” I mean, “Steve”, since this is a miserable job from hell and I hate it. 
Actually, there was enough trimming to be done that we could share the joy, so last night we had dueling case trimmers going, one for .223, the other for .22-250 and other misc. 8 man hours later, it was all done. Whew!
Then we took inventory and organized the total mess that was the ammo/reloading components storage room. The good news is I’ve started to standardize the storage boxes I buy so that everything fits together better. I’ve also started to “bulk pack” the highest volume stuff like .223 so that I can store it more easily. Those Palano plastic ammo boxes that look kind of like the old military ones are terrific because they lock together when stacked. Must get more of them.
Then on to the reloading component inventory. Somehow, some way, my log book does not match my count of primers or bullets. I was over 1000 bullets and primers “short”, which means that at some point I loaded and didn’t check things out on my inventory list. This is a really bad habit to get into these days when reloading components could, at any day, disappear for months or years on end, so I was online last night late and there’s a big, heavy box headed my way with over 3000 bullets on board. If you reload and shoot a lot, don’t do what I did, folks. Keep track of what’s in stock and adjust accordingly.
So tonight the fun part begins. Steve will do the cases and primers while I man the powder measure and press so we start actually producing something that will go bang. A couple of recent productivity additions that have really helped me:
– A big ol’ Lyman tumbler with auto-flow unloading. I put mine out in the shed so I can run it during the night. The key addition here is I found a digital “countdown” timer that lets me set the number of hours I want it to run. Fantastic! Give it 3-4 hours of run time and then it’s done the next day and ready to unload.
– The Rapid Case Kicker. I’ll post a separate review of this little gem, but this little device automatically “kicks” the brass out of the shell holder after each stroke of a single stage press, much like a progressive press would do. I bought one of these on a whim last year and it has dramatically exceeded my expectations. No, it’s not a progressive press, but for repetitive operations on a single stage press like re-sizing/decapping and seating bullets, it easily increases productivity by 20% to 25%. Which is significant when you are reloading thousands of rounds per year.
As soon as you place a case in the holder, you are reaching for another case instead of waiting for the press operation to finish and then removing the case that you just finished by hand. The Rapid Case Kicker ejects the finished case from the shell holder for you, so then you instantly move on to placing another case in the holder. Once set up, this little addition has increased my throughput significantly and at very low cost.
See the Rapid Case Kicker in action here.
Now for the “didn’t work out like I’d thought” portion. Sonic cleaners!
This seemed like a good idea at the time, and I still use it for parts cleaning, but for brass cleaning I have retired my sonic cleaner. It just proved to be too fussy to have to wet-clean all that brass and then add on a drying process. It does a great job in terms of getting the primer pockets clean, so I may still use it occasionally, but for higher volume operations the tumbler is still the best option for me. It was worth a try.
Happy reloading.
Grouse
