While most shooters struggle to find ammunition, reloaders are flush with ammo tailored especially for their rifles, pistols and shotguns.
Shooters reload their own ammo for many reasons. Match shooters do it because reloading is the only way to ensure precise consistency. For them, it's a laborious process that involves the most expensive dies and presses.
Many, like me, do it to tailor a load for a particular firearm that combines the magic balance of velocity and accuracy. Others do it merely to see how fast they can shoot a bullet before brass starts to fail. Some reload because it is the only way to have ammo with the premium bullets they like.
No matter the reason, reloading is a fun, relaxing pastime that helps you avoid the retail shortages that accompany irrational spikes and dips in supply and demand.
For this article, we will focus on reloading bottlenecked rifle cartridges. We will examine straight-wall cartridges and shotgun shells later.
One great thing about reloading is that you can choose your level of commitment. You can buy kits from RCBS, Hornady, Lee and Lyman that come with almost everything you need to load metallic cartridges. Included is a single-stage press, a balance beam scale, powder measure, funnel, shell block, primer pocket brush, case lubricant and reloading manual. Before the ammo shortage, a kit cost about $300. Now, they cost quite a bit more because they are so high in demand.
You will have to buy separately specific dies for the cartridge or cartridges you want to reload. You will also need a chamfering and deburring tool, and a set of calipers to measure your case length and overall cartridge length after you seat the bullet.
For considerably less money you can buy a Lee Loader. It is an all-in-one item that allows you to deprime, reprime and resize your cartridge, load powder and seat the bullet. The entire unit fits in the palm of your hand and occupies a box that is only 6 inches long and 33/4 inches wide. Of course, you still need a scale, calipers and chamfering and deburring tool, and ultimately a case trimmer when your cases stretch beyond spec.
I use a Lee Loader almost exclusively for loading small batches of ammo when I arrive at an optimal load for a rifle or pistol. Developing loads is a lot more labor intensive and requires loading a lot more cartridges. A traditional press allows you to work a lot quicker.
Developing a load is straightforward. First, choose a bullet. A good deer hunting weight for a 30-06 is 150- or 165-grain. An RCBS kit comes with a Nosler Reloading Manual. A Hornady kit comes with a Hornady Reloading Manual. Sierra prints my favorite manual.
For 30-06, let's start with a 150-gr. Nosler Ballistic Tip. That page in the Nosler Reloading Manual has 10 powder choices with minimum, maximum and mid-range powder charges. It also specifies a particular primer. Do not start with a maximum charge.
I start by loading three cartridges with a mid-range charge. I load three more 1-grain hotter, and three more a grain above that. Three shots is enough to tell you if a particular bullet/charge combination will group. If you don't like the results, move on to another powder or try a different style bullet, like a Nosler Accubond or Nosler Partition.
A chronograph is not necessary if you load strictly for accuracy, but it is the only way to know how fast your bullets travel when they leave the muzzle. That, of course, costs more money.
Eventually you will settle upon a load that groups well enough to kill a deer at 100-200 yards, but every reloader succumbs to the siren song of accuracy. The quest for accuracy is an obsession, and you will achieve it through reloading after spending enough money on components that obliterates the financial advantage of reloading over buying factory ammo. It is inevitable, and once you enter that morass, the only direction to travel is forward.
More than likely, you will reload factory cartridges that already conform to your rifle's chamber. If you don't intend to shoot reloaded cartridges in a different rifle, you only need to resize the cartridge neck. You can do this with a Lee Loader or with a neck sizing die. Lee Precision, my preferred brand, makes neck sizing dies for most cartridges.
During the resizing process with a sizing die, your die will resize the neck or the entire cartridge and push out the primer in one operation. Deburr the outside of the case mouth and chamfer the inside with a tool. A bullet seats easier and smoother in a chamfered case neck.
Remove primer residue from the primer pocket with a primer pocket brush and install a new primer into the pocket.
With the cartridge resting in a shell block, weigh a desired charge on a scale. I use a digital scale and confirm the charge weight with a digital scale. That takes more time, but the redundancy ensures safety. Place a special reloading funnel over the case mouth and pour the powder charge into the cartridge. High volume reloaders use a powder dispenser which drops the charge with the flip of a handle.
The last step is to seat the bullet. Adjust your seater die so that your bullet seats with the tip at the maximum overall cartridge length. As your skills progress, you likely will experiment with bullet seating lengths, but maximum cartridge overall length is a good starting point.
Finally, I crimp my bullets into the neck with a Lee Factory Crimp Die. I have noticed from reloading thousands of cartridges that neck tension is highly variable. Crimping eliminates that variable by ensuring uniform neck tension. More meticulous reloaders do it by manipulating the necks into uniform concentricity with various tools like die bushings.
Reloading is kind of like fly tying. You can buy flies, but it is more rewarding and more satisfying to catch fish with flies you tied yourself. It is also more satisfying and more rewarding to take game and shoot tight groups with self-loaded ammo.