DIY Reloading tools

[Oldbloke]

Often newbies ask about reloading kits, accessories or tools. Obviously you can do it cheaply or the sky is the limit. I assembled my kit over time as the need arose. I started with a Lee classic reloader, then graduated to a Simplex O frame press, a set of FLS dies and a few home made scoops.

Since ozzies often like to DIY I thought it would be good to show us some of your reloading DIY tools.

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Some DIY powder scoops.

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DIY Primer pocket cleaner. Drill ground into a screw driver like shape

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DIY Trickler. Just a pill bottle and a piece of hollow glass fishing rod. Lead sheeting to act as a base.

[Tiger650]

Cheers OB
That is how folks once did things, should be the same now, "necessity is the mother of invention" is pretty much an unheard of nowadays.
I salute you.

[Blr243]

For those about to rock. I salute you too

[in2anity]

Bravo OB! Now THAT is impressive!

[Blr243]

Not exactly reloading but home made for sure

[Blr243]

It’s a workshop drawing of a bracket I made up for roo shooting off my quad the 25 box steel attaches to the roof rack on my left hand side of the quad The big lead weight at the bottom acts like a pendulum ensuring that the light always points perfectly horizontal reagardless of the camber of the dirt track I’m on. I can swivel the light left or right manually if I need to but the idea was that while operating the quad putting along at night the light is always in the paddock instead of falling up or down Then when a roo is seen I just stop and adjust left or right and I can let go of the light without having to lock it’s position A faster system is what I wanted so this is what I came up with. But I just loved the idea that I could have better control of the bike and alternate between paddock scanning with my eyes and keeping an eye on the track in front ..... whenever I took my eyes of the track in front I could instantly see that my hunting spotlight was on track already in the right spot ready to pick up Roos .... but I think I only used it for one night then I got thermal gear and threw tthis unit away when having a back yard clean up

[Oldbloke]

What a great idea Blr243. A real KISS idea.
Necessity is the mother of Invention.

What does it swivel on? Ball joint?

[Blr243]

The vertical pole is 12 mm threaded rod It penetrates a 12 mm nut which is directly welded to a horizontal 12 mm threaded rod At both ends of the horizontal 12 mm rod is a bearing in some sort of houseing that I can’t remember Nothing beats a human assistant on the light but I’m too cranky and set it my ways to invite anyone along ......I think I might allow someone one day if they were good at getting out to open gates , able to keep their mouth shut , sit in the corner and not be allowed to touch a rifle ( but that’s no fun for them )

[Oldbloke]

This CoronaID19 lock down is forcing me to catch up on a few DIY's. LOL

I decided today I would make a new trickler. As it happened a couple of days ago I found an old broken car radio arial in the shopping car park. Just what I needed as I already had the other half of the project put aside, an old LED torch. The ones you often see in a cheapy shop. I already have a DIY trickler but for some time felt I would like to up grade.. (see above plastic version)

1. First I removed the guts of the torch and cut the piece of SS arial to approx length. Removed all burrs later once I had the correct length just right.
2. Drilled 2 holes in the torch same size as the diameter of the arial. In this case 6.5 mm. One hole about 1 mm lower than the other giving the tube a slight incline.
3. I then mixed up about 40 grams of No 5 shot with 2 part appoxy and poured it into the base of the torch body & allowed it to set. This serves to give the trickler additional stability when in use.
4. I then drilled the arial (3mm) and added some plastic tube to create a small knob. Job done & works a treat.

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[Oldbloke]

A couple of very simple ones.
A DIY reloading block and a socket filled with steel wool. Run in a drill does a good job of polishing the case mouth.

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[Noisydad]

A significant amount of my gear is home made. How many photos would you like? I like those adjustable scoops of yours, they’re great!

[Oldbloke]

A significant amount of my gear is home made. How many photos would you like? I like those adjustable scoops of yours, they’re great!

Yeh they served me well for a few years.

IlI thought you might come out of the wood work at some point.. Ill let you decide Noisy.

[Stix]

I too like those adjustable powder scoops...ive long thought to make a vouple of them--mostly for trailboss as that stuff is so static'ee (lol) it sticks to the plastic thrower tube like a blowie to the arse end of a skun out fox...!!

The trouble is we've become a single use society who is price driven & not taught to think through problem solving to a solution...its just too easy to get it delivered off the internet bay...

Also, many of the younger grnerations dont keep "sh!t"...i mean rubbish--for example that torch of yours OB would land in the bin without even a thought to even drop it in the recycling, let alone any thoughts that "this might come in handy some day".

Hell...i keep every-bloody-thing...
Came back to bite me once though...
--got real cheap rent once, in a house marked for demo by a developer...out in the old garden shed, there was some crap left about, & i kept & rolled up all this string laying as round.
My GF had a crack at me for keeping it--you know, the old "what are you keeping that for" kind of comments.
Well her & the other guy that shared the house used to read news papers, & one day it was time to get rid of them in a recycling pick up, but we had no boxes or string to tie them up...

So out walks me--very animated, saundering along like i was the lovechild of Tarzan & The Fonz... ...head held high, shoulders back & chest all puffed out...
GF--"Ah string--where'd you get tha...errgh..."
Me--"Yes baby, you remember that string...?...yea..!!...now who's your daddy...?? Thats right say my name baby...say...my...name...!!... ..."

Well we tied up all the papers & when we all picked up 2 piles each, the string waz so old & degraded it all broke & the papers fell everywhere...
I had kept that string for a year. & we all had a good cackle...

And Noisy...thats what the thread is for...so put up heaps of pics...!!


And BLR...that looks like it was a good set-up...
But how did the roos react to the spotty throwing a florescent coloured light...?..was it the lens/a filter or was it the globe...?

[Oldbloke]

Ha Ha, yeh i have a small box full of string. Use it all the time. I looked at that torch for a long time. Figured it make a good trickler. The squirrel in me couldnt let it go. Lol

[Blr243]

It was just a hid. White light , standard run of the mill shoot some Aussie Roos with a spotlight sort of light ... some ran away some didn’t I rigged up my rifle pointing fwd on the quad and loaded with the bolt handle lifted. Ready to go. I know I only had seconds before they got nervous and hopped off so I figured I have not got time to lift and swing the rifle around. My aim was always too shoot them before they had time to think about if they were hanging around or not .

[Blr243]

I had a massive car battery on the front of the quad. It was linked to the main original quadbike battery. During daylight hours I would disconnect them and trickle charge the big battery. It was the only way I could punch out a bright light for 6 plus hours spotlighting without getting stranded flat battery in the back blocks

[sungazer]

Nice job Oldbloke looks just like a bought one. I have to say the trickler I bought early on was great and I think it will be the only one I ever buy it was a Redding works great and looks pretty much like yours. There is one electric one I may buy one day that is able to just add that one granule that may work well in conjunction with a manual unit,

One thing I have made is comparitor gauges similar to the Hornady Gauges used to measure shoulder set back. I made some for that purpose and also to measure on the ogive of bullets or at least at a point as close to my barrels dimensions as possible. In the future I will use the bits of new barrels that get cut off when they are replaced.

[Oldbloke]

So I remembered today I made a Bullet Comparator about 2 years ago to measure off the ogive. It works OK. More consistant than measuring off the lead tip. Just a brass nut with 2 holes drilled one for 308 and the other 224 cal. They may not be precisely on the ogive but since the measurement is only reletive I dont think it matters.
I dont recall the drill sizes but after drilling I cleaned up the burrs with some very fine wet and dry paper.

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[Oldbloke]

I spotted this idea on face ache. A cheap alternative bullet puller. A drill chuck. Lol

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[Blr243]

I think we can assume that we can’t trust that bullet to fly well after extraction but at least you can pull the bullet I have constantly got collets shearing and failing in conventional rcbs bullet pullers and they are not offering warranty so I refuse to buy them again

[Oldbloke]

I think we can assume that we can’t trust that bullet to fly well after extraction but at least you can pull the bullet I have constantly got collets shearing and failing in conventional rcbs bullet pullers and they are not offering warranty so I refuse to buy them again

Interesting. I have an RCBS collets type bullet puller. Works great

[Blr243]

I was useing 450 bushmaster with 300 grain proj so there was plenty of weight there for the principle of inertia to work. For those unfamiliar with this cal it’s staightsided. I never crimp anything. It’s just seated. And in no time my collets were screwed. Took it back swapped it and knew the same thing was going to happen and it did straight away. Then tried but store said sorry bro I was lucky to pull two dozen loads

[Oldbloke]

Usually the reason we DIY is to do it cheap. With that in mind I spotted these presses. Now I have heard various things about these so buyer beware. But at this price they gotter be considered by a new reloader.

P.S. presses are not rocket science.

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[BigB1]

This CoronaID19 lock down is forcing me to catch up on a few DIY's. LOL

I decided today I would make a new trickler. As it happened a couple of days ago I found an old broken car radio arial in the shopping car park. Just what I needed as I already had the other half of the project put aside, an old LED torch. The ones you often see in a cheapy shop. I already have a DIY trickler but for some time felt I would like to up grade.. (see above plastic version)

1. First I removed the guts of the torch and cut the piece of SS arial to approx length. Removed all burrs later once I had the correct length just right.
2. Drilled 2 holes in the torch same size as the diameter of the arial. In this case 6.5 mm. One hole about 1 mm lower than the other giving the tube a slight incline.
3. I then mixed up about 40 grams of No 5 shot with 2 part appoxy and poured it into the base of the torch body & allowed it to set. This serves to give the trickler additional stability when in use.
4. I then drilled the arial (3mm) and added some plastic tube to create a small knob. Job done & works a treat.

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I knew I had kept those old torches for a reason, thanks for the inspiration - off the shed tomorrow........

[LawrenceA]

I spotted this idea on face ache. A cheap alternative bullet puller. A drill chuck. Lol

Damn wish I had seen this earlier!
What a brilliant idea.

[Oldbloke]

I spotted these. At Xhunter. Pretty cheap. Made in China I guess.

[Noisydad]

OB I prefer not to refer to our DIY activities as " ...cheap" - I prefer to call it "resource conscious" lol
Here's a link to a thread I posted here quite a few years ago about the reloading press I cast and built. This press has reloaded thousands of rounds and sized thousands of cast bullets (all my sizing dies are home made too) and still going strong...
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=504
And part 2...
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=504

[Oldbloke]

Note this is black powder. But with the right modern powder this should work. Lol

https://youtu.be/nZ4IBv0Bg9U

[Oldbloke]

Looks useful to someone just starting out.

Reloading the centrefire cartridge - by Technical Advisor Brendan Atkinson.pdf

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[Oldbloke]

More a repurpose than DIY. Long story short I googled deburring tool. This popped up at $10 at total tools. For plumbers I guess.

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