Hornady 125 SST good choice for first time reloader?

[HawkTac]

The speed tnt is a great bullet for the BLK for both hunting and plinking, andd it just happens to be one of the most accurate out of 3 of my 300's.

[r.tenorio671]

...the Speer 125 TNT's typically cost less than the SST's or Nosler 110's, especially if bought in the 500 pack. Graf's is a good source, 500 pack ~$100. Sierra 125 SMK's probably among the most expensive, ~$175 p/500.

Best to buy the 500 packs, a good load ladder when you develop the loads for your particular rifle would at least be 50 rounds 5 x 10 increments).

...MY accuracy results with the SST were good, but not so much better than the TNT, SMK, or Varmageddon's to justify paying the extra costs. In all honesty, I found them all to be about equal in MY barrels...

[r.tenorio671]

Hey guys thanks for the extra info, I have already ordered some of the Nosler bullets but am open to getting some of the other ones to try out. Having the lighter 110 bullet is appealing to me since it's the same weight as the Barnes cartridges I would use for actual hunting and my optic won't need adjustments when switching between the two.

It is a bummer about the Carolina brass, when it shows up I will start measuring it. What do you guys use to trim, do I have to get a 300 blackout jig?

....it happens on occasion that brass might fail the Sheridan, not because the brass is bad but possibly worn dies or a loss of adjustment due to high production rates. Depending on how much money you want to spend and how much time you want to save will influence what trimmer you get. If funds are low, you can get the simple to use and low cost Lee trimmer, less than $20. The Little Crow Works WFT-2 trimmer is a good one, can change calibers by swapping out the insert, ~$70. The "jig" is used when you are cutting down .223/5.56 cases to make into .300BLK cases, not used for trimming, which is a separate process. The WFT-2 is capable of trimming an uncut formed case to the proper size as shown in the demo vid on LCW's site....


If you haven't gotten the Sheridan yet, get the slotted one!

[Bucks13]

The 125 SST were the second bullet I used in my introduction to reloading. I can say it is a good round that shoots well, even in my 8.1" SBR. That being said, I did have some initial problems in my Lee Progressive 5 turret press. At first, the bullet seating die must have had a burr in it, so the shape of the bullet vs. the shape of the die was causing the bullet to get stuck in the seating die. I hadn't had a problem with the Nosler 220 gr subs before that. After a little polish of the die, I no longer have the issue.

Second, I was used to the boat tail of the 220 gr, so switching to the 125 gr SST gave me problems with concentric seating. Sometimes it would go in slightly crooked, causing one side of the case neck to protrude a little further than the other side. This was causing failure in my Sheridan case gauge (worth the $). I think this was partially caused by the flatter base and length of the bullet, not allowing me to hold the bullet in place as long on the up stroke of the press. I was able to prevent that from happening anymore by adding a little more chamfer to the I.D. of my neck, allowing the flatter base to align itself better on the up stroke.

Hope that helps. Good luck.

[voip-1]

Thanks again for all the helpful newbie info. I've inquired on the availability with Sheridan of the slotted 300 black gauge, if they have it in stock I will go ahead and order it.

Pulled the trigger (ha! ) on Lee turret press $99.99 with free Prime shipping from Amazon along with 300 blackout die set.

Now I need to decide if I want the Lee primer feed system or if I should just get a hand primer loader. Also need to decide on a scale and a powder measure (also Lee?) and I should be good to start working up some basic stuff.

I will also look into ordering a trimmer since it sounds like I'm going to need that one way or another.

I will have to shoot a LOT more than I usually do (I usually shoot 100-300 rounds every 90 days or so) to offset the cost of the reloading equipment with ammunition cost savings, but that's probably not a bad thing. I'm going to try to sign up for some 1-on-1 instruction with the guys at BluCore once the weather gets crappy, and I understand they will have you burn through 200-300 rounds in one session.

[plant.one]

you should be able to reload blackout for ~$0.50 to $0.55 per round for SST's (not including the cost of brass which can be resued several times - i'm only counting the truly one time use items - powder, primer, brass). Compared to factory ammo that can be anywhere in the range of $0.85 to $1.35 a round you can recoup your initial setup pretty quickly.

even on the low end of the savings scale - 300 rounds x $0.30 = $90 in savings over factory ammo. theres most of the cost of your $100 turret.

what you'll find - you wont save a single penny reloading, but you WILL shoot more for the same $ investment.

once you have the basic equipment expanding to a new caliber is simply the cost of dies.




re: priming - personally i prefer the feel of seating a primer by hand for my rifle loads. pistol i do run on a progressive so i prime on press for those. What i personally do is once i have my brass prep all done (resized, trimmed, deburred, chamfered, primer pocket maintence done) is to just go ahead an prime the whole lot of what i have available. Then when i'm ready to produce ammo i just have to powder them and seat bullets and its done. i do the grunt work of preping the brass in the winter when its nasty outside and then easy part of powder/bullet as needed to keep the trigger happy

[sc556]

Hey guys. I'm making my first foray into reloading soon. Going to pull the trigger on a Lee turret press, Lee 300 dies, a scale and other needed doodads in the next week or so.

I've got 250 pieces of pre-formed 300 brass coming from carolina brass so that I can get comfortable reloading before I start cutting, polishing and forming my own.

Be sure you resize those brass from Carolina, many of mine won't fit in my Sheridan gauge nor would they fit in my chamber if I didn't resize them.

(I found out the hard way as I loaded up a few hundred before trying them)

I've got some H110 powder coming.

Now I'm trying to pick a decent bullet to use. I would prefer to stay on the lighter side so that I don't have to re-zero my optic when switching between these and other light weight rounds such as Barnes 110s.

Hornady 125 SST looks pretty good to me, can anyone recommend anything else out there that is good for plinking, cheap and easy for a newbie to load?

Speer TNT are some of the least expensive good value plinking bullets.

RDA, I wanted to first apologize for the issue you had in 2013. I wish we heard from you back then because I would have 100% taken care of it. In 2013 we still used a Wilson gauge as many did then. We switched the the Sheridan Slot gauge because there was too much slop in the Wilson. I just wanted to mention that in over a million pieces which my wife and I have ran by hand here, I have only had 3 customer complaints. One was due to a chamber that was too tight and the customer was allowed to keep and use the brass. (full refund was issued, and months later the customer called back and said his gun was to blame and paid us for the brass) One other was the same issue except the chamber they had was cut so big that their fired cases looked like 30 carbine brass when they were fired, even with that the customer was credited all of his money + $1 over what he paid. The last issue was based off a swage issue where we needed to add more swage to remove the LC crimp. In the newer LC with the primer stakes we saw that swaging on the 1050 left an edge we did not like which made it harder to prime than it should have been. We sent out new brass and do not use the new staked primers only the old circle crimp.

We try our best to make high quality brass. We maintain the dies and equipment consistently to ensure this and we consistently invest in equipment and the best quality brass we can find. I am sorry that you had to resize the brass, I can tell you that should we have the opportunity to do business with you in the future we hope to make you a believer once more. I sincerely apologize for the work you had to do, and I would ask that you not consider that the totality of the work we do.

[Blowout]

once you have the basic equipment expanding to a new caliber is simply the cost of dies.

....and powder and bullets and primers.

[Fox84]

Carolina Brass has always been perfect (1000 cases) in my chambers without resizing before loading. Sierra makes a nice 110gr HP Varmint bullet.

[ajb]

I have also used Carolina Brass with no resizing and no issues.