Essential Ammo Reloading Equipment for Beginners: Complete Starter Guide
This month, let’s talk about reloading. I am going to give you a complete beginner’s guide to reloading. Hopefully, you can learn from my successes as well as some of the mistakes I have made in the past. As I’ve mentioned in past blogs, it is best to start out small and within your budget, then grow as you see fit. The same logic can be applied for reloading. There are a couple of questions to ask yourself in the beginning before you start purchasing equipment and supplies. Why do you want or need to start reloading? Do you have the time to dedicate to reloading? And finally, do you have the right amount of patience?
Why start reloading? – Cost of ammo? Competition shooting? Love to target shoot a lot? Peace of mind knowing you can always have ammo? Ammo for hunting? These are all good reasons, and they will determine what equipment you need.
Since this is the beginner’s guide to reloading, I will cover the basic equipment. You can build onto your basic reloading setup when your reloading needs grow.
Equipment
Let’s start with the press. There are many presses on the market today. I recommend a sturdy single-stage press to start. Single-stage presses do one operation at a time. Good brands like RCBS, Hornady, or Wilson are all very well made and you can most likely find them at your local sporting goods store or online. You may even be able to find used presses on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist. Single-stage presses are very simple. Not a lot of moving parts and hard to mess one up. These presses can be used for rifle and handgun ammunition.
They resemble each other, and there is not a lot to them. Single-stage presses work great for beginners because they are designed to do one operation at a time.
Reloading Dies
Most of the reloading dies on the market today will fit in other presses. So, if you have an RCBS 308 Winchester die set, they will work with a Hornady press. Dies are not that expensive, and I have never heard of someone wearing them out. I’ve picked die sets up in the past at yard sales and other places. If you do get secondhand dies, inspect them. Make sure there are no burs, scratches, or other blemishes. You can tell if they have been treated badly. When buying die sets, make sure you get all the dies required. Make sure you have a decapping(depriming)/sizing die, a bullet seating die, and a factory crimp die (if your ammo requires a factory-style crimp). Make sure your die sets have a shell holder as well.
Depending on the cartridge you are reloading, you can get other dies and add in different steps as you get more comfortable reloading. Most of the ammo you will be loading will either use a 2–die set or a 3-die set. Installing these dies into the press correctly is a very simple process. The directions provided are very easy to comprehend. A quick side note, since there are a lot of people who have AR-15s and will want to start reloading all the brass they have collected. Some of the primer pockets in 5.56 brass will need to be swagged before you can insert a new primer. The swage tool physically reshapes the metal case head so a new primer can be installed.
Primer Seating Tool
This tool is probably the easiest to use and a very simple design. This tool pushes the primer into the primer pocket of the brass casing. There are more expensive ones out there but something simple like the RCBS Hand Priming tool is all you need.
Measurement Tools
Measuring is very important in reloading. Measuring the amount of powder you are loading into the brass case is highly important. If you don’t load enough powder the bullet won’t perform like you want, or worse, it could get stuck in the barrel. Too much powder and you could damage your rifle or potentially hurt yourself. There are a couple of ways to measure powder. Some people like using a balance beam scale like below. This was the method years ago, before technology improved the process. A digital scale works great and is a lot faster than the old way. Either one works. Very simple tools for a very important step in reloading.
The other tool is a set of calipers. Measuring the overall length of the cartridge after you just filled with powder and topping it off with a bullet is as important as the amount of powder you measured. A cartridge that is too long can get jammed in the chamber, damage the chamber, or not feed properly if being fed from a magazine. After you get more reloading time under your belt, you can read more about overall cartridge length and slight changes you can make to make your bullets perform better. Calipers are easy to read. Digital ones are also available to make your calculations quicker.
The last thing you need is “The Book.” The Book of Reloading. This book is filled with all the information needed to reload your ammo. It tells you what powders to use as well as how much. It tells you how long your finished cartridge should be. It will also tell you how fast that bullet will travel when it is fired. The book shows you how different grain bullets perform with different powders. You can’t reload without it. The Book does come in digital format. Also, many reloading manufacturers provide apps to assist you with your reloading experience.
There are many manufacturers of reloading equipment out there, and many YouTube videos to help you as well. Reloading is fun, some people even call it therapy. I have a buddy that calls himself a “Mad Scientist” when he is reloading. Grow your reloading outfit slowly. If you see the need to produce more ammo because you are shooting more, then you can move up to progressive presses and automatic powder loaders. Don’t make the mistake that I made. I purchased a Hornady Lock-N-Load Ammo Plant press, thinking I was going to be loading hundreds of cartridges. It was during COVID so I thought I would be out of ammo. I ended up selling it because I wasn’t reloading that much. However, I do have a single-stage RCBS Rock Chucker press, and I can load all I need.
Happy Reloading
Semper Fi!
Written by: David Johnson, Leatherneck Gunsmithing
