Reloading

What, exactly, is a Magneto Speed, you may be asking? Fair enough. The name says a lot about it, but more on that in a second. If you have ever seen someone shooting at the range with what appears to be a fiberglass bayonet strapped to the barrel, they weren’t roleplaying a Dough Boy with really sketchy props. That was a Magneto Speed, the chronograph that mounts to your barrel.

In spite of the desert winds gusting over 18 mph, some of us were making contact with the plate, at 1,760 yards – one full mile – with a 6.5 Creedmoor.

With great ammo, you can turn a $400 handgun into one that shoots as well as a gun that costs many thousands. The opposite is true as well. Sometimes cheap ammo can turn a handgun that cost many thousands of dollars into one that shoots about as well as a cheap one.

Getting a new reloading press is a pretty exciting thing! And there is so much to do – from finding the right work area and getting the machine assembled, to deciding what caliber(s) you want to start making. If you are new to handloading then there is also the overwhelming nature of the complexity of the task and the volumes of information to sift through. We’ve all been there!

When it comes to ammunition, there are a huge number of companies in the mix. With that, the quality varies a lot from manufacturer to manufacturer. I decided to head up to Northern New Hampshire and visit David Stark, the owner of Discreet Ballistics.

Scroll through any forum for ammunition reloaders, and you’ll often see the same advice for newbies: start small. Don’t buy an expensive die set until you know how to use a basic set from Lee or Hornady. This is good advice, generally speaking, but if you buy basic now and then decide to upgrade later, your final bill will be even higher. That’s why I was drawn to the Competition die set from RCBS.

In my journey into reloading as a cherry boy, I have done some things that are at the very least questionable, if not downright sketchy. I think we can all agree that a red Solo cup and a Gerber baby spoon are not proper powder-measuring tools, though they do work in a pinch.

RCBS just released a die set for the 224 Valkyrie, which is a huge step forward for this fledgling cartridge. And I got my grubby paws on them, just in time for prairie dog season in the Potato State.

This week, the amateur reloading show got some upgraded tools. If you are stepping into the roll your own game, you are going to want to put these high up on your list not far behind the press.