DeadFlies
Member
The Lee cutter is cheap and it works. It's a bit tough on the fingers after a few dozen cases though, especially if you are chamfering and deburring with the Lee tool too.
A $2 pair of tiny locking pliers (at either Harbor Freight or Lowes) is a great addition to the Lee trimmer But there's a better way.
Rather than trying to get ALL of my cases THE SAME LENGTH, like I used to do, I just accept the fact my case collection contains all different lengths. So, e.g., measuring each resized case length, I throw 1.450" into a 6lb coffee can labelled "1.450", I throw 1.451" into a coffee can labelled "1.451", etc, As reloaded and shot, brass is decapped, resized, remeasured and redistributed. This way I maintain batches of brass all the "same length" needed for a roll crimp, much cheaper, faster, and more precise than the Lee trimmer, or even a power trimmer, allows.
And you already have the caliper so it's free!
I have never trimmed a piece of handgun brass and probably never will. There is no need to trim straight walled handgun brass mostly because it actually shrinks instead of lengthening. I have well over 20 reloads on a lot of my .38 special brass and there's still no reason to trim any of it...Thanks for all the replies as to my case trimming questions RE: trimming my .38 brass....since I will be shooting only mild load 148 gr. wad cutters I think I probably will not need to trim for the 1st few reloads...however, I like Lee Roder's idea of separating my brass into lengths... think that method will work for me...will be very careful to not exceed OAL with my calipers using my Lee OAL length guide.
Thanks again for all the suggestions and ideas...
tackbustr
For loading 148 Gr WCs in .38 Spl with a little or no taper crimp, you can get away with not trimming at all. 50 yard BE shooters might, dunno, but us commoners won't need to. Separating into groups of similar lengths may help accuracy, dunno. When I used untrimmed brass to test some things in .38 Spl once, I could not see a difference, but I'm no BE shooter either.Thanks for all the replies as to my case trimming questions RE: trimming my .38 brass....since I will be shooting only mild load 148 gr. wad cutters I think I probably will not need to trim for the 1st few reloads...however, I like Lee Roder's idea of separating my brass into lengths... think that method will work for me...will be very careful to not exceed OAL with my calipers using my Lee OAL length guide