Pulling Bullets

[FROGO207]

I have the Hornaday puller and a hammer type. Both are good for what they are. I also just use vise grips if the bullet is going to get deformed anyway (soft lead pistol) and be recast. I bought the Hornaday one so I could pull the pile of 7.62X54 FMJ rounds and make them into something I could hunt with. I slowly added collets and like that the lever works without all that twisting the RCBS one needs.

 

[444]

I have used a kinetic bullet puller as well as the RCBS collet puller.

A guy I worked with once gave me a big coffee can full of inert .45 ACP ammo. Hundreds of them, maybe 500. I have no idea where he got them or why they were inert but I tried to fire them and ........... they were inert. I pulled them all with a kinetic bullet puller and it took me a couple weeks to do all of them. It wasn't fun, so I only did 20 or so a day. I then used the cases and bullets and everything worked great.

Years ago, I bought 2000 rounds of Indian milsurp 7.62 NATO ammo. It was dirt cheap. It was so cheap that even though I had my doubts about the quality of it, I couldn't pass it up. Well........it didn't shoot worth a crap, so I decided that since I already had it, I would start off by pulling 100 bullets, and weighing everything to see what I had. After my experience of pulling those .45 ACP bullets with the kinetic puller, I knew I wasn't going to do that again, so I bought the RCBS puller (without doing any real research on the subject). This was so much easier and since I wanted to accurately weigh the powder charges, it was also much more practical and precise since I wasn't spilling the powder. FWIW: the powder charge weight variation was incredible. I don't remember the exact numbers but I had powder charges that varied by 8 GRAINS !!!!!!!!!!!!!. So at some point, I am going to pull all 2000 bullets and use the primed cases and bullets to load decent ammo. I may or may not try to work up a load using the powder also but that is up in the air for right now.

Since that time, I have seen and read about the Hornady puller and I would probably go with that one knowing what I know now. It just seems easier to use.

As far as marking the bullets, I found that if you are careful and only use just enough pressure to grip the bullet, you can pull bullets even from these military cases (which have sealant around the bullets) without any damage or marks at all. You just have to take your time and use only the minimum pressure.

 

[FROGO207]

Those military rounds with the sealer will come apart easier if you take the time to run them up in the seater die and push the bullet in a slight amount to break the grip of the sealant first. You need much less grip when doing it this way.

 

[bullseye308]

Yep, that Indian 308 was crap. The powder is crap too. The cases and bullets are ok after you get the sealant off. For years I have used the green hammer and it works just fine for me. That grip and pull looks interesting tho.

 

[hdwhit]

Frogo207 wrote:
...I slowly added collets and like that the lever works without all that twisting the RCBS one needs.

Strangely enough, I prefer the RCBS one because it does require the collet be screwed down so that I can adjust just how tightly the bullet is held.

 

[9mmepiphany]

Strangely enough, I prefer the RCBS one because it does require the collet be screwed down so that I can adjust just how tightly the bullet is held.

You do the same thing with the Hornady Cam-Loc handle by how far you depress it.

Using the method I described in Post #13, I usually depress the handle about 35 degrees from vertical. I've gone as far as 60 degrees