If you’re into fly fishing, no one raises they eyebrows when you tell them that you tie your own flies. The same goes for a lot of hunters – we reload our own ammunition. Why, and how do you do it?

Rifle ammunition basically consist of these components:

• case
• primer
• powder
• projectile

With safety in mind, reloading ammmunition is basically putting all these pieces together, in the right order, and according to a well tried reloading recipe.

Why Reload Ammunition?

With increasing prices, reloading ammunition is a matter of cost to a lot of us. However, you need a bit of reloading equipment to get started, so in order for it to pay off, you probably need to reload regularly and produce a certain number of items.

Apart from cost, high precision and the desired effect in the target are primary reasons for a lot of us, whether it is ammunition used for hunting or practice shooting. Given two identical rifles and two shots from the same box of ammunition, precision could differ between the two. Each individual barrel has its own characteristics, and thus, figuring out which ammunition type performs optimal in your rifle and being able to reproduce – i.e. reload – it, is a great advantage. If you also add the option to select with projectile type you need for your type of hunting, i.e. fox hunting vs. red deer hunting, home loading really has its superior advantages.

Step 1: Preparing the Case

Whether you buy cases new or choose to reuse those already shot, the first step in relaoding starts with preparing the cases. It involves lubricating the case, depriming (removing the old primer), resizing the neck and cleaning the case.

We usually reload when we have more than two cases ready, though. I typically reload in batches of 50 or 100, sometimes even more.

Using a reloading press, I resize the neck of the case so that the projectile will fit firmly. Cases widen when being shot, so if you don’t perform this step, you could end up with a loose projectile or a case that does not chamber correctly in your gun. I then use the Hornady Case Prep Trio to chamfer the inside and the outside of the case mouths and clean the primer pockets.

Used primers are left in a separate container on my reloading press.

After getting seriously into reloading, I invested in a Hornady Rotary Cass Tumbler which makes it a breeze to clean hundreds of cases. Just add water and soap and let it tumble away – you’ll be amazed by the shining result!

Clean brass is then dried properly before the next step. 

I tie 19 cases together like shown here and warm them up over the fireplace, in the oven or out in the sun to make sure all moisture is evaporated.

Step 2: Adding New Primer

Now the case is good as new, and in order for it to be able to ignite the gun powder, an new primer needs to be added. Using the reloading press again, one by one the cases go in and a new primer is firmly fitted.

Step 3: Adding Gun Powder

This step is perhaps the most important one. If you use the wrong type of gun powder, or even a tiny amount wrong weight of it, you could be in serious trouble. Always refer to the manufacturer’s reloading data or other sources of trustworthy reloading data to figure this part out depending on you caliber, gun powder type and projectile weight.

Gun powder is usually measured in grains. 1 grain equals 0.06479891 grams. Needless to say, you need to be very careful measuring your gun powder, and select the correct unit on your weight.

Step 4: Adding the Projectile

Now we are at the really dangerous end of the process. The projectiles come in different shapes and weights, and each are built for purpose. Some projectiles, like the Hornady Eld Match shown here, are aimed for precision target shooting, and not hunting. I use them as my go-to training ammunition as I have found the precision of these projectiles is excellent in my rifle and barrel.

Now we are done, and a new batch of “factory new” ammunition is ready to use.