This menial repetitive task matches my slightly OCD nature...

I've got just over a week before the IPSC State Titles where I'll compete against a couple hundred other shooters from around the country and overseas. Apparently the world's number 1 shooter in my class will be shooting at the competition so I hope to shoot in his squad. It'll be demoralising and probably embarrassing but I'll learn a bucket load of stuff from him.

Anyway, tonight I was loading ammunition for the State Title shoot and I thought I'd share some images and (badly shot) video of the process for those who are interested to see the machine in action. I hand load my own rifle ammunition one by one for accuracy and precision but with pistol ammunition I use a progressive press. A Dillion one. It's ingenious. Each down and upward stroke produces a bullet and multiple actions happen at each stage as follows.

Empty case feeds, case is deprimed of old primer, case is resized, case is primed with new primer, case is charged with gun powder, bullet is placed, bullet is seated and crimped, bullet drops into the tub complete. See the video below.

The press in action showing the stages. Right at the end you can see the feed tubes for the empty cases and projectile. This one is making 38 Super and I made 9mm tonight also.

This shows the case feeding. The cases are poured into a hopper above with sets them the right way and feeds them down this tube. They are then fed onto the die turntable for the loading process.

Here's the hopper that holds the empty cases. See the case at the front is the right way up? It's about to drop down the tube ready for the loading turntable.

The projectile hopper does the same thing.

This is the turntable where all the action happens. Freedom pills drop out into a tub after a turn on the turntable ready for the quality assurance process.

Here it is again. You can see the case to the front is charged with gun powder at this stage.

This image is the whole machine. You can see the two hoppers at the top, the blue on the right is for the cases and the black to the left the projectiles. If you look carefully you can see the two feed tubes full of projectiles and cases. The primer feed tube is hidden by the hopper containing the grey gun powder.

Here's a closer image of the gun powder hopper and projectile feed tube.

This machine is incredibly well designed. Once set up (that's a fiddly annoying job) it can do thousands of rounds before needing any maintenance at all. It has a few idiosyncrasies but is typically very reliable. This progressive press has made more than 50,000 rounds. That's a lot.

I have not gone into detail with this post as it can get reasonably complicated but you get the idea. There are other factors like cleaning the once-fired brass prior to loading, weighing the gun powder charge and making sure the bullet is not loaded too low. The lower the charge the less the recoil. In a competition that would give someone an advantage through greater accuracy due to lower recoil. There are minimum power factors involved in IPSC shooting and 8 rounds from each shooter will be tested during the State Titles.

So, tonight instead of walking the dog, watching TV, going to the gym or whatever other people do I made 1,000 rounds of ammunition. It took about 2 hours to make them and was pretty much done by sitting there pulling the handle with the occasional supporting activity like filling hoppers with cases, powder, projectiles and primers. The machine does most of the work. Hopefully you found this post interesting. If you read down to here you must have. If not then that's ok too.

Design and create your ideal life, and aim small, miss small
@galenkp

I apologise for the poor photography and video. I was not really set up for it and need to pump out some rounds quickly. Forgive me.