Reloading ammunition

Most of you probably recognize this as a a brass casing with spooky shading from my bad camerawork. It's what gets ejected from a firearm after it is fired. What some of you may not know is that some shooters, myself included, like to reuse these casings to re-manufacture ammunition. This is done to achieve higher accuracy by making ammunition that is custom fit to certain firearms, as well as to save money. You can save anywhere from 30% to 70%+ by reloading your own ammunition instead of buying factory-made ammunition.

I'm writing this short contribution to Imgur as my first post thinking it may interest some people. It is by no means a comprehensive guide, it just shows in the most basic possible ways the process of remanufacturing ammo.

The brass casing that you see above of one of four components of a round of ammunition. Unlike the other three components, the brass casing can be used and reused a certain number of times.

You may recognize this object as a bullet. That's fine, but for the purposes of this post, what you're looking at is a cartridge, a round of ammunition.

Now this is the bullet, the second part of the cartridge. It's the part of the cartridge that becomes a projectile once the gun is fired.

These are primers, they're the third component of a cartridge. They're the ignition source of centerfire cartridges. Those react to being impacted with something like 25 pounds. If you hit them with a hammer, they go pow. In a cartridge, it gets smacked by the gun's firing pin, causing it to ignite the smokeless powder inside the brass casing.

This is smokeless powder, the fourth component of a cartridge. Most modern cartridges use this type of powder, which burns vigorously but relatively slowly, unlike black powder which does ignites in a bit more of a "spark".

Edit: Thanks to yy0b and godelski for pointing out that black powder does not "explode". There are youtube videos showing the difference and it's quite spectacular.

When the primer is struck, the smokeless powder inside the brass casing ignites and burns much quicker than it would in open air. This creates pressure behind the bullet, pushing it forward. Since pressure wants to escape by the path of least resistance when possible, if all goes well that means it'll go forward behind the bullet. If it chooses not to, that's called a catastrophic failure and you're gonna have a bad time.

The primary tool we use in order to reload is a reloading press. it's a relatively simple mechanical tool, there are many types with different functions. The principle is always the same. You use a lever to lift your brass casing into a contraption that performs an action on them. You can see the black platform at the bottom, and those threaded things at the top are called "dies", they shape the brass and perform those other actions I spoke of.

The press should preferably be located in a garage with trash everywhere.

Above the press, you can have this "hopper" which is empty in this picture but it contains smokeless powder and dispenses the desired amount. Powder is measured by weight, so in order to get the correct amount, you have to weigh your powder charges and be sure to stay within manufacturer specifications. Otherwise, catastrophic failures may happen.

These are the dies. Those are for .223 rem, but they all work the same. You can see the hole at the bottom, that's where the brass casings are inserted.

The one on the right is a sizing die, which shapes the malleable brass of the case back to specifications. This is necessary, because brass expands when it is fired and the brass needs to be squeezed down back into shape after each firing. The protruding thing you see is called a decapper, it removes the spent primer from the case, so that you can insert a new one.

The die on the left essentially just allows you to seat your bullets at the desired depth.

This is the bottom of a round after firing. You can see that the primer isn't flat like the ones on the picture above, it's because it was struck by the gun's firing pin, causing it to ignite. This is what the "decapping pin" removes.

So once we're ready we can put a piece of brass into the reloading press.

You can see here the press platform is raised and the piece of brass is lifted into the full length sizing die. This squeezes the brass down back to spec and removes the old spent primer AND installs a new one.

This picture is taken on the second station of the machine on the other side. It's where the powder is dispensed. It also "flares" the neck of the case in order to allow some clearance to seat a bullet.

The machine is designed quite ingeniously, in that if there is no piece of brass in the way, no powder will be dispensed. Since there's a piece of brass, it will push the nozzle up and allow a charge of powder to fall down into the case.

In station 3, a bullet is placed on top of the brass casing. Right now, it's just balanced on top. When it goes into the die, the bullet will be seated deeply into the brass casing.

And station 4, the die removes the "flare" of the second station, making the brass walls straight so that it can fit inside a firearm without jamming it.

After that, the finished cartridge falls neatly into the bin, and it's ready to be taken to the range!

There's a lot that happens in the background, so as I have said this is by no means a guide to help anybody reload. The brass must be cleaned and then sorted and inspected for damage, and there are a lot of little things that can be dangerous if they're not taken care of carefully. If you intend to reload, buy a book about it, read it front to back, understand what you've read and then read it again.

I hope this has been interesting to some of you. Cheers :)