i still have all my fingers.

Well, it looks like I managed to get those .38 Special rounds reloaded properly.

Thorsten is visiting from the old Fatherland, and we went to burn some powder tonight. I ran a hundred rounds of my home-brewed loads through the trusty Model 13, and all of them went "bang" with the same noise and recoil. Thorsten shot a five-round cloverleaf of overlapping holes at seven yards with the M13 in single action, so I guess the load is accurate enough.

Thorsten rented a Glock 21, and I tried my hand with it as well, but my Glock groups were twice as large as the ones out of the S&W. That revolver is a thing of beauty...it goes bang six times without fail, you open the cylinder, dump your six empties right back into the box, and load up again. No busting thumbs, no chasing brass, no slides locking back with rounds left in the magazine (the repeated weird Glock malfunction of the night, with both shooters), and no failures to feed or extract. Make mine a sixgun...

i have made fire.

Here's the take of the day: two hundred and fifty rounds of roll-your-own .38 Special, 158-grain Rainier flatpoints lightly taper-crimped over 3.6 grains of Bullseye. I have enough bullets and sorted brass for at least another 250, but that'll have to wait until next weekend.

I probably set a new negative record for speed on a Dillon SDB, because I compulsively pulled every tenth round or so off the shell plate prior to bullet seating to check the powder charge on a digital scale. I also hand-inspected every empty piece of brass for defects, and then again every finished round for primer seating depth and OAL.

Now I need to go and shoot 'em all up, so I can get more brass....uh, check how the load performs. Yeah, that's the ticket.

i think i figured it out.

The powder die was set to maximum bell width...way too wide. I figured out the powder die adjustment and unscrewed it per instructions to just the bare minimum, and now the rounds chamber like a charm.

(Mark, if you're reading this: the hardware is excellent, but the documentation needs a little help here and there.) Alas, I am but a noob, and still figuring things out.

This reloading stuff is pretty neat. I'll load a box of 50 before I head to bed, and then check the powder charge dropping to make sure I'm still getting my three-point-six grains.

'nother question for the reloaders.

So I spent a few hours setting up the Square Deal B today. Some assembly was required, but I followed the instructions, and it looks like I got it together the way it's supposed to go. Test cases ran through fine, and it took me about thirty minutes of fine-adjusting and measuring charges with a digital scale until I got it to dispense my desired 3.6 grains of Bullseye. I checked the charge a half dozen times before starting on seating bullets, and it's consistent.

One problem: I've cranked out a dozen or so test rounds, and they're all slightly sticky in the chambers. Visual inspection shows that the case is still very slightly belled out below the crimp.
Not enough crimp, or too much bell? The manual says to back out the powder die to adjust the bell, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to back it out.

Everything else seems to work peachy, though. I clamped the whole mount to the desk, and it's easy enough to work with.

question for the reloading pros.

Aren't revolver bullets supposed to have cannelures?

These are the Rainiers I bought yesterday, and they most certainly do not have a cannelure.

Their factory advice is to treat these like lead bullets as far as load data goes, since the copper is not a jacket, but rather a thin electroplated layer. Does one a.) roll crimp such a bullet like a lead bullet with a cannelure, or b.) not crimp it at all?