Ask ten handloaders how they prep brass and you will get ten answers, and most of them work. What separates them is rarely the list of operations. It is the order, and what each person decided they could skip.
This is the first of three walkthroughs of how people who load a great deal of ammunition actually run their benches. First up is one of our regional sales managers, who loads for competition. By his own estimate this is what he does for 95 to 99 percent of his reloading.
- Anneal
- Full-length resize with a bushing die, expander ball removed
- Neck mandrel to set tension
- Small base die, sizing stem removed
- Tumble in corn cob to clean and strip lube
- Trim and chamfer
- Prime on a bench-mounted tool
Brass Processing on the Press
Anneal
Every firing work-hardens the case neck a little more. Harder necks grip the bullet differently than soft ones, and the difference compounds across a batch that has been fired a different number of times. Annealing first means every case walks into the sizing die in roughly the same condition, which is the whole point of the four steps that follow.
It also buys brass life. Necks that are never annealed eventually split, and a case that splits at the neck is a case you paid for and did not finish using.
Full-length resize with a bushing die, no expander ball
The MatchMaster Full-Length Bushing Die Set sizes the body and shoulder conventionally, but the neck is handled by an interchangeable neck bushing rather than a fixed die dimension. Swap the bushing, change the neck tension. Because the bushing only takes the neck down as far as you ask it to, the brass gets worked less on every cycle.
He pulls the expander ball out entirely. On the upstroke, a conventional expander ball drags back through a neck that has just been squeezed down, and it will pull the neck slightly off-axis on its way out. Take the ball out of the equation and that particular source of runout goes away.
Neck runout is the case neck sitting a few thousandths off the centerline of the case body. A bullet seated into a crooked neck enters the throat crooked. It is one of the few precision variables you can remove entirely at the press rather than manage.
Mandrel for Neck Tension
The bushing set the outside of the neck. The mandrel sets the inside. Run through the neck from the mouth, it pushes any variation in brass thickness outward and leaves a uniform inside diameter behind.
That inside diameter is the surface the bullet actually grips, so sizing outside-in and then inside-out gets him a tension figure he can repeat across a batch of mixed-thickness brass. It is a second operation to do the job of one, which is a fair summary of a lot of match prep.
Small base die, sizing stem removed
A small base die sizes slightly further down toward the case head than a standard full-length die. It exists for semi-autos and tight chambers, where a case that is merely close enough will hang up on the way into battery.
He runs it last, with the sizing stem taken out, purely as a body operation. The neck work from steps two and three stays exactly as he set it, and every case in the batch gets one final pass that guarantees it will chamber. Feeding problems on the clock are expensive in a way that a group size never is.
Brass Processing off the Press
Here is where this process diverges most sharply from the other two in this series. There is no wet tumbling, no stainless pins, no ultrasonic bath, and no drying time. Cleaning is not the first thing that happens to his brass. It is close to the last.
Tumble in corn cob to clean and remove case lube
Everything up to this point required case lube, and lube has to come off before the ammunition gets loaded. A run in corn cob media does that and polishes the cases at the same time. One operation, two results, no water anywhere in the process.
Corn cob rather than walnut is deliberate. Walnut is the aggressive media, which is what you reach for when brass is genuinely filthy. These cases were already sized and are not carrying range grime, so the softer media is doing exactly enough.
Lube left on a finished round is not a cosmetic problem. A lubricated case cannot grip the chamber wall the way a dry one does, and that changes how the cartridge behaves on firing. Whatever your cleaning method, get the lube off before you load.
Trim and chamfer
Cases stretch forward every time they are sized. Trimming brings the batch back to one length, and chamfering the mouth afterward gives the bullet a clean ramp to seat against instead of a square edge to shave itself on.
Doing this after tumbling rather than before also means he is not cutting brass that still has lube on it, and no media dust ends up trapped under a freshly cut mouth.
Prime on a bench-mounted tool
The Pro Chucker will seat primers. He does it separately anyway, because a dedicated bench tool gives you feel. You can tell by hand when a primer bottoms out in the pocket, and you can tell when one goes in too easily because the pocket has loosened up after too many firings.
That information does not exist when priming is one more thing happening on the downstroke of a progressive. Catching a loose pocket before the case gets a charge in it is worth the extra handling.
Loading: Short Line
The prepped brass now goes one of two directions. Ammunition for the short line is loaded on the Pro Chucker 7, in volume.
In across-the-course competition, the short line is the closer stage and the long line is fired at distance. The further the target, the more a small variation in powder charge shows up as vertical spread on paper. That single fact is why one prepped batch of brass becomes two different loading processes.
Powder measure with a case-actuated die
The case itself trips the measure as it rises into the station, so a charge is thrown on every stroke without a separate action from the operator. Volumetric rather than weighed, and fast.
Powder check die
The trade for not weighing every charge is that you need something else watching. The Powder Checker sits in its own station and flags a charge that is high or low before a bullet ever goes on top of it. On a progressive, this is the station that catches the mistake you would otherwise find at the range.
Seat on the MatchMaster seater die
The MatchMaster Seater Die handles seating on both of his loading tracks. The micrometer head means a seating depth gets recorded as a number and returned to later, and the loading window lets the bullet drop in and be caught by an internal sleeve that holds it square to the case on the way down.
Loading: Long Line
Same brass, same seater, different standard for the powder charge.
Weigh every charge on the MatchMaster dispenser
Long line ammunition gets loaded on the Summit instead, one case at a time, with every charge weighed on the MatchMaster Powder Dispenser. Nothing is thrown volumetrically.
At distance, charge-to-charge variation is one of the things that opens a group up vertically. It is slower work, and he only spends the time where the target is far enough away for it to matter.
Seat on the MatchMaster seater die
The one constant across both tracks.
What Is Worth Stealing Here
Cleaning is a lube-removal step, not a first step. Most reloaders clean brass because it is dirty. He cleans it because it is greasy, and the timing follows from that. It saves a drying stage entirely.
Neck tension gets set twice. Bushing on the outside, mandrel on the inside. Either one alone will produce ammunition. Doing both is what makes the number repeatable across brass that is not perfectly uniform.
Effort is spent where the distance justifies it. The interesting decision in this whole process is not any single operation. It is that he built one prep routine and two loading routines, and matched the slower one to the target that punishes inconsistency. There is no reason to weigh 400 charges for a stage that will not show the difference.
See It Done on the Bench
Setup, adjustment and technique are easier to watch than to read. The RCBS channel walks through the presses, dies and dispensers in this article one tool at a time, plus new gear as it lands.
Gear in this process
- Pro Chucker 7 Progressive Press — brass processing and short line loading
- Summit Single Stage Reloading Press — long line loading
- MatchMaster Full-Length Bushing Die Set — sizing
- Neck Bushings — sold separately, sets neck tension
- Small Base Sizer Die — final body sizing pass
- Case Cleaning Media, Formula 2 Corn Cob — cleaning and lube removal
- MatchMaster Precision Case Trimmer — trimming
- Bench Priming Tools — priming off the press
- UPM-3 Competition Powder Measure — volumetric charging
- Powder Checker — catches high and low charges
- MatchMaster Powder Dispenser — weighed charges
- MatchMaster Seater Die — seating, both workflows
This article describes one handloader's workflow, not load data. Whatever process you borrow from, start from published data for your cartridge, component combination and firearm, and work up carefully.
More How-To Guides
From case prep to crimping, the RCBS Reloading Hub has you covered at every step of the process.
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