doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Advice on bullet pullers and recycling components

I recently reloaded some cartridges where I over applied the factory crimp die and distorted the cases to the point they won't chamber. I plan to buy a bullet puller to disassemble the cartridges and recycle what I can. Can anyone recommend a bullet puller they've had good luck with? I'm leaning towards one that I can mount in my press and hopefully remove the bullets without damaging them. These RCBS pullers seem to get good reviews: https://ads.midwayusa.com/product/1012943183?pid=680804 My press is a Lee Classic Cast, so whatever I use will need to fit my press, perhaps using an adapter.

I'm also curious what components can be recycled from the disassembled cartridges? Can the bullets be re-used if they are not damaged? How about the powder and the primed cases? I'm assuming the handful of mis-shaped cases will need to run through a full length sizing die to make them useable again. Like always, I welcome input on these questions.

Thanks!

I've used an inertia (hammer) type bullet puller for years when needed. It works very well, and all components including powder, primed cases, and bullets can be re-used. Precautions must be taken to avoid mixing different gunpowders. They are less costly to use versus buying a different diameter collet for pulling various calibers.

I've only used a collet type bullet puller once, a Forrester-Appelt in .30 caliber. It worked OK, but was a bit slow and left light marks on the bullets. I'm sure they could be re-used, but don't know if the minimal damage could affect accuracy. These were not cartridges that had the bullets heavily crimped.

A lot of military surplus powder has been harvested from ammo that was disassembled. Same with mil-surp bullets. So re-using components is nothing new. When I used to use a ball puller to unload my flintlock rifle at the end of a day of hunting, I'd keep the lead roundball and use them later for plinking at groundhogs or other targets. I'd just try to center the hole in the ball from the puller so they weren't unbalanced. But then Pennsylvania made it legal to travel in a vehicle with a loaded flintlock, as long as the flash pan was empty. A lot of guys, including me, used to fire their flintlock at the end of the day to unload it, but then you'd have to quickly do a good cleaning job to avoid rust and pitting.

I'm not sure how well trying to resize cases that were bulged behind the shoulder will go. I felt it might be worthwhile to try rolling the bulged cases between two plates of steel to work the bulged areas back down. Don't forget to remove the decapping pin if you attempt to size cases with live primers.

earlyriser,
If you don't have many bullets to pull, an inertia puller will work fine. You can salvage all of the components. Pull the bullet, pour the bullet and powder into a container and remove the bullet; remove the de-capping pin when you resize the cases (to leave the primer in place), then reload as normal by re-weighing/measuring the powder. If you have a lot to remove, a collet type will be more convenient but caliber specific (with 1 collet) and more expensive. The procedure to save components will be the same.
Mike

If you have a lot to pull get a collet type puller. You can easily pull 4 bullets a minute, dump the powder in a container, drop the bullet and case into another, done. Plus you don't have all the racket of banging an inertia puller then disassembling and reassembling the darn thing for every bullet.

The collet will not harm the bullet for shooting in the least. The ogive or sides of the bullet have absolutely nothing to do with steering the bullet, that is the job of the bullet base. I've reloaded cast and jacketed bullets I've pulled and if there's any difference you need to be mystical to tell the difference.

I use an Electricians pliers to pull unusable ammo apart.
The kind that has a crimping tool in it.

Put the round in the shell holder,,no die or other accessory in the press.
Raise the round till the bullet itself is above the top edge of the press.
Grip the bullet with the crimp tool edge of the pliers and hold it there.
The pull the round back down in the press.

The bullet gripped by the pliers will be pulled against the top edge of the press and stay there. The case will by pull downward and free of the bullet.

Yes the crimp tool will leave a mark on the bullet, but I haven't seen much of any difference in 'my' shooting.
They have all been usable for range shooting.

Lead bullets are a bit more difficult to pull this way as the lead can start to deform around the grasp of the crimp tool edge as the case is pulled down and away.
But I've still have good luck de-bulleting most of those as well.

Most I do 'dud rounds' left by other people at the range. Some are just that, others are dented cases and such.
The bullet is what I'm after and the primer is an extra prize.

I've owned and used both the RCBS collet pullers and their kinetic pullers. I've found the collet pullers less than satisfying on spire point bullets where they often slip off. And in some bullets (especially cast bullets) they damage the bullets and the bullets can't be reused. The kinetic is slower, and pulling a lot of bullets by banging the puller on my vise is time consuming, but it never damages a bullet, and I prefer it.
I sold the RCBS collet puller and all the dies, as I never used it after awhile. Luckily I bought it and all the collets cheap at a gun show, so it was easy to sell and get my investment back.

Vall, I've heard that a lot but I have never had the first difficulty with spire point bullets or, most cast bullets if they have much of a nose, with no damage of note, they shot fine. Rifle bullets are simple, it's the revolver bullets that the collets mostly don't work. There is definitely several types of cast bullets the collet is worthless for. For those I do as Kutter described and it's not much of a loss as they are easily re-cast.

I tried an inertia puller and couldn't get rid of it fast enough.

As with almost everything, that was my experience and others will vary.

A bit off the topic of bullet pulling, but still within the limits of the OP's question . . . . even primers can be re-used. I was given a huge cardboard box of shot shell cases from which the powder, wad and shot had been salvaged, by the original manufacturer. Thousands of them. They were/are Cheddite hulls. The cases were cut open with some sort of spiral cutting tool. I wanted the primers if I could safely salvage them, so I cautiously began punching them out with an old single stage Texan press, using the original deprime punch.

That was 15 years ago. I've deprimed thousands of them and reused the Cheddite primers in other cases with not one issue. Never had a primer to detonate, or fail to fire after being loaded into another case.

Not something you hear about everyday, so I thought I'd mention it.

Absolutely!! I've never salvaged shotshell primers but have saved a pile of rifle and pistol primers. Never had one detonate either.

I've used both the RCBS collet puller and a Franklin (?) kinetic one. Much prefer the collet as it's way faster and I don't have to go outback to use it. (No workbench in the house).

Kutter - I'll have to look into the method you describe. Sounds very promising for oddball sizes if I'm trying to avoid the kinetic puller.

A very informative topic. Thanks all for sharing what you do.

Chris

I really appreciate all the input on this. In the interest of not buying another tool I tried Kutter's suggestion, and it worked well. I needed to pull only 4 out of the box of 20 I was working on. The marks on the bullets were minimal as long as I held the electrician's plier tightly so the bullet did not slip in the plier. I've attached a couple of photos showing the pliers I used and one of the pulled bullets. I also found, advertised on the internet, this puller that works on the same principle: https://grip-n-pull.com/


I also have a handful of cartridges, from when I first started reloading, where the case neck wasn't sized tightly enough and the bullet slid down into the case. For those I will buy an inertia puller. Again, thanks everyone for your help!

I had to break down a case (1,000 rds.) of 43 Spanish ammo and did it with a pair of lineman's pliers that had a hole drilled and polished to .430" (.433" bullets) in the wire cutting part of the pliers and used the same procedure as Vall, otherwise. The bullets were marked somewhat but the marks went away when I sized them to .425" for 45-70 level lead bullet loads on my .404 Jeffery.

Salvaging primers can be scary. My friend Gene was de-priming 45 ACP cases many years ago at Ft. Hood with a punch and hammer to salvage the primers when one detonated and damaged his thumb. He went to the emergency room and had it bandaged and went back home to continue the task when another one detonated. He didn't say how he explained that in the emergency room. I can understand salvaging primers but be sure they are not crimped in or take other precautions.

When I use a collet puller, I slightly close the collet and raise the cartridge until I feel the neck hit the collet and then tighten it, before pulling the bullet. Using this procedure I seldom have a bullet slip in the collet.
Mike

Using anything that strikes a primer can detonate it as strikes are made to set off primers. But slowly depriming without any strike will never set off a live primer. I've used my Pope style re-decapping tool made by Jerry Cleave for me to do thousands of live primers and never had any issues. A regular press mounted die allso deprimes without setting off live primers, but a lot slower than my Cleave tool is.

Not to pick nits but, to pick nits, being a retired electrician/electrical contractor after 45 years in the trade. Those are wire strippers, not 'electrician's pliers'.

I have often used electrical crimpers as suggested by Kutter.

Yes, they may leave marks on the bullets, but generally those pale into insignificance compared to what happens when the bullet meets the rifling.

A selection of cappers/decappers.

From what I understand, Boxer primers have only 3 components... a cup... a small amount of priming compound which is deposited as a paste... and an anvil. The very sensitive paste is dried into a so-called pellet during manufacturing.

Benchrest and competition shooters have long preferred to use hand priming tools that allow them to feel the primer bottoming out in the pocket without crushing the pellet of priming compound, which might negatively affect accuracy. For this reason, I have always used a hand priming tool to prime my rifle cases in a separate operation that takes very little time. I recently bought an RCBS Automatic Bench Priming Tool at an Auto Parts Swap Meet, of all places, and look forward to trying it out. I load for economy, but also reload for better accuracy than I can get with factory ammo. I know that primers may detonate from any sharp blow, and they also may be removed from a primed case if done gently. Then we have to consider the greater force that is needed to removed a lot of old military primers that have crimped or staked primer pockets. My biggest concern, aside from inadvertently detonating one, would be having the decapping pin push the anvil into the compound hard enough to crush it. That could lead to misfires or reduced accuracy, which may not be a real concern for casual plinking or target shooting.

Primers are still relatively cheap, especially if you stock up when they are on sale instead of waiting until anti-gun Democrats cause price spikes, shortages, and panic buying. A lot of old commercial and especially military ammo was primed with the very corrosive mercury fulminate primers too. The first SKS rifle I bought was a Yugo that looked nice outside, but had a bore that looked like a sewer pipe. It's nice to know that I could take the time to salvage and re-use old unknown primers if we were ever in some SHTF situation. But for now, I'll work on using up my considerable stockpile.

My Jerry Cleave set he made for me that will do a dozen or more different cartridges by changing shell holders, decapping rods, and priming rods for small or large primers:

Some of the old journeymen I worked with during my electrical apprenticeship taught me that T&B Sta-Kon pliers had a secondary purpose too.

They would use them to cut the valve stems off of the tires of guys who squealed to the boss, or other such offenses. They said it was important to do as a warning before puncturing sidewalls, but always do at least two tires because nobody carries two spares. Some of these guys had more angles than a geometry teacher. Glad none of it rubbed off on me.