Anyhow, the idea of hammering out 145 rounds of 9mm using the inertial puller did not sound like my idea of fun. So there those boxes of ammo sat on the shelf, unused and taking up brass that I could be using to load new ammo.
About a month ago, I loaded up 100 5.56 pressure hunting rounds for my AR, as I'd landed on what I found to be a good hunting load, velocity and accuracy-wise. Only I got the ammo to the range only to discover that they were running hot and popping primers from the cases... right into my action. One stuck bolt, a trip home, and a difficult job of freeing up the action got me to contemplating where everything went wrong. I found the error of my ways in failing to calibrate my scale prior to *every* loading, and the answer was that my rifle rounds had gotten loaded 0.5 grains hotter than they should have been. While the load was still safely within 5.56 pressure data, the pressure was too much for uncrimped primers (that's why they do that!) and pockets to maintain their loving relationship with each other.
So, I had 87 rounds of 5.56 ammo that couldn't be used. I contemplated backing the bullets out of the case to make more room and hopefully pull the pressure down. I tried on one round, pulling it up to the Max OAL of 2.260", and then chambered it to see if this would be acceptable. I ejected the round took a look. The scratches on the jacket seemed to tell me that the bullet may be already be engaging the lands (or maybe it was just grit in a dirty chamber, I don't know). This load uses the Speer 70 grain semi-spitzer, which is more elliptical in shape than a normal spitzer round and a longer-than-normal full-diameter surface, so OAL is generally shorter with them. Backing out the rounds was a no-go, so I had another 87 rounds of ammo that was destined to sit on the shelf until I got around to knocking them out with the puller.
And thus, the need for a bullet puller die was finally great enough for me to justify to myself that I should buy one. I got on Midway's site and ordered the puller, along with a .357 and .22 caliber insert. The die put me back $16, with the inserts at $9 each. It came in the mail, and a couple days later, I decided to try it out. I will say this: I will never again use an inertial puller unless I absolutely have to. Holy cow, this thing is awesome. Operation is pretty straightforward - you raise the round into the die with the downstroke until the mouth of the case hits the bottom edge of the insert, tighten down the lever to grip the bullet, and pull it free with the upstroke. Loosening the lever releases the grip on the bullet, and it drops free. In practice, I found that the .223 bullets required a tap on the top of the die to fall free, but the 9mm fell on their own.
Including emptying powder from cases and putting brass and bullets into containers, I found that I could do 30 rounds in 10 minutes' time. With an inertial puller, i was lucky to get one round done in a couple of minutes! At $25 for a single caliber and $9 for any caliber after that, this thing is definitely a great buy. Two thumbs up from me!
