What Techniques Have You Picked Up Reloading That You Wished You Knew From The Start?

Wish I would have known that buying a standard die set is not the way to go. Wasted a lot of money this way. I Wish I would have known that a body die used with a Lee Collet die and a good seater die takes care of 99% of the bullet run-out issues. At least it does for me.
Yeah wish I would have known this myself, took a long time to perfect everything. I credit the member I just quoted for turning me on to the collets. Life's too short to deal with runout issues, gives more time for rifle tuning and shooting :)
 
We all learn from experience of course, reading or hearing others methods, or sometimes just by learning as you go. I know many on here have perfected their methods thru the years no doubt. I think a thread like this will help newer reloader's get a leg up so to speak, there has to be hundred's of combined years of experience. We don't all do it the same way or reach our goals the same. Even seasoned pro's learn new tricks and techniques as they watch, learn, and experiment. Seems like a topic that can help all those who like to roll their own, I still use a lot of the methods that my original mentor taught me.

But if I was starting today with what I know right now there would be some things I would do differently. First off a forster co ax press, they were available and the style of press I would eventually move to, money spent twice I guess. I started off with a variety of different dies, again now I would stick with forster or redding sizer's and forster seater's. I never heard of a collet die till I came here so thanks to a couple member's of LRH, they are now an important part of my equipment. I was always kinda obsessive about runout with tweaking loaded rounds as standard procedure, now I produce close to 2/3's of my loaded ammo that needs no tweaking at all, those that do are very minimal. I've ceased using expander ball's and spindles, but continue to use the dies for external sizing, I like a mandrel for neck sizing and tension. At first I price shopped for brass but now I prefer premium unless the rifle tells me otherwise. What do other loaders have to share?
 
I have often wondered if my procedures are causing a problem that I don't foresee this is a good format to address this issue. My brass preparation work has to do with using a Sonic cleaner. I first only punch out the primer without forming the brass that will come later then into the Sonic cleaner to even clean the primer pockets without reaming metal out of them next with clean brass I inspect it. Primer pockets sometimes take a second cleaning. The clean brass goes through the forming process better cause it's slick,but still requires lube. With cases formed and now trimed to length and the cartridges made. Anything I'm doing wrong?
 
Betarider you sound like you are doing fine, I find there are a lot of ways to clean and prep brass. A post a while back really made this apparent, I believe you will have no problems with your technique.
 
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