[emcon5]

Originally Posted by Joeaksa

Always deprime before tumbling. Otherwise the primer pocket is not cleaned.

I never found the tumbler did that good of a job cleaning the pockets, I always ended up needing to hit them again with the pocket cleaner anyway, plus another pass through the sizing die to make sure there is no media stuck in the flash hole.

Tumble them first, plus they are clean for resizing.

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

I use old margarine tubs and just dump all the cases into one, transferring to the other as they are processed.

Same here, they stack really well. I also have a bunch of acro bins, but I always go for the tubs first.

Originally Posted by Bill Douglas

Are there better or lessor brands of reloading gear. Is Lee the best way to go due to it's large popularity (the crowd is not usually wrong)? What's this Hornady stuff?

Lee is kind of the Harbor Freight of reloading tools. All of it is quite serviceable, but there is better quality stuff out there. That being said, I really like their collet dies for rifle, their trimming tools, and their "carbide speed dies" were a very clever solution for loading straight walled pistol cases on a single stage press (You screwed the die body into the press, then screwed the sizer, de-capper and bullet seater in separately). Too bad they are discontinued.

Lee presses and powder measure are both pretty good, but I wasn't impressed with the hand priming tool (it kept breaking) or the safety scale (wouldn't hold zero).

Here is how I do it:

For pistol (Dillon Square Deal B):
Throw them in the tumbler. When clean, remove them from the tumbler and throw them in an ammo can until ready to load.
When the time comes, pull them out of the ammo can and run them through the Dillon. I inspect the cases on the way out of the tumbler, and again before I put them in the Dillon, but otherwise that is it.

For bolt action rifle, single stage press (Rock Chucker):
into the tumbler, inspect and sort on the way out an in to tubs.
Neck size and deprime.
clean primer pockets.
Prime with RCBS Hand primer
ZERO THE SCALE
Set the powder measure where I want it, depending on the load, either at the desired charge weight or a 1/2 grain light, then trickle up.
Charge each case, typically I put the powder funnel onto the case and throw the powder into the funnel. Then eyeball into the case and make sure the powder fills it to where expected. Seat the bullet and put it in a plastic ammo box.
I write the load details on a piece of tape with a sharpie and stick it to the side.

Every other load I trim with a Lee hand trimmer, and clean up with a chamfer tool. I neck size only, and I would have so few that actually needed trimming after one load i decided it was a waste of time. Even doing this, more don't need trimming than do.

For self-loading rifles, I cheat, and buy once-fired, fully processed military brass. Usually run it through a neck sizer to remove any dings from shipping, then follow the steps outlined above.

Sadly this will need to change, as the sources of inexpensive surplus 30-06 are drying up, and I may need to start loading for my M1.

This is worth repeating though:
ZERO THE SCALE I got complacent on this one, and ended up with strange pressure problems I couldn't explain. I have 2 of the powder pans, and it turns out they don't weigh the same. Evidently one time the pans got switched, and I ended up with the light one on the scale that was zeroed with the heavier one.