Bullet Pullers

C

coyotestalker

New member
All right, I am ready to pull my hair out. Trying to pull bullets for a guy and I am having a hard time getting the bullets to fall out of the puller. I have a forester puller. I have tried filing down any edges on the collets, but still have problems. I have beat the heck out of my puller trying to get these bullets out. Some of them I had to pull the puller apart and tap the bullet out from the top. Wrecked several bullets doing that. Any suggestions would be very helpful.
 
HIGH neck tension!!!

I use the impact puller on concrete. I would imaging you have a collet type? if so, the high neck tension is allowing the collet to probably dig into the jacket and get a firm grip. If you are simply saving brass,..use plyers and resize the brass without a decapping pin.
 
How many are you pulling?

I agree---I've always had good luck using an RCBS Inertia Impact Hammer to pull bullets and powder. They've always left the bullet and powder reusable. Hit on Concrete or the flat of an anvil. The cost I think is less than $25

Last year I pulled a couple of hundred old 250-3000 Savages to resize them into 22-250s.
 
That doesn't make sense. I use a collet puller and it works perfectly, can't recall the make right now.

Call Forester and tell them the problem. They have always been helpful when I have talked to them.

Jack
 
Are you sure you're using the right collet for that caliber? If you were trying to remove .243's, for example, with a .257 collet, you might have to pull the collet up too far into the die. On the other hand, if you're trying to remove .243's with a .22 caliber collet, the bullets may be getting so jammed up in the collet that it won't release. Are they terribly deformed once you DO get them out? I'm assuming this works like the RCBS unit. I've used the RCBS unit a lot, and it works great.
 
I have a forster super fast bullet puller, it works OK I use it for pulling milsurp 855 ball, and then replacing with a vmax of something like that, I have noticed that you need to make sure the bullet is centered below the one it just pulled or else the thing kinda jambs up on ya. or sometimes on calibers I don't have a bullet puller for I just take my leatherman run the bullet up though the hole in the press, ie no die in place, grab bullet with my leatherman, then lower the press, the leatherman hits the top of the press and removes the bullet kinda crude, but either of these type of pullers pretty much trash the bullet
 
I'm assuming you're using the right collet size for the puller? I recently sold my RCBS puller in favor of the Forster and so far prefer it over the RCBS. Is this a new puller or used? The reason I ask is that like all collet type holders, routers,lathes and mills rely on the collet being able to release smoothly from it's receiver. It sounds like maybe the collet may be dirty or slightly rusted and not releasing from the holder and in turn not releasing the bullet. Try cleaning the collet and the reciever. With tight neck tension both pullers can damage the bullet because of the force needed to grip the bullet in this situation. I still think you should try polishing up the collet and reciever.
 
The inertia pullers work, that's for sure, but be careful and ALWAYS wear eye protection. I had been using an RCBS puller until last Fall when I had part of the top of it break off and hit me in the right eye. Luckily I was wearing glasses so I suffered no major injury. The top screw on part split in two and half of it hit my glasses and right eyebrow hard enough to make me see stars. I heard a bang and saw a flash of light, then I sat there holding my eye, scared to move my hand and find out I was blinded. Ther glasses saved me. I actually thought something had detonated, the bang was so loud, but I was wrong. Evidently the bang was from when it hit my head.

I had used the puller many times, on concrete, and did nothing different this time, it just broke. I have another one, a Quinetics this time, and when I use it I look away on the down swing. And no, I don't swing it hard as I can, if anything I swing it too lightly and usually have to increase my down force a bit to get the bullet out, usually taking 4 or 5 swings in all.

After the incident my eyebrow was all swollen up for several days and really sore to the touch. Also my eye was weeping and sticky in the mornings when I woke up. My vision seemed to be OK though. Finally I broke down and had an eye doctor check it out, I was beginning to think I'd broken a bone around my eye socket or something. The doctor gave me a good report though and said it was just bruised. After a couple weeks everything was back to normal.

Just remember to use caution with the kinetic pullers.
 
Great story about how to be safe.

I agree wear eye protection and don't swing too hard. Nothing wrong with taking 4, 5 or more smaller lighter hits to shake it loose. On mine, the top cap always seems to shake loose. So after every other hit it seems I need to relighten the cap.
 
I have used the RCBS Collet/Die type puller for years. I am fairly quick with it. If I encounter bullets that are heavily crimped or very hard to pull I usually toss them out. Others that pull easily, I often load back up. In essence, I avoid re-using any that I feel have been deformed in either the loading or pulling process.
 
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