Reloading Room Organization

Streamline Your Process
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In my house, our reloading room started out as a craft room. When my sister and I were young, it was filled with popsicle sticks, pom-poms and other miscellaneous items we “might” use. As we grew older the room shrunk to half its size as my dad took up reloading and claimed the first half, then all of the room. When I started reloading and needed my own space, I first secured the inside of a cabinet and eventually my own bench. With such a small space, it’s incredibly important to keep yourself organized.

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The Key

For organization, plastic containers are my go-to. I keep extra bullet boxes in ammo cans and reuse the empty ones to store shell holders, snap cap and more. Before you throw away packaging, think about if it can be reused. Large plastic pretzel containers are a hot commodity — a perfect size for separating brass by firing session, headstamp or step of the reloading process.

Brass prep is perhaps where organization can really save some time. Tumbling all of your brass first before moving to the next step allows you to do things in batches without losing track of what’s what. For me, it is easier to finish with one step before moving on to the next so I don’t have to try to fit my dryer, trimmer, etc. on the same small bench.

Other handy packaging is the heavy-duty hanging boxes screws come in. They fit bore snakes, gauges, etc. Don’t have any lying around? Clamtainer also offers inexpensive hanging tab boxes in multiple sizes. I use the see-through boxes to store sample cartridges and comparator inserts as I can easily see what I’m looking for. For things I can’t see through or are hard to mark, the label maker is my best friend. It’s easy to peel the labels off the pretzel can lids and replace them when brass is trimmed or resized.  Rather than trying to find a place to stack all the containers, they hang on the board on the back of my reloading bench. Having a pegboard provides a storage space for tools as well

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Everything in its Place

Knowing where everything is also saves time. Having bullets all in one place, powder in another and dies in a third makes it easy to know where to look. If course, this only works if you remember to put it back!  It also helps when someone needs to borrow something. If I’m away from the house I can tell my dad exactly where to find something without him having to dig through everything I own. It also saves money because it’s easy to end up with multiples of the same thing just because you lost the first one. Sometimes it’s nice to have a back-up, often its superfluous.

For many this is common sense but something they put off. Rather than spending a few days a year deep-cleaning your reloading area, take some time on the front end of things to organize. It saves time, money and headaches!

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