I ordered an rcbs bullet puller made to used on the press. Great tool. I had an idear. In theory I could get a factory load of something cheap, like prvi ammo, and simply pull the bullet and reseat a bullet I do want.

Why would this be a bad idea? Point of reference, I had 6.5 Grendel in mind since I'm dying to build one.

Not necessarily a bad idea .... but you need to use caution. You'll need to weight a few of the pulled bullets to verify the weight (don't believe what's printed on the box) and replace with a bullet of the same weight +/- 5 grains. And a bullet of the same general configuration seated to the same depth would likely be the safest route. But I wouldn't necessarily expect excellent accuracy, either. Otherwise I can't think of any problems that you might encounter. Personally I wouldn't go that route. If you're going to spend the time to do that you can probably just reload new from the beginning and get better accuracy and consistency for not much more money. Sometimes cutting corners isn't the best way to do things. I'd rather see you discard the powder and replace it as well. At least that way you can duplicate the load later on.

Maybe some others may see a problem that I do not?

Not a bad idea.

Tell you what I would do, after pulling bullets, and that is pour the powder into a pan, on a scale, then into one big container. Do that 10 times, and find a mean powder charge "they" loaded. After that, set up to reload that powder charge to the .1 gr for as many as you have components for. And I agree that you need to stay within the same bullet weight.

Of course I would only call these "barrel fouling", "fire forming" loads.

Since you haven't pulled the bullets yet, you haven't seen that the puller will leave a circle dent around the bullet. That deformation worried me, but bullet accuracy was not noticeably worse (at 100 yards).

The idear I had was IF I shot some thing like wolf 120gr Grendel with brass case in my currently imaginary ar and it shot well THEN I can pull whatever out and replace it with something like a hornady 123gr sst and see what happens. I'm not sure what I would do with a bunch of bullets with the ring. Because it was there only the bullet I did have to pull.

If I were to attempt this, would it be smart to neck size without a primer tool?

What is "neck sizing without a primer tool?"

I don't always know what everything is or its proper name. I thought there was a die that doesn't mess with headspace, it just resizes the neck of the case only. I thought this die works like the fl die and has a threaded piece that pops the spent primer off.

Google, "Mexican Match Ammo" and/or "Moscow Match Ammo"



http://www.theboxotruth.com/educational-zone-177-mexican-match-ammunition/

http://www.rifleshootermag.com/ammo/ammunition_rs_moscowmatch_20090506/

Minus decapping pin but you know that

You can do that with the Lee collet neck sizing die

You can use a full length bushing die. Back the die out of the press where it does not bump shoulders, and remove the decapping stem.

My question is...

If I were to do this whole thing, then should I resize the neck after pulling the bullet?

I would just keep it simple and not do this.

Chances are the bullet is the most consisten part of the whole equation you bought the biggest variable is powder charge. For what all your going to have to do to make it consistent you may as well start from scratch or buy better factory ammo.

Studies have shown that it's damage to the base of the bullet that causes the most inaccuracy. I've heard that lots of guys did the bullet replacement trick with military .30-06 ammo back in the day (50s and 60s). By all accounts it worked quite well for hunting purposes, but you obviously need to apply common sense and, as others have suggested, use a conventional bullet of a profile similar to the replaced bullet.

You want to take some "high quality" Wolf ammo, pull the bullet, and insert the bullet of your choice? And you want this to shoot great, I bet!? If you do this, you will get to shoot the bullet you want. Then you're going to complain about how bad it shoots afterward. There's too many items to list on why this is a BAD idea. Just shoot this ammo up, and now you have some cases to reload, and start from there. There are WAY too many variables that will make the pulling of a factory bullet and putting a new bullet in a bad idea.

Whoa, lets cool our jets here for a sec!

First of all, everyone should always "want" all their ammo to shoot great, even cheap ammo by your own standard. When I bought your cheap 308, I didn't buy it thinking, "ah I really want this ammo to shoot like crap. Give 300 of them." So yes in this hypothetical I want this ammo, just like literally every round I own, to shoot great.

Secondly, I am a very practical man in general. I'm an engineer for god's sake. I've at least figure out that good ammo goes a long way. However, even in one's own personal collection of ammo I think it's fine to have some blasty ammo available especially on an ar platform. So yes I fully understand this would have some lackings as it is not going to be precison tuned. But I'm curious enough to find out by what margin of inaccuracy. Everything has a diminingshing return value. U built a whole business on this premis otherwise everyone would reload themselves.

Finally, if u can serious think of some real safety reasons, then that is genuinely what in after. Not anecdotal comments about my accuracy expectation. Not try to offend you or call u out. Let me phrase this another way...
This is the idea I had. Looks like no has any real experience in doing this so how well it works, in terms of reliability and accuracy, is unknown. I would like to find out because if it works well enough then it would be immensely beneficial to me and my needs. The only thing that will stop me from trying is if there is some potential safety concern I haven't thought of.
Anyone have a potential safety reason why I shouldn't try this?

End of rant.

You can certainly do what you were asking about. I pulled at least a hundred bullets with the RCBS collet puller, removed the primer punch from a FL die and partial neck sized the case and reused it. In my case I dumped the powder, and recharged with a different powder weight, but you don't have to do that.

If you take 120 grain Wolf ammo, and put your 123 grain SST in there, you have to look at the differences in the bullet itself. The Wolf ammo will load the powder charge to the bullet they are shooting seated to their specs. If the Hornady has a longer bearing surface, it will increase the pressures. Wolf loads 2 bullets in the 6.5 Grendel, a 120 grain MPT (which is a hollow point) and a 123 grain SP (soft point). If you seat both of these factory Wolf bullets to fit in the mag at 2.250", the ogive will be fairly far forward, and the base of the bullet will be seated not that deep in the case. If you seat a 123 SST or A-max, the red tip alone will cause you to seat the Hornady bullet deeper, decreasing case capacity and increasing your pressures, guaranteed. The bullet will seat deeper into the case at the same 2.250" max length. The difference in bearing surface and the bullet seating deeper alone can and will cause a dangerous high pressure round.

Next, you are pulling a bullet on a brass case. The neck will lose some neck tension, and the new bullet will have minimal neck tension. Shooting out of an AR, the bullet can easily move around. If the bullet catches on the feed ramp during chambering, the bullet will seat deeper, causing a high pressure round, just from the bullet seating deeper. Next is the opposite, which is the bullet moves forward during chambering from the sudden stop at chambering. The bullet moves forward causing a change in pressure and accuracy. If you pull the bullet, and want to fix the neck, you have to size the case mouth with powder in the case. (more case prep)

Next, if the factory Wolf ammo was crimped, there will be a rough edge on the inside of the case mouth. This will cause heavy bullet scratching or flaking on the new Hornady bullet when it is seated.

Next Wolf, typically, uses a crappy dirty powder. The shooters I have seen run Wolf ammo, often have to clean their rifles more frequently. Plus, it's Wolf ammo. It's not known for being the best ammo out there.

So, take all the combinations of things that can go wrong on doing this and ask is it worth it. From a reloading stand point, I see this being very dangerous. Let's pretend it's not dangerous. Would there be an accuracy gain in doing this? Highly doubtful.

So, taking into account all the dangerous variables, why not just shoot the ammo up, then reload the ammo to a high quality powder and bullet of you choice properly? Doesn't that seem to be a more reasonable approach? The idea is not a safe idea, and I personally would not attempt to do this. WAY too many variables to take into account. You're doing a lot of work for no reward, and creating a dangerous situation in the process. It's just not worth it, IMO, and a scary task. When loading ammo, you want to keep things safe and under control. This does not accomplish that.

Fair enough. Now that's some real food for thought and the kind of info I was after.

I did think about the neck tension, hence my misuse of the word "primer tool". But he other stuff I'll have to think about to see if it's worth it to me. Just a thought I had.

For me, this was just gonna be mostly blasty ammo if this could work half decently. I really wanted to replace it with some generic soft point of the same weight. I prefer my blasty ammo to be sp just in case. While easy to do with 556, this Grendel just has less cheap blasty ammo options. Btw, I plan on buying some new brass (in fact probably going to buy 100 rounds from u loaded in that Lapua brass u offer and start from that) and do a precison load.

IF you insist on doing this, just use a Lee Factory Crimp die (after swapping bullet) to get a reliable crimp;
I did the same on some 223fmj ammo (put in a 55gr vmax bullet to replace 55gr fmj) because silly range wouldn't allow fmj; bullet grains and profiles essentially matched (so no 'compression' worries), and accuracy actually improved (better bullet)!
I did weigh the factory powder charges on several, and they were surprisingly consistent (Federal American Eagle black box) so didn't bother 're-powdering' .

I think getting rid of FMJ bullets is about the only time I would consider something like this, and at that point I would probably try to sell them and buy something else first.