Well I did a little experiment today to see how long it might take you to prep your cases from start to finish. I too have a few 556 cases to prep and load.
I preped about 1200 cases today and it took most of the day or about 7 hours. I started with clean deprimed brass and mass lubed them and ran them through my FL die(I have a case kicker on my press!). Then set my calipers to 1.75" to see how many I had to trim. I then trimmed about 1100 and swaged nearly all of the cases. Some were 223 and didn't need a crimp removed. This process was mind numbing! I did it all in batches of about 200 cases. That is trim 200 then swage/debur inside and out rinse and repeat.
This whole process made me realize that I need to invest in a faster trimmer and possibly a case prep center.
I used three battery drills. Two with the inside and outside chamfer tool with the triggers wired closed. The other was on my RCBS trim pro2. With the trim pro when I was in a really good rythem I could trim about one case every 7 seconds.
With the cases cut to 1.750 I should get a few firings out of them before I need to trim again.
I preped about 1200 cases today and it took most of the day or about 7 hours. I started with clean deprimed brass and mass lubed them and ran them through my FL die(I have a case kicker on my press!). Then set my calipers to 1.75" to see how many I had to trim. I then trimmed about 1100 and swaged nearly all of the cases. Some were 223 and didn't need a crimp removed. This process was mind numbing! I did it all in batches of about 200 cases. That is trim 200 then swage/debur inside and out rinse and repeat.
This whole process made me realize that I need to invest in a faster trimmer and possibly a case prep center.
I used three battery drills. Two with the inside and outside chamfer tool with the triggers wired closed. The other was on my RCBS trim pro2. With the trim pro when I was in a really good rythem I could trim about one case every 7 seconds.
With the cases cut to 1.750 I should get a few firings out of them before I need to trim again.