Made a bullet puller

[JScott]

I have a kinetic plastic hammer style bullet puller for "erasing" loading mistakes but it almost always mashes the tip of the spitzer bullets I favor.  I wanted a type of puller that grasped the bullet without marring or damage.

This style of puller is available but along with the collet pullers it is very expensive (I'm cheap!).


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I used an idea from a magazine article of using a side cutting pair of pliers to hold the bullet and pull it from the case using a reloading press in reverse.  That sounded like it would work but I didn't want the little grooves cut into the bullet jacket.

To make my prototype I started with these pliers from Harbor Freight for $2.99.

   

Next I clamped it to the mill table using a bearing race as a setup block.  I put two shims of steel banding tape between the tips of the jaws to leave some final clearance and then center drilled the jaws.  The shims measured right at 0.045 inches.

   

After the center drill, I used a size L drill bit (0.290 inch diameter) so that I could pull 0.277 and .0284 inch diameter bullets.  I used a Harbor Freight drill bit on the Harbor Freight pliers in a head to head battle using some dark cutting oil.

   

Here is the finished prototype puller after drilling and chamfering.  It turned out pretty good.  The drill bit won but it complained a little bit because of the interrupted cut.  The dark cutting oil helped I think.

   

And here is the puller holding a 0.277 inch diameter bullet.  The fit is very good and it almost looks professional.

I tried pulling a bullet with it and it did not have enough gripping force to pull the bullet.  I cheated by using my kinetic puller to get the bullet started out of the case and then used the plier to finish pulling the bullet.  It worked perfectly without marring or damaging the bullet.  I am going to stamp this one 27-28 and make some others in .224, .243, .257 and .308 flavors.

   

[Highpower]

Interesting project! I've seen similar ideas using needle nose pliers drilled & tapped in different sizes along the jaws, to use for holding and shortening small screws on a grinder.

I just stuffed a wad of cleaning patches in the bottom of my kinetic puller to cushion the bullet nose when they come loose, rather than smacking into the base of the puller tube. I helps to lighten up on the swing though when they get close to coming out of the case neck.

I wonder if you made one of the other style pullers with something like aluminum plate if they would grip better? Maybe drill a bit undersize and then ream them to final size?

[JScott]

I may try the plate idea to see if it can generate more grip by using a reamed hole.  For now I like this one because it is inexpensive and the powder stays in the case so the whole operation is less messy.  I only needed to reduce the powder charge by a grain or two so it was a simple operation to dump the powder from the case onto the scale and scoop out a little bit until I had the charge weight I wanted.

I'll have to dig through my reamers and see if there are some sizes that match up.

[Highpower]

Better safe than sorry. A grain or two is all it takes sometimes to ruin your day, but you already know that. I was just reading a story last night about someone using a light load of Bullseye in .38 special cases and doing "quick draw" moves from a holster. Muzzle down, all the powder settled to the base of the bullet leaving a big air gap between the powder and primer. The resulting detonation split the cylinder. Bummer.

Sounds like your puller is doing the job just fine, and that's what counts.