Can I reuse a bullet that i pulled from a caseing?

Yes. Accuracy may be affected if you damage it however.If you use a Kinetic puller stuff some cotton balls in the bottom.Won't be perfect but usable.

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Yes. Accuracy may be affected if you damage it however.If you use a Kinetic puller stuff some cotton balls in the bottom

I've also used a collet puller.

I've pulled countless hundreds, if not thousands of bullets; using Side Cutters, Collets & Kinetic Pullers.

Perfectly re-usable for all sorts of shooting other than real valubale Trophy hunts or Bench Rest/Target.

Even if they're nicked a tad on the side from the Side Cutters - shoot just fine; as a Rule of Thumb the only way you're gonna get real bad performance from pulled bullets is if you damage the bases of the bullets which is actually pretty hard when pulling them.

Exactly; bullets can look like hell and still shoot well. If you are a bench rest shooter, I don't recommend using vise grips. I see this has already been covered; well I got this far....

Absolutely!

Any bullets (or less-than-stellar combinations) that don't look or shoot up to snuff at the bench I just designate for use in offhand or other practice sessions. It gives me more trigger time with the rifle in question and gets good use out of partial boxes.....

Cheers,

Dan

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Originally posted by dpcd:
If you are a bench rest shooter, I don't recommend using vise grips. ....

I disasembled a bunch of old loads the other day. Just used side cutters @ the top of the press. That steel barrel is a LOT tougher then any minor defect in a lead/copper bullet, and many times those little nicks and such will be gone by the time it exits the muzzle.

yes you can. as a matter of fact, sometimes you can buy "pulled bullete"

When I pulled the bullets with my RCBS collet there is a ring around the bullet from the collet gripping the bullet to pull it out. Are they still safe to shoot too?

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Are they still safe to shoot too

Yep. Heck I've used bullets that were pulled with a pair of wire cutters.

I take cartridges apart just about every time I do load development.

I put a good amount of ammo together, head out and check these on paper and return home.

The good loads are repeated....the bad are disassembled and bullets, powder, primmer ect are reused in the good load recipe

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Originally posted by Bob da Builder:
When I pulled the bullets with my RCBS collet there is a ring around the bullet from the collet gripping the bullet to pull it out. Are they still safe to shoot too?

I use an RCBS collet puller but have not noticed a ring on the bullet other than a very faint one sometimes if this is what you are referring to?

Have not noticed any loss of accuracy in hunting loads using bullets pulled with collets.

For those that do not have a puller, a cheap set of electrical crimping pliers from a hardware store work fine, the ones with different sized holes at the nose of the pliers. They are usually plastic coated and do a good job of pulling bullets from cases provided neck tension is not too much. Put the cartridge in the loading press without a die, handle down, grip the bullet protruding from the top of the press and then up with the handle.

I read an article quite a while back about this very thing. The author determined that if the "damage" was forward of the shoulders, it had little or no effect on the accuracy; if the damage was on the shank, it did. He went so far as to distort the noses of some of the bullets with pliars and they still shoot fine.
IIRC, what drove the article was concern over the battering that cartridge's tips sometimes take whilst in the magazine of the rifle.

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Originally posted by wasbeeman:
I read an article quite a while back about this very thing. The author determined that if the "damage" was forward of the shoulders, it had little or no effect on the accuracy; if the damage was on the shank, it did. He went so far as to distort the noses of some of the bullets with pliars and they still shoot fine.
IIRC, what drove the article was concern over the battering that cartridge's tips sometimes take whilst in the magazine of the rifle.

Guy by the name of Koos Barnard did that many years ago in SA Magnum magazine.

He mangled the points and bent some right over and it didn't make all that much difference - extra 1/2 - 1 MOA IIRC.

Filing the bases slightly at an angle caused them to veer off all over.

That must have been in the 90's - maybe 80's.