Ep. 205 - 2026 NEW Reloading Products DEEP DIVE

I'm Joyce Hornady. You might say accuracy is my business. I make bullets. You are listening to the Hornady Podcast. Thanks for joining us and enjoy the show. Hello, everybody. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Hornady Podcast. I'm your host, Seth Swerzyk, and today, to my left, General Manager of our Tools Division.

Jason Slinkard and the engineers that work for him and really have done a great job here as of recent. We got Ben Searing, Dylan Hood. Guys, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having us. Thank you. It's one of our favorite times of year.

internally for a bunch of reasons mainly uh the weather is turning to be not so bloody hot and uh man that's a big win this morning sharp out you can see my breath raining fall is in the air yeah fall is in the air so there's that going on but what that means for hornady and a lot of other companies in this industry that's new product season and as a consumer of these products and a user of a lot of these products

that's exciting to me you know yeah it's fun to be working in this field but i also play in this field and so when you see new product season i just can't help but get excited i mean it's for us it's the culmination of all our work for the year before sometimes two years three years into a project so for us it's huge as far as you're actually seeing the fruits of your labor go out and things you design and built by hand be produced out i mean these guys

They busted their butts on these two new products we're going to talk about today. And before we get there, I want to bring up another product that you guys came out with. And I want to hear Slink from you. what your vision is for hornady reloading because it's certainly changing and i'm you know just from the outside looking in i'm seeing more products that are either just now being released or in the pipeline that are really designed for precision for that

high volume precision reloader so i'd like to hear one you're kind of broad level what you guys are doing to the reloading division and what that restructuring kind of looks like internally and then i want to touch on last year's new product the three-in-one case trimmer uh There's been some just some complaints about volume. I want more of them. I've had one on back order for two months. Where's it at? Got some good news on that. Yeah, we need to address that to make the listeners breathe.

sigh of relief but let's get into what the reloading tools is looking like for now and into the future you know when jason and steve they approached me to take the job almost a year ago now they wanted uh they're really happy they're proud i mean hornady was founded with bullets and tools you know and when they bought after they bought specific they were very proud of it and they just wanted to take the brand to a whole nother level i mean we always make

the best quality and everything else but we want to elevate it and just really look at some things like the classic press hadn't been touched in 10 years so there's updates in machining that have come along there's updates

to the parts and function and quality to where you can get less than a thousandth run out now in a press all day long as long as you set up the dies right. So it's really focusing more on what the customer is asking us for is what... we're doing a lot we're spending a lot of times at matches we're talking to different customers at events we're talking to our accounts like shields and bass and all those good guys midways of the world and they're saying hey we see

we would really really like this like our customers want this so that's what we're going to deliver i mean beautiful that's the key to always understanding is realizing hey just because we think it's a great idea don't mean it is Sometimes the customers have the best ideas, and those are the ones you've got to follow forward with and really just launch and let them lead you. I mean, they're the ones.

We do this every day, so sometimes nobody likes their baby be called ugly, but sometimes there's some ugly babies. There are ugly babies. It's a thing. It is one of those things. They look like aliens. I was like, what in the heck? They grew up to be handsome young men. Yeah, you know, a couple of tweaks, though, you make, and all of a sudden that ugly baby becomes one hell of a functional thing. Yeah, right. So it's really just getting hands-on. Being innovative, really. Yeah, nothing.

nothing leaves the until it's been tested thoroughly and everything's made made manufacturable and we're looking at the different parts and it's the best quality and the tightest tolerances we've ever done beautiful so

Let's talk now about that trimmer because that was a project that was long in the tooth. It's like you mentioned at the beginning of the show that a lot of these products are in development for a year, two years, three years. That one took the scenic route to get... uh you know to the market but uh between you dylan and dylan's predecessor tyler the the groundwork that was laid there that trimmer is the best on the market no questions asked

obviously i have a little personal pride because i work here but i've used every trimmer on the market that's the best one out there right now well and honestly we knew it'd be successful we just had no idea it would be how successful it would be yeah so we weren't prepped for the parts because everything on that trimmer is made here with the exception of the motor right so we weren't like right now my mills are running seven days a week almost just on trimmer parts

wow and now they're converting over to new parts for the new products but you'll see consistently coming out of our plant between 250 and 300 tremor units a month moving forward we've already gotten 427 of them out this month. Wow. Okay. So the commitment has been made, and I'm sure there's a bunch of red tape. I should say last month. Right. Yeah, because it's just now going over in October. Yeah, it just turned over.

It's one of those deals. I'm sure there was red tape with either tariffs or a vendor or getting things anodized or whatever. That has now been satisfied. Yes. Correct. 100%. We've accounted for that. We just decided I increased all our safety stock levels on the parts so we're building more parts than we ever have and I don't mind setting on them to make sure that we could serve our customers better because I realized that was kind of a black eye.

And that's why on all the new stuff we're talking about here, you'll see them in stock in January. We're going to have, I've already got it prepped. Stuff's on order. The guys are already cutting parts. Beautiful. Awesome. Well, that trimmer. Like I said, I know there was more people that wanted it than there were trimmers available, which is neat to have some back order. But, man, Dylan, I was beating you up.

All the time. I kind of need a few of these for this, that, and the other person. Kind of need some. What's going on? Oh, yeah. We've made big strides. I mean, just because of the demand of that, you know, we looked into everything, not just running, like he said, seven days a week. Okay, where can we have versatility? So improvement in fixturing, improvement in...

Clamping, what machines these can run at, horizontals, vertical mills. I mean, we're looking at everything to get that job done. Like it. Yeah. So, listener out there, trimmers are available. And you're going to see 250 to 300 a month coming out of our plant, which is fantastic. All right, now let's get into 2026 because...

New products moving forward, that's the exciting part. Not that the trimmer's not exciting, and not that Slink Your Vision for the department isn't exciting either, but we've got some pretty darn cool products here, and I think the listener, the consumer of the product is going to see that. gradual not shift but focus on okay who is spending money on reloading and gosh it seems to be the people that are trying to increase the precision of their system

And also do it really fast in high volumes. So what you're going to see here is kind of a focus on that. Let's first talk about the Lock and Load Classic Pro. Now these kind of O-frame style presses, there's nothing new.

there they're nothing new under the sun anyway but this style of press gosh every manufacturer's got one and they'll outlive you yeah you know so there was uh there has to be ways to improve it though and that's what you guys found so i'd like to you know lock and load classic one of our staples is still available in its original lock and load is not going to go anywhere we just wanted for the guy that's wanting accuracy and demanding it

Right out of the box, we wanted a next stage up. And this was Dylan's project, and I'll let him talk about it. But it was amazing, the tolerances and everything he was able to achieve. Yeah. Dylan, if you would kind of juxtapose the original Lock and Load Classic to the Lock and Load Classic Pro and how you identified, hey, there's room for improvement in this place, in this place, in this place, and then what this product actually looks like.

Absolutely. So fundamentally, an O-style press has made some of the greatest ammo ever, and they still will. But what we wanted to do was tighten things up a little bit. Okay. Make it biased toward the guy who's going to be... running those long volume high accuracy loads and we did we listened to the customer and what we decided to do was just clean things up a little bit yeah so when i say that um

Yeah, it wasn't really a little bit. Yeah, I was going to say, there's a bunch. When I look at this and I look at everybody else's O-Style press, you know, I see cast parts. And cast doesn't always scream.

nuts on precision to me you know kind of oh yeah most castings when they come in depending on the actual cast itself is a plus or minus 40 thou on the tolerance you get okay so what a lot of guys will do is they undersize certain components and oversize other components to make sure it always fits yep stack it up same thing so linkages here and then the toggle um there was quite a bit of slop in the in the in the frame

And that was by, I mean, you had to design it that way. Otherwise you're going to end up with a whole bunch of parts that you would have to hand fit. And, you know, we're trying to build.

uh glock 17s with the lock and load classic not necessarily hand fit 1911s bingo you know kind of an analogy there and so we also decided to include bushings so bushings are becoming more and more of a thing nowadays we see that across the board in all sorts of uh reloading companies um and then we added room for a grease zerk okay we also added

combination with bushings and the linkage pins we machined flats on both the toggle and the frame so what that means is we can now instead of having that plus or minus 40 thou we've eliminated it by having a machined reference surface on each unit. And we're doing it in the same operation as we would drilling the holes.

so everything is lined up everything is concentric and then you're putting on either side so they're parallel yep putting it on either side and then we have a torque spec down so instead of a typical e-clip and a pin Now you're looking at bolts, essentially. That's fantastic. So that power pack linkage and the toggle, the way those go together on a lock and load classic, and then virtually every other press out there.

you have a pin going through the hole yep with generally a wave washer or something to take up space yes um because you have all those tolerance stacks you have to put something in there and that works really well you can make great ammunition really accurate ammunition on there You removed the wave washers. You've got brass bushings, and your pin goes right through there with a bolt, essentially, and that removed. I'm just feeling the difference. Boy.

yeah a lot the slop yeah it's the slop it's like 80 of the slops going maybe even higher than that yeah i would venture to say higher There's no better time to stock your reloading bench and light up your rage with Hornady Get Loaded Plus. New this year, free bullets or free cases when you buy these select Hornady reloading tools. Plus, receive the free hit target input.

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limitations apply visit hornady.com get loaded 2025 for further details the funny thing is this comes from something that i learned from slink he calls it duct tape yeah

Look for duct tape. What do you see out there that people are doing? Because if you're seeing it, there might be something there, right? That you guys can fix from an engineering standpoint. I had a friend with a classic, and I looked at it, and I was like... where's the pins he said i got rid of them it was too sloppy i put bolts in there and he just literally had a bolt through it with a nut and i thought

if you keep it greased up i'm sure that operates just fine exactly so i mean that the bolt idea come from the duct tape you know look for that look for the how can we improve things machine surfaces it just made sense that's how we can tighten things up you know we have the ability now maybe i don't know how many years ago but we already went through with some more modern castings for this um

So the tolerances are there even better on the castings. And everything just come together. Don't put a grease circ in a hole without a ring. So we added a ring to the inside of there so there's a spot for the grease to go. It's just impressive. that uh two things number one you know if you go downstairs in our accuracy lab those presses i don't even want to know how many times that handle's been stroked they it is incredible they're

That service life of those two presses down there. Yeah. They've paid their dues. And during the COVID craziness, it was all hands on deck, right? And orders were through the roof. So I spent time down in there whenever I had free time. shooting bullets for accuracy and you'd have to lube that ram pretty regularly because you get you know graphite or powder residue and and you know primer residue from all that

And it would just build up and it wasn't smooth. So you'd have to tear it apart, lube it up, put it back together. So having a way to lubricate that is huge. And the number two thing I was going to bring it up was there are presses out there that have grease zerks that are just pressed in.

And then if you put a grease gun on there, which builds up huge amounts of pressure, it just pops the grease circ out. So taking the stainless steel ram and machining a groove in there for the... the lubricant to actually have a place and then you have kind of a self-lubricating system once it goes up and down through there she's going to pick up what it needs and the zerk is threaded it not pressed in yep we did thread it yeah little things like that uh

We did that because we don't ever want that consumer saying, oh, I popped the grease circuit. Well, one, it's got a grease ring, so you're not going to. But two, it's threaded to where it's not going to be an issue either. And if you pop one out.

You put another one back in there, but it's not going to stay. No, not once it's been pressure fit. And I would imagine with, just because I'm an early engineer, with the size of the ring we put in there and the grease we put in it, you're going to grease it once and probably not need to do it for another. five years yeah so between the grease zerk there and then the kind of self-lubricating brass bushings uh when you start pulling the handle on this thing

Not just a few times. You grab the handle and pull it a few times, you're going to feel, wow, this thing is tight and buttery smooth. You go to sit down and load 400 rounds of ammunition. you're going to find that it's continually smooth. And one of the goals of this press when we came out with it, and what I told those guys when we were updating, I was like, guys, there's presses out in the market right now that cost $1,400, and they tout.

Less than a thou in difference. As long as you do your job and set your dies up right. I want to give our consumers a value that will last them a lifetime. That they could spend $250 on. It will do the exact same thing. Yeah. Yes, it will. And last a lifetime. Yep. Yeah. That really is. And you mentioned, you know, setting your dies up, right? So when you have, you know, the Hornady custom grade dies, just the standard custom grade dies, not our match grade stuff.

but that's just another enhancement. But our standard custom gray dies, they all have that floating alignment collar in the seating die. You couple that up with a press like this, and you've got a really affordable way to get... match grade precision uh you know our bench rest team uses uh johnny potratz our most decorated bench rest shooter custom grade new dimension off the shelf dies

No problem. With a classic press. With a classic press. Absolutely. So it is definitely capable of extreme precision, and these are all enhancements. Now, the other enhancement that I see up top here is more of an ergonomic thing. You know, normally you have that. flat spot right on the top of the press you've included a little caddy up here sure did so you're a golfer i am oh yeah obviously no i'm a big fan of built-in storage yeah and

What was at one time wasted space is now a place to put dyes, a place to put your powder measure if you want it, and a place to put two island wrenches. Yep. And as every reloader knows, you lose Allen wrenches like they're going out of style. Especially those ones. I'm glad Hornady includes one with every set of dyes because I need one with every set of dyes. And I've also drilled holes.

yep in places on the press to store these things oh yeah a lot of a lot of guys do that was the duct tape believe it or not we've seen that in the lab yeah we've seen it in the lab they drilled holes in their press i'm like

Let's just add it. Let's put a spot for it. So this is really simple. Just an L-shaped piece of, I'm guessing, aluminum? No, it's steel. Okay, so... steel obviously that's not going anywhere it's got two spots and we did the steel on purpose because a lot of the other presses will come with aluminum and they'll expect you to run your powder measure off of it

And those volumetrics are very sensitive to impact and everything. So they're sitting there flopping on the aluminum the whole time. Yep. We switched to steel and there's no movement. It's solid on there. So you're able to get your consistent powder throw with a volumetric. Yeah. Dylan took special care to make sure that that was out of the way. I like to trickle up, but I could put the volumetric there. It's just perfect. I sit off to the side a little bit.

I get my hand in there, the press is not in the way, boom, in my case, and then I can trickle up to write what I want. Well, Bill mentioned the storage thing. And being self-contained, you know, there's not... we've got a reloading bench behind us in the studio 12 foot long and then like probably six or seven foot long on one side you got this huge space and there's a i would say the hefty majority of reloaders

you don't you don't have that kind of space so having things that the form factor just plain fits it's those little things that make things nice and being able to put your powder measure on there up on top it's easy it's convenient and uh For guys like myself, I do a lot straight out of the powder measure, especially with these new spherical powders like Stable, Match, that Varget-type alternative. Man, you can throw that stuff.

meters like melted butter oh yeah i was running through our auto charge the other day when i was loading up for a match this stuff meters well yeah it's super convenient so having that kind of storage right there works great and

the same classic bolt pattern that we've always had so this is really that lock and load classic pro it's just that next level it just you get quality you get assembly you get the engineering behind it that again just elevates it from the original lock and load class it's great when you're working up a load as well

You know, you've got your full-length die right there, your cedar here. Oh, we've got to go back to full-length sizing for the next five. Just boom, boom, and they're right there. It's really handy. Oh, yeah. Excellent. Now, a couple other things. I'm looking at two. Primer cedar arms and they're laser engraved small and large. Is that going to be a thing? Because historically, Lock and Load Classics, you got one arm and you had to...

Depress this. That was another thing we got from the consumers. They hated having to switch it out. So now you get a small and large. But there's something important about these that I'll let Dylan talk about that's different than the normal press. Yep.

So for a very long time, we created shell holders that were a little bit different than everyone else's. But what happened is... the way that our primer arms would interface with our shell holders specifically while priming, it would occasionally be not ideal to prime. It would be on the fine center. Yeah, to make sure you center. Yeah, to make sure you centered it. So what I would always do, because I've loaded a lot on Classic, put the case in, present the primer.

wiggle the case and then wiggle like if you're in a manual shift transmission you find neutral oh yeah i'd wiggle it like i was finding neutral and you'd feel it oh you feel it and then it then it's fine go right in yep But we wanted to eliminate that because that's a pain. It is. So what we did was we came out with new cups. And when I say cups, the actual component that holds the primer on the arm.

What we did was those are now a tighter tolerance with our shell holders. And what that means is it is going to sit concentric to that primer pocket every time. Yeah, there's no more shuffling. There's no more. You just pop it in. You don't have to find it. It's self-centered and everything else. Yeah. Now, something important, though, because we still have customers that want to use, I don't know why, but they want to use other die sets and shell holders.

we're still including the paws so you could switch back and forth but it's going to come ready with two arms for large and small beautiful with the hornady like he said we'll include the other the old classic cups will still be there for you to swap out should you have a shell holder yeah that's not a hornady shell holder yep

Simple. And those shareholders, again, those are hardened tools still. They're going to last forever. So if you've got a bunch of RCBS or other brands, yeah. We're not asking you to convert. We're giving you everything you need. But if you're using ours, these will.

Work flawless. So, full disclosure, statute of limitations is up. When I was in tech, tech services, answering the phone, helping customers out, I... was reloading a ton and i had a large and a small shell holder a primer arm set up and if i was on a call with a customer this happened many many times and that may or may not have had anything to do with those primer arms but

You know, he was talking about me setting up a die or what CD stem do I need for this bullet or whatever. And he mentioned, you know, the pain of having to change those over. If I was sending him something else, say a zip spindle for a die or warranty part or whatever. He's getting another primer on it because I've lived that.

Like I said, I don't know if that's petty theft from the company or not, but it was one of those deals where we were already paying shipping to send it to him. It's a nothing part, and it made his life better. It makes reloading easier whenever you can just switch it quickly. And we attempted to think of everything. We even...

the ram was modified to help those cups center up so i mean we've done we tried to think of everything and i'm sure there's things we missed but we tried to get everything in there that we could for this pro press I love it. Well, it's definitely an elevated version. It's definitely one that's going to be on my bench here in the very near future. I'm putting together a new gun room slash reloading room. Oh, yeah. It's going to be square lock all the way around, big vault door.

uh and i'll probably not reload a whole lot in there but it's going to be set up because my kids are just now getting to the age where uh they should be helping me in the reloading room or as punishment they should be sizing a Five-gallon bucket full of .223 brass. No, I agree. If they get in trouble or anything. Well, we know a guy. We'll make sure you get one. Yeah, for sure. Dylan, team, well done on the Lock and Load Classic Pro. You're going to be able to see these on the shelf shipping.

right in 2026. So that's a great commitment. Hornady vMatch Ammunition. loaded exclusively with Hornady ELD VT Bullets. The low-drag design of the ELD VT Bullets provide high-velocity retention and minimal wind deflection. Initial offerings include 22 arcs, 6 arcs, millimeter Creedmoor, 6.5 Grendel, and 6.5 Creedmoor. Elevate your varmint shooting experience, shatter records, and make your mark like never before with vMatch ammunition from Hornady. I'm gonna move on now.

to the drum roll please yeah the big one this new tool is is brand new you've never seen anything like this from hornady and it is one of the fastest I think one of the safest, if not the safest and fastest press on the market for priming. I say press because it feels like it's a priming press rather than just a priming tool.

Now, there's a bunch of priming tools on the market geared towards those really, you know, I'm going to call them those accuracy enthusiasts, the bench rest guys, the PRS guys, just the varmint hunters, just the hunters in general. I think the average reloader is really after. supreme consistency at all levels and this priming tool the versa prime delivers in every category speed precision reliability

You're not going to run this thing dry and end up with powder coming out because you didn't miss a primer. This thing looks good on the bench. The form factor is great. The ergonomics are great. Talk to us about the Versa Prime. Yeah, I think we really knocked it out of the park. This is Ben's project, and Dylan helped him out with it. He did a great job knocking it out of the park because what we wanted was, and it's not just the precision guy right now.

There's a couple of things in reloading, let's be honest, that it's a job. Brass prep is a job. You know, cleaning it is a job. And priming can be a job because you're either sitting there with a hand primer or you're doing it on press. And especially for the guys that are doing prairie dogging and things like that, the varmint crowd. I mean, when you're loading up 500 rounds, it takes on. Doing a hand primer takes a lot. So what we wanted was a system that was the safest.

And most versatile because everybody likes kind of reloading their own way, you know, like they like their own setups. So Ben did a really good job and I'll let him go in and talk about how you can set this thing up literally any way you want to make your reloading better. And switch out is so fast it's not even funny. Ben, take it away, brother. Well, we all have seen what's out there on the market, what's there, what's not.

We wanted something that would do the job as well as the $700 guys and the $600 guys and the $200 guys or the $100 guys, and we knew that we could get it done. You know, we started with all kinds of things. Some of them got big, some of them got bulky, and we just kept shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. I wanted it easy to change between small and large. So with a pin, you can pull a pin. Swap out small and large, swap out your punch, and it's literally less than five minutes.

Probably a minute. I was going to say probably a minute. Yeah, once you've done it a couple times. It takes you longer to get all the parts. It takes you longer to pick up the primers, you know. It comes with the primer pickup tubes, 100 primers. I said we don't need to reinvent the wheel. Our AP press has a great primer protective shroud with that, so we're going to incorporate the way the AP...

I should say the way the AP holds primers, and then we're just going to modify the feed mechanism so it's literally a disc. It's got detents that snap you in every time as you snap. The primer's on center. Pull the handle. We can set this. however we want I can go right-handed I can go left-handed I can set it off the table I can put it on the table wherever I want to position this for my comfort

We made it switchable so you can go clockwise, counterclockwise. You can move the tube to one side or another. It is literally, I think, the most versatile tool. I wanted a stop. Not everybody wants a stop. So you can move the stop all the way down and go by feel. You can adjust the stop to make it stop every time at the same distance. That's, I think, a huge point. So the stop that Ben's referencing is.

the depth that the primer is seated and that is a mechanical stop correct that's steel when you press down it goes no further it's a hard steel on steel and that's the only way to really truly ensure that you're the same every single time and i think that's something that precision crowd i know the the old school environment guys obviously the bench rest crowd and even now like the prs crowd they want consistency at every level

Whether that means any tangible result or not is irrelevant. They want the same. And if you set this thing to go 3,000 below flush, it puts that primer 3,000 below flush. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, you can... You know, we used the idea of a lever, but we added a cam to that lever, so we get the mechanical advantage as well, like you mentioned a press. It's not just a lever pushing it in there. I've got a cam rolling with it.

on a plunger that seats it the same way every time yeah so it doesn't take hardly any yeah when you push this down it's just it's buttery smooth and yeah when you start seating a primer with it it's

effort yeah when we did rep training half of them didn't realize they'd already seated a primer yep you know when they were doing it just because it was so easy they didn't have they're used to that tension yep and you still have some tension but it's nothing like yeah you're used to another great feature

hornady shell holders you probably already own them you don't need to buy anything else we've got inserts that go in the shornity hornady shoulder as a result of learning how to get the primer centered yep and that

it's just funny when you're working on project how things come together and that was one of the things that came together with the classic pro all that synergy yeah yeah very very corporate so so yeah it is i don't know what else i can say about it we had a lot of ideas we we pounded it through there we also left on that was a vision that was that uh mr slinkard had seen he uh yeah he said no we're not going to put any red on it

What? That's Hornady Red. That's what we do. I was going to bring that up. And the reason we did it that way is this is important. I want the consumer to know we're not hiding anything. This is 100% solid billet. Machine taken right off the machine. There is not a single quality piece cut. Everything is done.

there's no i'm what i should have said is there's no single quality piece corner cut everything is done the highest quality standards i am not hiding anything like a lot of companies will hide stuff with finish yeah they'll hide oh we had a bunch of extra tooling marks here the finish

we're not doing any of that we're showing you 100 that when you buy this you are getting the top quality primer that will last you forever i mean we thought about everything you can yeah it's got our hornady h lasered on the front of it you can set it up however you want to But we wanted to come up with the best priming and the safest primer on the market. Let's talk about the safety aspect because that's a big one. Oh, it's huge. Everybody who's ever used the hand priming tool. I would say any.

Well, yeah, this is just the idea of a hand priming tool as a whole is convenient, I suppose. But I've seen what happens with those if you double stack a primer and try to force it home.

and priming on the press that can be a little bit arduous so you take it off the press how do you verify how do you how do you not guarantee but how do you do your best to say if there is a detonation if you got a crimped primer pocket you didn't think about and you try to bury that thing home and you detonate that primer

What's to stop that from setting off the 99 above it? The beautiful thing in Ben's design is so you have a primer that's in the feed, one primer here, and one primer here that's in the disc set up here. Yep. i'll pull out that's how easy it is to change by the way so you have you've only got two primers that are actually unexposed out of the stack and they are underneath a half almost a half inch of solid billet and a full

What has that been, like three and a half inches solid billet below it? Yeah, about three inches, two and three quarter by two and three quarter by three. So once you do that, then you have the one that's exposed. Yep.

and the tolerances are so tight in between that even if you do get it to spark off it's not going to chain react back to here yeah because if you light this tube up that's going to be a problem yeah and in that disc each each primer is supported they can't fall through that disc there's actually a step in there so each primer is flush with the top of that disc so when i roll it over i got a primer here i got a primer there and my stack is here so when my

Once my punch starts to come up, which is where a detonation could happen on a pierced primer, it's pushed that primer away up to the case now. So now I've got the aluminum piece in my shell holder sizing it up, keeping that.

from getting over to the next primer the next primer and the blast not to mention the same steel shroud that we run on the ap press right in case there was a detonation so um we really were directed and thought about how tidy we wanted this and coming from a tool maker background um is how this culminated now i i did have to give up

some of my you know in in the toolmaker world a tenth is where you want to be 0.0001 well you know we've got to do these mass production we can't do these one-off so but the tolerances are very tight like you said these go right from the machine to assembly there's there's no middle ops we're not bead blasting anything you're going to see the mill marks you're going to see the tooling marks you're going to create your own character with it as you run it

You can set it up. I just, let's see, I seeded 100 primers last Friday with it, and I changed how I originally wanted to run it just to make it more efficient for me. I moved the tube to the other side, and I... push the wheel rather than pull the wheel with my hand so there's so many different ways that you can actually run this tool

and the detent on that wheel is really nice like there's no mistake when you turn that thing over it snaps and once you get into the like if i was going to set it up like this i think i would want to pull press press pull press and you can really get into a good system but if you wanted to push that wheel you swap that over and i was doing exactly that seth that's how i designed to run it like pull press pull press

But I realized the tube on that side, because I don't want the primers to come around the back. I want one primer in, one primer in, not all the way around. The tube, because I wanted to do two-handed. So the tube was in my way trying to put a primer in there. So I moved the tube over, left the handle on the right-hand side. I could grab a case, slide it in, cycle, let go, press.

pull that out with this hand, grab to the next one, and I was able to just flow. We had – Zen reloading. Well, again, it's so versatile. And that even – it was my design, and I even –

surprised me yeah the teacher became the student became the teacher yeah gosh this is good and you know we we started this out with we each had our own vision yeah dylan and ben you guys came up with separate designs yeah it was a cool project i made them both come up with something different and then they married their two designs to that yeah so awesome and you know little things like

I, you know, socket head cap screws. We'll just do this. And then Dylan and one of the other fellows we work with said, well, let's just go to button head cap screws. Okay. All right. Let's make them all adjustable with an eighth inch.

Allen wrench. So everything on that tool that a consumer would need to do is eighth inch. Yeah. Just that simple. And we're going to throw the eighth inch. Shout out to Luke. Yeah. We're going to, we're going to, I mean, we've thought about everything. We're going to throw the primer plate in there.

Excuse me. Yeah, the turning plate. So that you can use your tubes. If you happen to have a Hornady 1911, it's the same tube filling system as an AP if you're familiar with it. And then you can have those preloaded.

ready to go yep oh bingo hundred at a time and this little thing has been the bane of my existence this is your primer follower yes um as you see well if you were watching this podcast you would see that before we started slink took this out because i can't tell you how many times when we were developing this tool this was in the primer tube and i'm like uh-oh something's wrong it won't roll because when you run out of primers it blocks this is going to lock you from turning that wheel yep

right in fact when you're loading 100 your 99th one it'll lock you lift this up so you can get your last one because that last one's in that staging step i was telling you about but i can't tell you how many times i pulled on this and he's got to come over and pull it out and hit me in the head with it because I forget that it locks it down. So sometimes the result of what we designed, there were some benefits of what we designed that we didn't even...

For C. Thank you for the word. It was cool. It's really cool. I'm excited about this product. Just simple stuff like the mounting. It's the same hole pattern as our standard. classic and at the same time we put it so you only really need two bolts so if you just want to run it off the side run it off the side put two on there and you're going to be solid yeah yeah so it's it's like i said it's just the most versatile thing on the market and then

This thing's going to retail for $2.99. That's the big one. That's the thing. As I started this conversation out, we knew where the high-end ones were. Yep. But this, as high-end as those, we're not covering anything, and we're half the price, significantly. Well, actually, we're... There's no corners cut. I mean, that's why we did it this way. I mean, there's no way you could see a corner cut. And you're going to get it in the box. We'll assemble the block portion.

but you're going to get it in the box without the handle on it, without the Eclipse in it, without the pins, without this, so that you can think about how you want to set it up the first time. Right, because that's, yeah, that is huge. In the market, there's one particular that I'm thinking about that.

Nearly most of my compadres in the industry that are in the precision rifle space, they have and they use it. Form factors a little bigger than this. Great unit. Amazing. More than double the price. It looks good. It functions really well. But you don't have the versatility like this one has. You use that one this way. With the VersaPrime tool, if you want it left, right, sideways, angled.

Whatever works on your bench, whatever works for your flow, you can set it up that way and you still get absolute precision. You get the quality. It's going to last you a lifetime. Easy changeovers and safe. We took all those into play when we designed the feeding system as well. feed go i didn't want to pull the handle twice to get a primer picked up i wanted in the same operation to be able to just feed that primer so i didn't have to move a lever it's a rotating dial i mean

I don't know. We're pretty excited about this tool. And because we're foreseen, based on the tremor, we're making... adjustments in the shop to make sure that we get these on the shelf for you too yeah so yeah come january i i suspect these to be uh yeah snatched up in a hurry because i feel like there's a lot of people that are in the precision space But they dabble. And it's hard to drop $700 when you're dabbling. It's much more palatable to drop half of that.

This tool, I just feel like was really well thought out, right down to we were having an issue like, all right, what's going to happen? And we jammed it. Had an operator on the floor so well. Put a magnet in the base so it pulls that down. Hmm. Let's think about that. Okay. And it fixed the problem. Yeah. Just like that. So everybody thinking about this thing and everybody's idea going into it.

I think just made for a great product. Well, and that's one of the things we're doing now a lot with any new product is we literally... hand it to everybody and then say okay break it yep yep figure out how you're gonna jam it how you're gonna break it That's like giving out a new machine gun to the Marine Corps. Oh, yeah. And I scratch my head going, how did you break it? It was perfect. No, it wasn't because we broke it. All right. But there's a lot of people's ideas.

um in this tool you know dylan's mine jason another gentleman on the floor told us about this his name's dan taught us about it Right down to our assistant manager out there helping us get it machined quicker. We've got another gentleman just working only on the machining of this, the programming. How do we get this machined with tooling?

with machines, with people kind of like Joyce Hornady's. Yeah, with material. Yeah, exactly, exactly. A tenth of a green and a tenth of an inch at a time. Exactly. So it was, I'm. Pretty proud of this tool. Sometimes I don't show it as much, but we're all very proud of this tool. Yeah. And I think it'll do real well. I know it'll do real well. Priming goes, it's a game changer.

It gets no better. Everybody we've showed it to behind closed doors, the only question is when can I have it? Yeah, it's kind of like the trimmer. Yeah. You get a rhythm going, and I venture to save five minutes for 100. Wow. You can get them getting in there. Oh, yeah, it's fast. You can make them roll if you get your rhythm going. I like it.

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The RapidSafe keypad vault from Hornady Security. You've definitely seen, the consumer has seen a... focus on the precision a focus on the quality between last year's trimmer the priming tool the lock and load classic pro and you know i'm not going to go into anything and i don't expect you to is either but suffice it to say for the consumer

for the viewer here there are other products in the pipeline over the next one to three five years whatever it is that you're going to see absolute continued innovation

that's going to make your reloading process better, easier, faster, more accurate. I like it. Well, there's a shameless plug that I'm not sure where to put this in the podcast that we're having. or the podcasts that we're having, because during new product season, we release a bunch of new product podcasts. I'm going to put it in this one, and that is the 12th edition of the Hornady Handbook Partridge Reloading. Yep, you bet.

huge huge project um you know i'm already looking forward to the 13th edition because i think that's going to be the best one we ever make uh news 11 this just in i've never edited a book or a reloading manual so let's just say uh it was a learning experience for me but i'm really proud of the 12th edition and how it came out and we've made some significant changes just with the layout with some of the information displayed in the first 150 pages or so

updated the look of the book like you wouldn't believe. When you open the manual and you look at some load data, you're going to see a picture of a cartridge case diagram or a picture of a bullet that is... a 3d rendering it they look like real bullets and real cartridge cases it just really enhances the look that's awesome um aesthetically obviously fonts and photos and that kind of stuff but more importantly the the reason for the manual the data

We went wild with reloading data. Now, yes, you have the obligatory new cartridges, new bullets, and you're going to see a lot of that in the 12th edition, the 400 Legend. The .22 Creedmoor, the .22 Arc, .338 Arc. I mean, there's a bunch of new cartridges in there. New propellants, the Stable line from Winchester, you know, that's what's, you can reliably find that on the shelf all the time.

So stable match, stable 6.5, stable HD. We went through great pains to put those powders where applicable in darn near every cartridge that we could. But the data that you're going to see. That you might not notice right away. Is Todd Connect. He devoted. I don't know how many months. A year. To just reshooting. existing data correct and uh you know over time you get the you know kind of burn rate migration of propellants you have powders that um aren't

aren't available anymore or weren't available at the time, different barrels, different pressure reading equipment. So you're going to see some data that is as good as we've ever had. throughout the entire manual i mean he was shooting stuff that hadn't been shot in decades uh so you're by the 12th edition you're getting a

Probably, I would say, outside of maybe the first one or two editions, you're getting the best edition we've ever made. It is the most up-to-date, the most inclusive. You keep talking, Seth, and as an old man, I actually like...

You know, this is odd because old men don't like reloading apps, but I've always loved the reloading app. But now the way you're toting this book, I might have to get the book. You better have one of each. Yeah, because I've got the app and I love it because I get the data.

right as soon as it's published right away i don't have to buy the manual but now you've got me thinking all right let's go back old school let's get a manual uh you know a guy i'll get you get us hooked up yeah but the the app it's another good point Ben it is available in the app form and as I'm getting new data developed for the 13th edition I will put it in the app and if you're a subscriber you get access to that

And that's what I love. That's what I love. So it's again, it was a labor of love. I sure learned a lot about the reloading manual and how to edit that book. Todd and Matt.

George down in our lab did a phenomenal job with data collection. My good friends at Idea Bank that helped me out bring that product to life did a great job. And for the consumer, I do want to mention... the data collection process is as scientific as we can possibly get it and there's you know there's some questions some data we shot for 7prc for example we re-shot the data

And it came out a little lower than what was previously listed. And that's not only one example, but the examples can be found all throughout the book. We now... order in a pressure and velocity barrel and we can tell that barrel manufacturer bore and groove diameter and they can hold bore and groove diameter you're getting when you order a min spec bore and groove diameter

That thing comes in with almost no tolerance. Those things are perfect. Then you order a chamber reamer. And if we're going to use it to establish safe pressure, I want the minimum chamber dimensions that we could possibly get.

reamer manufacturers today my goodness you order that spec it arrives that spec so the ability of a barrel manufacturer and a reamer manufacturer to produce products that are absolute minimum specification has certainly enhanced over the last few years so now we've got this pressure barrel cut with a min spec chamber and you know the piezoelectric pressure reading system that we have the transducers those are only getting better with time so we are

giving you data not lawyer loads none of this has been reduced by five percent the pressure limit 62 500 let's say we run it up to 62.5 and that's what gets printed but know that that is established in the shortest throat, the smallest throat diameter that we can get with the smallest and tightest borne groove dimensions that Sammy Speck allows. And I just wanted to put that out there that if you're seeing data that you think is conservative,

Just know we've done everything possible from a manufacturing standpoint to establish that data in min-spec conditions. Because the chances that you go buy a rifle off the shelf that's min-spec, not real good. So generally they're...

somewhere in the middle and so just wanted to put that out there yes good point absolutely anything else guys on the tools on the manual what the future looks like for 100 degree loading did you guys play with barrel length at all did you

make any changes while you guys were redoing the book? We generally stick to, since I've been at the helm, I've stuck to, I do a lot out of... test barrels now because those are semi-length barrels so a good example is if you know for the six millimeter arc and the 22 arc we have gas gun data and that's yeah you're going to see that out of a

24 inch barrel um we just try to stick with the sami length oh yeah and that was mostly just for the yeah the guys at home listening to this so yeah that's why we know you might not hit the velocity that you see in the book yeah but You know, I've got an 18-inch 308. We didn't fire any of that out of 18-inch 308. I know I'm going to lose some velocity. Or 20 or 22 or 24. Exactly. There's a lot of reasons your velocity will vary. Sure. Cross-sectional area of the...

The bore is one of them. Bore and groove, diameter, land diameter. The throat geometry is a big one. You cut a bunch of freebore into something, you're going to bleed velocity like a stuck hog. Yeah, exactly. And there's a tolerance on everything.

A lot of reasons outside of barrel length that you might see reduced velocity or increased velocity. Exactly. And that's why, you know, we tell you in the book, these are the max loads in our test barrels with the tightest tolerances. Yep. This is it, you know.

we don't want to exceed that right so your your tolerance might be even tighter so it's just there's a there's a lot that goes into that book and before i started working here i was like not a big deal but now working here for 20 years or so you can see that the amount of work that goes into producing a new manual an updated manual it's just a ton it is just described yeah i think uh

a lot of folks see it as oh it's got the new powders and some new bullets in there a couple new cartridges cool well we yeah it does do that and then it's got we went backwards a lot uh i was putting data in uh six five Uh, stay ball six, five. Gosh, I was putting data in for like, I don't know how many people are going to be using stay ball six, five with 150 grain bullet and a three in one mag or, you know, whatever the combination was, but we got it.

Got it in there. Don't discount that 150 green flat base. It still shoots the best out of my 300. I mean, it's simple. When you go to the store and you're buying powder, which one's there? Yeah. Especially right now. It's getting better, but still, yeah, it's still a lot of...

Which one's there? Yep. I'll tell you which ones aren't there. Awesome, guys. Well, I don't have anything else. Is there anything you want to leave the listener with about these products? Or... peak in the future we're excited about it and trust me there's gonna be a lot more coming we've got a lot more ideas coming we've got products that are even launching two years from now where we're getting prototypes built so it's we're we're uh

Paying attention to what's going on, and we're looking for duct tape. I love it. Slink, Dylan, Ben, thanks for coming on the show. I will add, it's a little odd without Preston by my side to heckle. Well, there's been no arguments. I can't wait to hear Preston's arguments after we're done recording. Yeah, he has them tallied up back there. Yeah, he's been taking notes. I've been watching. All right, thanks, guys. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for tuning into this episode all about our new reloading tools. Obviously, these guys did a phenomenal job designing what we think really enhanced the user experience. Now, if you've got suggestions. on some reloading tools that you'd like to see from Hornady, you got to let us know. Drop them in the comments here. Email us, podcast at hornady.com. We'd sure appreciate it. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you on the next one.