Anybody here have any experience using the Doyle Gracey cartridge trimmers? I heard about them in the Sierra manual. They operate similar to a pencil sharpener and trim and chamfer the brass at the same time. The price seems similar to many of the other power trimmers.

Does it work as well as it is supposed to? The Sierra manual spoke pretty high of it. I would love to speed up trimming 223 brass, I loathe trimming several hundred with the Lee trimmer. I also would like a faster way of trimming down the 300/221 Fireball brass I am making.

If you chuck that Lee trimmer in a drill press and use the drill press base for a stop it sure trims pretty fast. You can buy a small drill press form Harbor freight for 29 bucks most of the time and thats a real savings over any power trimmer I've seen. Even using the Lee trimmer in an electric drill speeds thing up, but the drill press trick is faster than any power trimmer I've ever used.

I usually use my cordless drill for trimming, and it is certainly faster than by hand. I usually end up with sore fingers, and even blisters sometimes trying to tighten those cases in the little shell holder. Plus the 300/221 Fireball (300 Whisper) cuts past the shoulder of the 223 and opens the neck to .308" I can get a custom Lee trimmer made, but it would be .308" thick and would not seat in the cartridge with the original 224" neck. I was looking for something that would trim through all of that, and the Doyle trimmer looked nice, it evens chamfers inside and out. Although in general I try to save money, it takes me nearl and hour to form about 25 300 Fireball brass. If I can drop that time it could be worth alot in saving my time. I would much rather be using that time to load than just forming.

I gave up years ago putting the cases in the little shell holder. Just chuck the cutter in the drill press and let the drill press table be the stop for the cutter, but I'm not doing any wildcats. I'm using my old shooting partner's RCBS case prep center for chamfering and it's quick and easy.

I do see where your coming from with a wildcat case such as the Whisper. The Doyle sure might work well for you. If you get it let us know how it works.

Just remember that the Gracey relies on the shoulder of the FULL LENGTH RESIZED case for the trimmer stop. Apparently you are trimming PRIOR to forming. That will not work with the Gracey.

What I had planned to do was size the brass first with the expander removed from the die. The trim die that I use sizes the the necks of the brass too. So when I remove it from the trim die it already has the general shape of the final brass. Then after the neck is cut down it goes through the sizing die to get the final dimensions and squeeze the neck down.

So I would have a sized case to use in it, it would just have much more brass in front of the neck. Do you have one Blackhawk, if so what do you think of it?

I think I would expand the necks first, then get Lee to make a custom trim gage. Have them make the trim gage a little undersized in the neck just to be on the safe side.

Chuck that in the drill press and you are ready to go to town. It's going to be a combination of speed and cheap tools that can't be beat.

Wear a glove. Removing that much brass, is going to get the case pretty darn hot.

I can get by reloading without a bunch of my usual reloading tools, but I couldn't get by without a drill press.

I think I might give that a try before trying one of the more expensive routes. I would much rather use that money on components. I will have to get some templates to send to Lee.