Introduction
Giraud Tool Company is based in Houston, Texas, and is a pretty small outfit. They’re best known for the Giraud Power Case Trimmer, which for years was the envy of every handloader I knew. It trims cases quickly and consistently, and the cutter’s unique shape trims to length while deburring both the inside and outside of the case mouth. In its day it sat at the top of the food chain, but the market eventually moved toward companies like Henderson Precision.
A lesser-known Giraud product is the Tri-Way trimmer. It uses the same cutter style as the powered trimmer but packages it in a compact unit designed for use in a hand drill or drill press. Of all the trimmers I’m testing, this one was the most expensive at $120, and my sample is dedicated to .30-06 Springfield.
What’s Included
There’s no frills in the packaging. You get the trimmer, a business card, and a trimmed case. You might assume that the included case was cut on the specific unit you’re holding. After using mine and needing to adjust it substantially, I don’t believe that’s true. The instructions describe the case as an example of a good trim—nothing more.
How it works
It works like most drill-mounted trimmers. An exterior housing contains a bearing, and inside that bearing is an insert shaped like a chamber. When you push a case in, it indexes off the shoulder, attempting to pick up the same shoulder datum that positions the case in your rifle chamber. This method of indexing is not unique, an is employed by most case trimmers that share a similar form factor.
Inside, the core contains the cutter. Many trimmers use an endmill; the Tri-Way uses a custom-ground cutter designed to follow the case mouth while trimming to length and deburring both the inside and outside edges.
You can adjust the cutter position (which affects how aggressive the ID/OD chamfer is) and you can adjust the exterior body to set trim length. The concept isn’t complicated, and the underlying principles are sound enough.
Unlike most competitors, the Tri-Way has only one cutting surface, offset from the centerline.
What is it suppose to do?
The sample case Giraud includes is meant to demonstrate the kind of chamfer and trim quality the Tri-Way can produce when adjusted correctly. All while maintaining a consistent Overall Length.
What did I Get?
This trimmer was a bit frustrating to set up. I initially assumed the included case was cut using this exact unit. After several attempts where cases weren’t trimmed to the proper length, I stopped and checked cutter alignment. Based on what I saw, the cutter wasn’t positioned correctly from the factory. The photo I took uses the sample case that shipped with the trimmer.
Adjusting the cutter is not a simple task. You loosen a set screw, fight gravity as the cutter tries to fall out, push it forward or backward by guesswork, and then cinch the screw down again hoping you’re close. Eventually, with enough trial and error, I got trim length to settle around 2.484 inches—the recommended trim length for .30-06 Springfield.
I did get a decent outer chamfer, but most of my brass showed little to no inner chamfer. Functionally that’s not a huge issue; the ID was clean and free of burrs. But it’s clear the cutter wasn’t perfectly dialed in.
As seen in the picture above I got a decent outer chamfer, but most of my brass was not getting any chamfer on the inner diameter. I don’t see this as a huge issue, as the inside is mostly burr free and the cut is clean. There are a few other things I want to point out that trouble me a bit more.
Another issue: cases weren’t contacting the .375-diameter shoulder datum. They were indexing slightly forward, right in the transition radius between shoulder and neck. All my brass showed the same behavior. Whether it indexes at .380, .375, or .400 isn’t a crisis—the point is consistency—but indexing on a radius introduces more variability than indexing on a fixed diameter.
I trimmed between 200 and 300 cases and pulled 25 random samples to check consistency. I set a working tolerance of 2.484 ± 0.004. Everything between 2.480 and 2.488 met my standard. The average landed at 2.482—slightly short of target but not meaningfully so. One case fell just outside the lower limit, giving me a defect rate of about 2%. Not bad.
Given the indexing-on-radius concern, I expected more variation. Either it didn’t matter much, or my tolerance window absorbed the added scatter.
On paper, things looked okay. But not everything was okay.
Here’s what went wrong
The real problem was the cutter grabbing the case mouth mid-feed, and once it grabbed, things went downhill fast.
I started at 800 RPM on the drill press. That was probably too slow for a single-flute cutter. If the case isn’t perfectly straight when it enters the cutter—or if you feed it too aggressively—the cutter bites into the mouth.
When that happens, one of three things occurs:
- The case starts spinning in your fingers.
- The mouth collapses or flares badly, making it nearly impossible to remove from the trimmer.
- The cutter completely destroys the case mouth.
Sometimes I could get a solid grip, pull it out, and refeed slowly enough to save the case. Other times I had to kill the drill press, grab a punch and hammer, bend the case mouth inward just to free it, and then throw the case in the scrap bin.
This did not happen once. It happened often.
I tried 1500 RPM. Then 2000 RPM. I honestly couldn’t tell whether it improved anything.
A contributing factor is case-mouth roundness. It takes nothing—dropping brass, tossing it in a bin, running a sizing die without an expander—to knock mouths slightly out of round. Even small dents created uneven chamfers and thin spots. A cutter that follows the mouth exactly will catch on those imperfections, and when it does, you get another chewed-up case.
By the end of trimming, I had about 18 scrap cases. For me, that’s not a huge loss. I have enough .30-06 brass to last several lifetimes. But if someone were trimming a small batch of expensive brass for the first time, this would be a disaster.
To be fair to Giraud, they warn you: slow feed, firm grip. This is the same basic design used on their powered trimmer. Plenty of people swear by it. Some own multiple units to avoid setup changes.
My experience just wasn’t in that category.
What works, and what doesn’t
The chip shroud is the best part of the whole design. It keeps most chips contained, which I doubt I’ll get with some of the other trimmers coming up in this review series.
Functionally, I’m torn. When everything works, it trims well, deburrs cleanly, and produces repeatable lengths. But when it goes wrong, it goes wrong fast and forces you to shut down the drill, clear the cutter, and scrap brass.
Adjusting the cutter is tedious. Even after I thought I had it dialed in, I still wasn’t getting a consistent ID chamfer. A small dovetail mechanism or micro-adjust slide would improve the design tremendously, but it would also increase cost.
The machining is clean, and it does feel like a $120 tool in terms of build quality, but the user experience isn’t polished. If I didn’t have the issues with it destroying the case mouths on cases that were not perfectly round, I could probably get behind it. It’s just not quite there.
Wrapping it Up
I had high hopes for this trimmer. I really wanted it to shine. Either I haven’t mastered the technique yet or something about this specific unit isn’t quite right. I don’t think I’m the smartest guy in the room, but I do think I’m a fair representation of the average handloader. I can’t imagine my first-time experience being wildly different from anyone else’s.
If you want to try one yourself and compare notes, they’re sold directly by Giraud Tool and usually ship in a 2–3 week window. Here’s the link.
Next up: the Frankford Arsenal Universal Precision Drill Case Trimmer.
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