Learn from my mistakes / better reloading

I want to ask about case prep but feel the need to give a little background first. Back in 1984 I was living in Tulsa and a buddy of mine had a Colt .45Gold Cup. He let me shoot it a few times and I was hooked...I wanted a .45 but couldn't afford one like his. The Tulsa Gun Show was coming up and I decided I'd buy a .45 there. He suggested looking for a 70 series and showed me what to look for on the slide. I bought one for $325 and it seemed to shoot fine.

I would shoot and reload using my RCBS. One night we were at an indoor range shooting when my pistol exploded. Only by the grace of God did I escape with only a small cut under my eye, one on my hand, and no hair left on my right hand thanks to the powder burns. Upon closer examination, the explosion cracked the frame, blew the magazine out of the pistol, and pushed the bullet half way down the barrel before swelling the barrel in the slide.

Turns out I had purchased a "parts gun" with a Colt 70 series slide but with a frame made from some type of pot metal. The explosion was either caused by the round detonating when the slide wasn't completely in battery (I know, it's not supposed to happen) or a powder overload.

I had the gun fixed and began shooting again. From time to time the slide wouldn't go all the way home, which scared the CRAP out of me!! I took the gun to a .45 gunsmith in Ringgold, Georgia (great guy ) who said he couldn't find anything wrong with the gun. However, I kept having the same problem. I took it back to him with some of my ammo and he said my reloads were the problem. He and another guy shot it with both factory loads and their reloads and it worked fine. They checked my ammo and it was very inconsistent, as I wasn't checking the overall length after loading.

I posted a message asking what I needed to do to get started reloading rifle and received lots of good feedback - thanks to all. The feedback made me want to do a much, much better job with my pistol reloads. So I'm going to start prepping the cases and checking the length before and after seating the bullets.

To that end, I thought about buying a case trimmer. Then I watched a few vids about deburring and champfering and decided I needed to do that (at least on rifle). Then I thought "rather than do it by hand, why not get a case prep tool". But if I buy a case trimmer and the tools to do it by hand I could by something like the fancy-shmancy one that trims and preps.

If anyone has any thoughts on the prepping hardware I'd love to hear. Sorry it's so long.

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Learn from my mistakes / better reloading