A jog around the blogs...

• Camo patterns of 'Murrica


• Box killing


• Surely there is something in this list that will trigger you.

Lee Press On Ammo

I must be getting bored, because this is starting to look like an enjoyable project: A Lee Hand Press and a set of 9mm dies. I've got thousands of small pistol primers, freezer bags full of once-fired brass, and I have no idea how many projectiles of various types. Powder's probably my weak link, but I'm pretty sure I've got a few pounds that'll work with nine loads.

I can't really use homemade 9mm stuff for work, and really wouldn't want to load in those kind of volumes anyway. For that I'd need to yank the cover off the turret press and set it up somewhere and I just can't be arsed. But fifty or a hundred rounds a week in my spare time? Sure, that's doable. And it's the sort of attention-focusing touch labor that's relaxing; like putting jigsaw puzzles together, but with a better payoff.

The hand press isn't super efficient, but I've used it to assemble small amounts of rifle ammo before. It's not hard to use.

.

Tab Clearing...

• Reloading bench pr0n


• MountainGuerrilla's bleeping book is finally bleeping available.


• I'm just worthless at musketry without a cup of joe in the morning.

Full barrel.

Fire a squib. Fire another one behind it.

You now have two bullets lodged in the bore.

Swing out the cylinder and reload.

Fire another squib. Fire a fourth.

The fourth squib prevented him from firing any more, because the bore was already full of bullet and the fourth projectile lodged halfway into the barrel with half still in the cylinder, locking the gun up tight. The clue to what was wrong was the shiny copper ogive of the first bullet now protruding slightly from the muzzle.

Remember: If it goes *pop*, STOP!
.

Under pressure.

That is not actually a belted magnum variant of the .223 Remington case; the "belt" is where the pressure expanded the case head.

The round locked the Bushhamster "CAR-15" flattop carbine up tighter than a drum, hogged out the primer pocket and unseated the primer, and flattened the headstamp against the breechface.

This dude came really close to a very eventful range trip. Always wear your eye protection.

Ka-POW!

I need to get a portable reader for CF cards or an extra cable for the Rebel, because I have pics of a couple of spectacular malfunctions brought into the gunsmithing shop within 48 hours of each other, both of which were related to reloaded ammunition.

Brief safety pointers until I get the images up:

1. If the gun makes any noise other than a normal, healthy *BANG!*, don't pull the trigger again. And for the sake of Sam Colt, don't pull it another two or three times.


2. If you don't know what you're doing, reloading rifle ammunition probably isn't for you.

(Also, maybe I should think about a ring flash for this kind of pickcher takin'.)

Today was a good day...

Another good day at the range...

Shootin' Buddy took up reloading again during the current ammo shortage. His 230gr LRN reloads have been running well so far, at least until today, when this malf popped up a dozen times or so.

The malf happened in both his Les Baer TRS and this Springfield Lightweight Loaded maybe ten times today, total. Both guns were using Baer mags. The only thing in common was the ammo and the nature of the malf. To my eye, it looks like the rim wasn't making it under the extractor claw, but I can't think what factor in reloaded ammo would cause that across two different guns. Any of you twenty-pound-brain reloading gurus, feel free to chime in...

Gun Show Post-Mortem:

Firearmageddon seems to be tailing off slightly, although only about two-thirds of the vendors had gotten the word.

I picked up an assortment of oddities:

• 60 rounds of surplus 7.62x45mm, just because.


• A box of .380 PMC Starfire.


• A box of Black Hills 9mm +P 115gr JHP.


• Someone was selling off their Y2K ammo stash and I paid $25 each for a box of 9mm Blazer and 9mm S&B, partly out of admiration for their capitalism and partly because I want to keep at least some ammo coming in, and of different varieties, in case I need to T&E a 9mm pistol.


• Some other guys 'way back against the back wall had various bricks of .22 out for $40-$50 which, after passing through the $100+/brick reality distortion field of the show, seemed downright reasonable. I bought Bobbi a 333rd box of Winchester, because she was running low on stuff that would cycle in her Ruger. (Farmer Frank's generous gift of a mess of assorted old CCI .22 shorts and CBs and whatnot from a year or so ago will keep Roseholme Cottage's .22 revolvers going through the slump.)


• A Lee hand press.


• Three old Lee Loaders: .45 ACP, .357 Magnum, and .243 Winchester. The guy had 'em priced at $25 each, but sixty bucks took the trio.


• I bought a Surefire P2ZX Fury. Remember when 65 lumens in a pocket-size flashlight was a lot? I can't imagine ten years from now looking back and saying "Remember when 500 lumens in a little pocket light was a lot?" but I'm sure I will.


• My buddies the book sellers were there, and so I bought a book.


• Lastly, I picked up a Maxpedition Sitka Gearslinger, with an eye toward possibly up-sizing the turse, because an iPad is bigger than a Kindle Fire.

There was no line when we arrived or when we left, but the venue remained pretty packed after about 10AM.

Oh, I almost forgot the highlight of the show for me!

As we approached the entrance, I saw a knot of Cletii clustered around an object at which they were staring in bemused wonder like the Australopithecines facing the monolith in the opening of 2001. What could have drawn their attention? As I drew closer, I saw the object of their bafflement and my heart leaped for joy!

Now if they'll only read the instructions...

Thank you, Indy 1500! If you're going to mandate that I coonfinger my loaded heater in the name of safety, good manners would dictate that you provide me a safe backstop against which to do so. Thank you, thank you!

Blech.

Stay away from the NOS in the green cans. It tastes like slightly-watered, lightly-carbonated Delsym cough suppressant, complete with the faintly gritty mouthfeel.

It'll get the heart going in the morning, though, especially if you slam a can of the stuff after watching a Chris Matthews show that included Dan Rather as a panelist. I swear, I thought those two were going to ask the ladies to leave the room so the two of them could engage in some mutual fapping to a picture of the president. The only other time I've seen that look on someone's face, it was a member of the JV chess club talking about a varsity cheerleader.

I know conservatives get a little misty-eyed when talking about Reagan, and liberals of a certain age talk about JFK like he was the greatest thing to happen to the office since Jefferson was in it, but the obsessive adulation some of the professional punditocracy have for the current Chief Executive would get them slapped with a restraining order if they directed it at a secretary. You get the feeling that Chris Matthews has a little shrine in a closet, with carefully-clipped pictures of Barry taped all over the wall, or that the Secret Service is going to find Rather skulking in the bushes around the White House one night with a roll of duct tape and a steak knife.

Woke up to a cell phone battery that was flatter than western Kansas, and Shootin' Buddy's supposed to be here at 0800 so we can do a Broad Ripple breakfast and then go freeze our asses off at Iggle Crick, which opens for the season this weekend. Shootin' Buddy has gotten back into reloading, and I reckon I should look at setting the press up myself. I really want something better than this little Lee turret press, though...

Tab Clearing...

• Thumbnail blogmeet recap. More to follow.


• When is a 1911 like a Glock? Always wear eye protection!


• Because racegun!


• See? It's not even the fun kind of genocidal totalitarian dictatorship with tanks and snappy uniforms that people can get all up in arms and revolt against. It's a dull, healthy, high-fiber one, with hot and cold running iTunes and laws about wearing galoshes when it's raining.

Overheard in the Office:

Me: (Idly flipping through the Big Book Of Bullets) "Huh. '.10 Eichelberger Long Rifle'..."

RX: "What?"

Me: "You take store-bought .22LR, pull the bullets, dump the powder..."

RX: "But it's a rimfire! How do you get the priming compound...?"

Me: "...run the primed cases through a series of sizing dies..."

RX: "Yikes!"

Me: "...and then you seat your..."

RX: "Matchstick."

Me: "...7.5gr .103" spitzer bullet over not quite two grains of AA9, and launch that sucker at over 2100 feet-per-second."

RX: "Yes, but what would you do with it?"

Me: "I bet it would $&#@ up a mouse."

RX: "Yes, but so would a darning needle attached to a length of dowel rod, and it would be a lot more sporting to hunt them that way. I believe fat Hermann was the last hunstman in Europe to take a mouse with the traditional darning needle attached to a length of dowel rod. It just seems like something he'd do."

I see big clouds of white smoke in my future...

In comments here, Michael Z. Williamson dropped a link to an awesome French website that sells reloadable shells for old .32 and .41 rimfire guns and reloadable pinfire cartridges, as well as several other black powder calibers. They have a reloading kit for 11x59R Gras!

They'll even ship to the US, although international shipments obviously don't come with primers, but that's a minor obstacle...

Led spaghetti.

MattG has been on a hunting trip out in Children Of The Corn country.

While out there, he got to take a field trip to the Hornady plant.

Neat-o! I'm jealous.

Cast away.

I've never tried casting my own boolits at home, although it looks to be all kinds of fun and practical.

I'm just worried about having a place to do it that is well-ventilated enough that I don't need to pull my socks off to count past ten after a long session.

Free bullets.

I thought that would get your attention.

Hornady apparently has a promo going on whereby you send in your proof of purchase for various dies or presses, and they send you bullets.

Hm. I do need some dies...


EDITED TO ADD: Did you know that Amazon carries Hornady reloading stuff? They seem to occasionally have smokin' clearance sales on strange die sizes, too, like 7mm Remington Short Action Ultra Mag. We picked up some .25ACP dies for the same $20 low price the other day. Reloading .25ACP should be like building a ship in a bottle...




(H/T to Unc and John D.)

Random Boomstickery.

Hecate takes a class.

Awww, who's the sad clown?

Frank W. James on .40S&W reloading.

A man's got to know his limitations...

Reloading your own ammunition, while fun and practical and possibly the single geekiest gun-related activity there is, is not something to be done casually.

Especially on a single-stage press, reloading well and safely demands almost as much focus as shooting itself. You'll hear folks say that the most relaxing thing about shooting is that when you're shooting, you're not doing anything else; your mind's completely focused on the front sight and the trigger and the target, not "Did I remember to pick up a gallon of milk?" or "Where are we going to get a sitter Friday night?" Reloading on a single-stage press is the same way; it demands total absorption. On a progressive press, you might get away with having the radio on in the background, but if you're interested in not turning your firearm into shrapnel, your head still needs to be in the game.

Thus, when I asked Les Jones if he'd gotten into reloading yet, his answer made me happy. A man's got to know his limitations.

Inventorying for the coming zombocalypse...

Let's see, we have dies in .44 Spl/Mag, .38 Spl/.357 Mag, 11mm Mauser, .405 Win, .303 Brit, .30-40 Krag, 6.5 Swede, 6.5 Jap, 6.5 Mannlicher-Schoenauer, and .22 Remington Jet. We have at least a few hundred bullets in .429", 411", .357", .312", .308", 264", .224", and .222". Several pounds of various powders, a few thousand assorted primers...

I need to lay in dies for 9mm and .45ACP, as well as .223. I should probably lay in a complete swatch of loading supplies for .32 S&W Long; cheap to load and cheap to shoot. If I'm actually going to start reloading rifle cases, rather than just talking about it, I need a good case trimmer. I need a good tumbler. I need to teach my roommate.

EDIT: Just rummaging around to go to the range this morning and realized another must-have: .44-40 dies. Gotta keep my Model 544 fed.