A friend and coworker has been talking a lot about reloading lately. We got off early on Thursday, so I told him to go to Academy and pick up some bullets (I was out) and to come by the house, and I would show him how reloading worked.
He took me up on it, and we spent about 2 hours going through each step on my single-stage press, and walking him through the process. He came out with 95 bullets. One was loaded entirely too deep, and will have to be pulled, he crushed 2 primers, and lost 2 primers. Still, 95% accuracy is pretty good for your first time doing anything.
Afterwards we ate pizza, and drank a few Shiner beers. Not a bad way to spend a Thursday afternoon.
Anyway, the stumbling block (pun intended) was that I only have one reloading block. They're cheap, and I've been meaning to get more, but somehow it hasn't happened. It slowed the process down a bit. Well, oddly, when my partner was leaving, he asked to borrow my reloading block. I thought it was weird, but told him to bring it back to me at work whenever he was done.
Last night, he sends me this picture. My buddy is a woodworker, and he did a hell of a job. You can see the original on the bottom right of the photo.
Man, that's a hell of a thank-you, ain't it?!
3 comments:
Not bad at all. Good work all-around.
Oh, nice!
I'm cheap. I use the plastic or styrofoam inserts that new ammo in factory boxes comes in. Lots of those lying around the range at the end of the day.
Those plastic (etc) inserts are lightweight and subject to being bumped off a loading bench. The big wooden blocks are easy to make if you have wood and a drill press. You can make them for different calibers. They don't have to be pretty, though you can paint (for example, color code by caliber) or varnish them to suit your taste. Bare wood loading blocks get grimy very easily, especially if you are lubricating your cases and/or using graphite for resizing.
In the seventh and last place, having ANY kind of loading blocks is essential for single-stage presses.
Don't forget the all important penultimate step; after filling the cases with measured powder charge, visually inspect the cases under a strong overhead light to ENSURE that you have not under- or over-charged any of them (or missed loading powder into a case AT ALL!).
Not that I've ever done that ...
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