Crash_Corrigan
10-14-2009, 05:33 PM
Another lurker and a good friend and fellow cast shooter called me up one day recently. He is an out of work {like all construction guys in Vegas} door installer and he has a friend who has a destruction demolition concern here in town.
He had a job to demo out a dental x=ray installation and asked my friend to help him out. He was not to be paid to demo the room but he was to salvage all the leadsheathing on the walls.
Blake {my good pal} called me for some help as this job needed to be done in a short time period and I of course agreed.
Understand that I recently had surgery on my leg and a new implanted titanium bar had been screwed into the end of Fibula and healing was not quite done yet.
I met Blake at the site at we started to remove the drywall that had been screwed and glued to the lead sheathing. Some panels had only been screwed and they went really fast and easy. However about 2/3 or so of them has also been glued to the lead and this made the job a real bear.
Four hours later and I was done in. I was soaked in sweat from the skin out and my arms and hands were numb. Understand please that I am 66 years young and the heaviest activity I had done in the last year was to move into my present diggs. Thank the stars that I had an appointment to see my doctor at 10:30 am and this gave me an excuse to leave.
I had done my share and Blake had only a 4 foor by 4 foor piece to drywall to finish off and the room was done. On the floor was a waist high pile of folded leadsheating that was 1/4" thick by a variety of sizes. I found that my beloved KA BAR sheath knife cut through that sheathing really fast and we whittled that pile down to pieces that could easily be melted in a Lodge Cast Iron Dutch Oven.
Of course I bailed before he needed to remove the sheathing to his pick up and I should have felt guilty but I was too tired to care. I left him in a dusty and hot room with all the loot.
I went to my appointment and he discovered that 25 minutes later my blood pressure was through the roof and I felt really lousy. I went home and took a hot shower and rested for a few days.
A few weeks went by and he again called me. He had another dental lab to demo and asked if I could pitch in. I agreed and then he started to laugh and admitted that it was a joke. He only wanted to see if I was still game enough to help him out. He then invited me to dinner.
His lovely wife Laurie made a great dinner of stuffed peppers and all the trimmings and I brought a Marie Callender Coconut Cream Pie. It turned out that this was his favorite and we all had a great evening.
After dinner he took me out to the back yard where he showed me the loot. He had made a few ingot molds. Some were 6 inches long and some a foot long. The smaller ones weighed 4 pounds and the bigger ones 8 pounds.
They produced a huge pile of ingots. He had some still piled on the ground but most were in a 55 gallon drum. It was 3/4 full of pure lead ingots. You know the kind with blue and purple colors on the surface and they could eaisly be scratched with a thumbnail. He figured he had over a ton of pure lead.
He had always bought his boolits for his 45-90's and 50-90's and I had been on his case for him to start casting lead to save money and increase his shooting. He broke down and got a decent casting pot, turkey fryer and a propane tank.
Unknown to me he had smelted all the lead during these two weeks and he never invited me to help out. I was feeling left out of it as I love smelting and casting. I had loaned him a few of my Lee 6 bangers so he could get started and he had obtained a new LBT mold for his .44 Magnum. That thing was just a piece of art. Nothing like a lee. A four banger of aluminum but made like a Dusenberg Automobile. The finest mold I had ever seen.
I made him promise to let me hang out when he put it to work. After dinner and the admiration tour he and I retired to his loading room so I could assemble some Elk Hunting rounds for a friend. I got to use his PACT powder measure and dispensing machine. What a pleasure. We decided on a load of 81 Gr of H 4831 powder for a 300 Weatherby Magnum under a 180 gr Nosler Partition J-word bullet.
It is so easy and a reliable machine to use. During the first 10 dispensings the unit is really calibrating and learning how to use the particular powder so the loadings vary some. After the 1st 10 {thrown back into the hopper} it started to produce perfect loads every time. As the dispenser was dispensing I was busy seating the bullets into the cases.
I could have probably done the job faster using my tried and true RCBS scale but I doubt if it would have been as accurate. It made for a leisurely and pleasant evening of telling lies to each other and partaking in a mutually enjoyable pastime.
He has ordered a mold for his Smith 500 magnum and I suggested that he might be able to paper patch up some of those boolits to use in his 505 Gibbs. That is our next project as j word bullets for that cannon are very expensive. I suggested that using a cast boolit for that gun would keep his expenses down and that use of lead boolits would also prolong the life of the barrel of the rifle to generations rather than only thousands of rounds fired.
Of course being the rcoil junkie that he is I doubt if he will be able to keep the velocity down on his Gibbs rounds. I fired that Enfield Actioned custom rifle one time. Once was enough for a lifetime. I am old and I heal slow.
Photos depict that day that I was invited to partake in shooting the Gibbs. Luck is with me in that we took a video of me shooting the gun and I cannot reproduce it here. The photos are of Blake and the Gibbs. The round consists of a 525 gr j word bullet over 130 something grains of powder that move out at 2,500 plus FPS.
Expensive yes. The projectiles cost over 70 cents apiece and the brass cost is outrageous.
He had a job to demo out a dental x=ray installation and asked my friend to help him out. He was not to be paid to demo the room but he was to salvage all the leadsheathing on the walls.
Blake {my good pal} called me for some help as this job needed to be done in a short time period and I of course agreed.
Understand that I recently had surgery on my leg and a new implanted titanium bar had been screwed into the end of Fibula and healing was not quite done yet.
I met Blake at the site at we started to remove the drywall that had been screwed and glued to the lead sheathing. Some panels had only been screwed and they went really fast and easy. However about 2/3 or so of them has also been glued to the lead and this made the job a real bear.
Four hours later and I was done in. I was soaked in sweat from the skin out and my arms and hands were numb. Understand please that I am 66 years young and the heaviest activity I had done in the last year was to move into my present diggs. Thank the stars that I had an appointment to see my doctor at 10:30 am and this gave me an excuse to leave.
I had done my share and Blake had only a 4 foor by 4 foor piece to drywall to finish off and the room was done. On the floor was a waist high pile of folded leadsheating that was 1/4" thick by a variety of sizes. I found that my beloved KA BAR sheath knife cut through that sheathing really fast and we whittled that pile down to pieces that could easily be melted in a Lodge Cast Iron Dutch Oven.
Of course I bailed before he needed to remove the sheathing to his pick up and I should have felt guilty but I was too tired to care. I left him in a dusty and hot room with all the loot.
I went to my appointment and he discovered that 25 minutes later my blood pressure was through the roof and I felt really lousy. I went home and took a hot shower and rested for a few days.
A few weeks went by and he again called me. He had another dental lab to demo and asked if I could pitch in. I agreed and then he started to laugh and admitted that it was a joke. He only wanted to see if I was still game enough to help him out. He then invited me to dinner.
His lovely wife Laurie made a great dinner of stuffed peppers and all the trimmings and I brought a Marie Callender Coconut Cream Pie. It turned out that this was his favorite and we all had a great evening.
After dinner he took me out to the back yard where he showed me the loot. He had made a few ingot molds. Some were 6 inches long and some a foot long. The smaller ones weighed 4 pounds and the bigger ones 8 pounds.
They produced a huge pile of ingots. He had some still piled on the ground but most were in a 55 gallon drum. It was 3/4 full of pure lead ingots. You know the kind with blue and purple colors on the surface and they could eaisly be scratched with a thumbnail. He figured he had over a ton of pure lead.
He had always bought his boolits for his 45-90's and 50-90's and I had been on his case for him to start casting lead to save money and increase his shooting. He broke down and got a decent casting pot, turkey fryer and a propane tank.
Unknown to me he had smelted all the lead during these two weeks and he never invited me to help out. I was feeling left out of it as I love smelting and casting. I had loaned him a few of my Lee 6 bangers so he could get started and he had obtained a new LBT mold for his .44 Magnum. That thing was just a piece of art. Nothing like a lee. A four banger of aluminum but made like a Dusenberg Automobile. The finest mold I had ever seen.
I made him promise to let me hang out when he put it to work. After dinner and the admiration tour he and I retired to his loading room so I could assemble some Elk Hunting rounds for a friend. I got to use his PACT powder measure and dispensing machine. What a pleasure. We decided on a load of 81 Gr of H 4831 powder for a 300 Weatherby Magnum under a 180 gr Nosler Partition J-word bullet.
It is so easy and a reliable machine to use. During the first 10 dispensings the unit is really calibrating and learning how to use the particular powder so the loadings vary some. After the 1st 10 {thrown back into the hopper} it started to produce perfect loads every time. As the dispenser was dispensing I was busy seating the bullets into the cases.
I could have probably done the job faster using my tried and true RCBS scale but I doubt if it would have been as accurate. It made for a leisurely and pleasant evening of telling lies to each other and partaking in a mutually enjoyable pastime.
He has ordered a mold for his Smith 500 magnum and I suggested that he might be able to paper patch up some of those boolits to use in his 505 Gibbs. That is our next project as j word bullets for that cannon are very expensive. I suggested that using a cast boolit for that gun would keep his expenses down and that use of lead boolits would also prolong the life of the barrel of the rifle to generations rather than only thousands of rounds fired.
Of course being the rcoil junkie that he is I doubt if he will be able to keep the velocity down on his Gibbs rounds. I fired that Enfield Actioned custom rifle one time. Once was enough for a lifetime. I am old and I heal slow.
Photos depict that day that I was invited to partake in shooting the Gibbs. Luck is with me in that we took a video of me shooting the gun and I cannot reproduce it here. The photos are of Blake and the Gibbs. The round consists of a 525 gr j word bullet over 130 something grains of powder that move out at 2,500 plus FPS.
Expensive yes. The projectiles cost over 70 cents apiece and the brass cost is outrageous.