New "Thread" Use For Old Boolits

[floodgate]

The attached photos shows a use for boolits I doubt many of you have ever thought of: my wife is stuffing several 250-gr. .38-55 #375248's into plastic film cans (note the one hanging at lower left) to apply "just the right weight" to the selvage (weaving edge) warp threads on her loom, for a rag rug she is weaving.

It works!

(She has also dug into my stash of #457125's to sew into the hems of curtains, to make them "hang right".)

floodgate

[StarMetal]

Doug,

That's great....just the thing to get even with the enviromental crowd trying to make us recycle. Well your wife has a great recycling plan.

Do you think that the colonist women might have sewed musket balls on the curtains for their minute men husbands? Kinda like bandoliers
:Fire::Fire:

Joe

[BruceB]

At the risk of dating myself....

The Canadian Army still used PUTTEES as an item of dress right up into the 1960s in some units. Maybe they still do, Heaven only knows!

Anyway, to keep the trousers properly bloused over the puttees and under some tension to keep the razor-creases straight, we made circular weights which rested inside the bottom of the trousers and above the tightly-wrapped puttees, which only went just above ankle-high, not up the shins like WWI doughboys wore them.

These trouser weights were constructed by cutting a boot lace to appropriate length, and then sliding range-salvaged .30-caliber bullets inside the lace to fill its entire length, and then wiring the two ends of the lace together to make a circle. Made a fine (and cheap) item for the purpose.

I've even used bullets-to-be (3-pound ingots) as tarp weights on haystack covers. Drill a hole in one end for a light rope or twine, and a few of these ingots would hold a tarpaulin over the hay quite securely. When they weren't needed any longer as weights, ....VOILA'! BOOLITS!

[SharpsShooter]

Here is a another use for you CCW folks. A 500gr boolit sewn into the right side hem of your light weight windbreaker will keep a stiff breeze from exposing your weapon, but not put so much weight on it to cause the jacket to "print" and define the outline of same.

SS

[floodgate]

Joe:

Seriously, in our "disposable economy", the concept of recycling is hard to sell. But if - as we have - you have made mittens, caps, sweaters, shirts or blankets from wool from your own sheep (we do hire the shearer, but I do the spinning and Bev does the weaving and/or knitting, and tailoring), you will understand where the rag rug came from. With all the work that goes into a home-produced piece of cloth (we estimate that in a "frontier" economy, about 1/3 of peoples' time each went into food, shelter and fabrics), you DO NOT waste a scrap of it! Cut a piece of clothing down to fit the younger 'uns, then when it is all "worn out" it goes into a rag rug - and then maybe into tinder for the fire-starter. Bev, raised in a tiny town in the Depression, still remembers wearing clothes made out of flour sacks, printed with attractive figured patterns for the mills to pack it in. Mebbe we "boolit casters" know something the rest do not!

End of rant (for now).

floodgate

[StarMetal]

Doug,

I remember my Mom and Dad making rag rugs. Everyone canned stuff too and the next door neighbor made some and root beer. She made some darn good strawberry/rubebar pie too, mmmm. The good ole days.

Joe

[Glen]

Doesn't that have a negative impact on the ballitic coefficient?

[LET-CA]

That's a really neat looking loom. Is it one you made or can you purchase items like that. Your wife is a talented woman. Tell more!

[Four Fingers of Death]

I have given shot to the wife to use in curtains. Tailors used to use small shot in the bootom corners of suit coats and sports jackets to help with the garment's 'hang.'

My son used to use reject boolits in his model airplanes to assist with balance when they were being placed on a stand. They also sat better with a bit of ballast.

The gunshop in my home town sells 45 cal cast boolits in packs of 20. I asked him why such a small pack and he said they were popular with kids hunting with slingshots (just when I was starting to worry about the younger generation, some of them are on the right track it would seem).
Mick.

[Bucks Owin]

Doug,

I remember my Mom and Dad making rag rugs. Everyone canned stuff too and the next door neighbor made some and root beer. She made some darn good strawberry/rubebar pie too, mmmm. The good ole days.

Joe

Same with my folks. I still use a couple of Mom's rag rugs. I remember cutting up the rags for her when I was a young 'un....

Dennis

[9.3X62AL]

I had just started reloading shotshells at about age 15, and Mom asked to use "some" of my #7-1/2 shot for sewing weights. SOME is right, she made 50 or more of the little 2" x 2" cloth things, depleting my shot supply --and she still has them. I saw them yesterday in her sewing room, as we were getting her stuff ready for moving into her new home.

[floodgate]

LET-CA:

It is an old loom, made in Los Angeles by a man named Burnham in the 1940's; we got it from a local weaving studio when someone donated a newer one and they needed the space. Weaves to 45" width, 4-harness counterbalance - a very basic, sturdy loom of the type used through the 19th and early 20th centuries. For more info, get a catalog from Halcyon Yarns <www.halcyonyarn.com>. But don't ever buy a new loom; attics, garages and basements are full of looms people bought because they wanted to try weaving and found it was more work than they wanted, and you can often get them for the trouble of hauling them away. But they often need some work to get them running again, and some are only fit for firewood. I do loom and spinning wheel repairs, and have made a couple of "Navajo" style rug looms, but am no great shakes as a weaver myself - I leave that to Bev, and keep her supplied with spun yarn.

Mick:

Back when I made airplane models, I used to ballast them with a mixture of lead shot and model glue; the model railroaders do the same thing to get a low CG to help traction and tracking.

I guess we're just BARELY on-topic here!

floodgate

[NVcurmudgeon]

I often use ingots to hold glued pieces together until drying. When dealing with large piles of paper, usually before April 15, ingots provide a secure "filing system."

[StanDahl]

Here's a recycled 'bullet' of some sort with an attached wickedly jagged piece of shrapnel. My great-uncle Roy brazed the two together to make this letter opener. It's about 9" long, and it was made from WWI battlefield scrap he collected as a souvenir of his time in the trenches in France in 1918. I never met him, so I don't know if there's a story associated with the particular pieces. I did meet 3 of his brothers, all WWI vets, when I was a kid. Stan