I have accumulated lots of casting/reloading "stuff"

[ghh3rd]

I'm in the process of moving, and just packed up all of my casting & reloading stuff, lead, propane equip, lube components, books, etc.,and holy cow, it took lots of boxes! Having to pack it up made it evident at just how much stuff I've accumulated in a year and a half, just to make boolits.

I don't know how much I've spent, but it's all worth it when I get a nice group from a handgun at 50 yards with homemade boolits and lube... especially when someone says "I didn't know that cast boolits could do that".

Randy

[Charlie Two Tracks]

Sounds good Randy. For me, this is a fun hobby. Someday it might pay for itself but that isn't the point for me. Having fun, pride of accomplishment and trying something new, are the highlights right now.

[WHITETAIL]

Yep, you are right.
You do not know how much %^&* you have till you move.:holysheep

[Crash_Corrigan]

The disease started in the early '90's. I had convinced the SWMBO to let me pick the christmas present she was going to give me that year. I had at that point only two revolvers in .38/357 and was getting back into shooting for fun again after a layoff from '61.

I believe I discovered girls in '61 and put away my shooting irons and fishing rods to chase them. Silly me... I joined the NYCPD in '64 and I was required to carry a .38 24/7 for the next 20 years. Shooting was not fun anymore as the targets tended to shoot back at you. So like most cops the gun was just a tool and the last resort to use in case of need. In that case the revolver did the job pretty well for me as I am still around to talk about it some 43 years later. It aways worked, never jammed and could be used as a close quarters club very well. I ended up breaking a Smith Chief's Special and a Colt Detective Special as their designs were not up to the job on certain skulls. I found a better club in a Smith Model 10 with a 2" bbl and a round butt. It was a mite heavier, held one more shot and was built like a tank. It was a keeper.

Anyways that year I aquired a whole buncha Red Lee stuff. The loadmaster press, dies, molds, electric furnace and a buncha tools etc. I was so proud when I made my first .38 Special round. The SWMBO was not so impressed. Then I aquired another firearm. It was an 8 MM Mauser design made by BRNO. Shooting factory ammo was a cost I was unwilling to incur so I started to cast and reload these rounds. Of couse by this time I had been scrounging all the ww's and once fired brass I could find. I had all this stuff in the garage in, on, under or around my converted woodworkers bench.

There came a time in '03 when we bought our house and I had to move all this stuff. We were only moving about a mile away. However just moving my reloading stuff took two entire days and the use of my pickup truck bed trailer and over 4 trips to get it all. The worst was the ingots and wheelweights and 5 gallon buckets of pieces of solder and solder spatterings gleaned from my friends radiator shop.

Currently most radiators are made of plastic and repairs to radiators are no longer made by soldering or the use of solder. In those days he would repair radiators and such and every day his help would sweep up the debris and place it in 5 gallon plastic buckets for disposal. He was paying somebody good money to safely dispose of this toxic metal solder and such. It consisted of pieces of unmelted solder (60/40) that varied from less than an inch to a couple of feet long and a large amount of melted solder that had solidified when it hit the concrete floor. As a bonus I would find all kinds of little brass and copper valves and such, pieces of rubber hose, thermostadt housings, old thermostadts and the like.

All of this after drying out was melted down in a large cast iron dutch oven over a used coleman gas stove. It took forever for the first smelting. I learned to always leave an inch or two of alloy in the pot for next time to speed things up. The smell was a perfume to my nose as it was money being saved. The SWMBO was not so sure about that. I melted and smelted and carried on for about three years until I had a goodly supply of ingots for making boolits.

I had a source for those nice plastic milk crates and I stored my stash in ingot form in those milk crates. I had them stacked up against the walls of the garage on two sides and the level grew to above my head. Once the crate was in position I would place my newly smelted ingots carefully into the crate and I would maximise the number of ingots in each crate until it was full. Of course it was too heavy to move but I was not worried. I should have been.

When it came time to move I had over 65 crates full of ingots to move. Each one weighed hundreds of pounds and I had to carefully unpack each crate and place about 80 pounds of alloy into an empty crate and load each crate into my trailer.
After driving this load to the new digs I had to carry that crate to again restack those little ingots into more milk crates alongside the walls of the new home. This took days. The SWMBO was mystified by these activities and wondered what was so special about these little ingots.

I took her onto the internet where I was able to find a seller of cast boolits. By this time I was loading for 4 calibers and I was shooting about 1,000 rounds a week. I explained to her what the cost was for a factory made round and that I could make the same or a better round for a very small cost as compared to factory ammo. This she understood. She was a mite fuzzy on the ingots though. I explained that for me to buy cast boolits for my shooting I would be spending at least .05 cents per round just for the projectile. So my smelting and casting of boolits saved 5 cents every time I made a boolit. Then I took her to a famous metal supplier and showed her the cost of a pound of alloy and the shipping costs and she realized that casting alloy ran about $1.50 to $3.00 per pound back in those days. Then I explained to her that we had thousands of pounds of this wonderful alloy and that it was worth a lot of money.

Now I was getting through to her. Money she could understand. From then on she would always be coming home with orphan wheel weights that she found in parking lots and on the street.

Since that conversation with her in '03 she has a much better understanding of the shooting addiction etc. Now she has her own 9 MM and I am teaching her how to run a Dillon Square Deal press to allow her to make her own ammo. She will regularly run through 200 to 300 rounds in a range session and a long time ago I taught her to retrieve her own brass for later use. Now whenever we go to the range I find her wandering off to scrounge brass from the ground.

She has gotten pretty good at leaving Wolf steel cases and other of the 3rd world country non brass on the ground as it has little value. However even the berdan primed brass cases can be converted into money at the scrap dealers and she has her own buckets of such brass and unneeded calibres which she converts into money for her own needs.

Alas 3 years later we divorced and I moved along. I left the alloy in the garage. Over a period of time we buried the hatchet and I had access to my alloy but eventually I moved it again. And again. I am not moving it again. It is piled into milk crates and I take what I need when I need it and add to it from time to time.

I am not going to move it again. When I pass on I have a few friends who are casters here in the Vegas area and I have left instructions as to the disposal of my stash when that day comes in my will.

I also have taken photos of all my firearms and reloading equipment and made up lists enumerating what the value is for each item and where the best place would be to dispose of them. Some of my firearms are going to a couple of friends of mine and others she will be able to sell. The vast majority of the reloading and casting gear will appear here on this forum for sale when I am no longer needing it.

But I am not moving it again.

[jonk]

I started casting for muzzleloaders. Then I saw .30 caliber molds for sale and said,'what, you can cast for rifle?' Uhm......yes...... haven't looked back since. I still shoot J-word bullets for some apps but there is a reason my casting and reloading set up is still in my parents' basement 30 miles away..... even a 2 bedroom apt. isn't big enough to house it all! :) I'm 31, left home 11 years ago, but have never had anything that would hold 50 odd guns and reloading and casting stuff for them all, lol!