Share Your Tip Of The Day

[44wcf]

Need a big pot for casting on a turkey fryer? Use an old empty propane tank. BE SURE IT IS EMPTY! Remove the valve [this is where empty is important]. Fill with water, empty water. Use your 5" grinder and cut the tank in half along the welded seam. Cut the collar off the top half and cut it in two for two handles to weld onto the bottom half for carry & pouring. Works great on the turkey fryer. be careful... it will hold more melt than you can easily lift.

How about a picture?

[ghh3rd]

When you get your new Lyman lube sizer, and are about to pour melted lube into it, stop -- install a sizer with ram inserted into it first. Otherwise, you will have hot lube running through the lube sizer all over your feet and the floor .

Please don't ask me how I know this

[Rattlesnake Charlie]

When taking your .44 Magnum and your .45 Colt to the range..............don't take your .44 Magnum and your .45 Colt to the range at the same time unless each gun and its respective ammo are separated, i.e. keep the .44 Magnum and its ammo in your vehicle while you have the .45 Colt and its ammo at the bench...don't ask me how I know this.

Same goes for .41 mag and .44 mag. Trust me.

[oldfart1956]

Easy-peasey pistol rest! Working up some loads for the Ruger .45 Colt and I'm jittering around like I have the palzy. I broke down and bought a Nikon scope....now I can really see the crosshairs bobbing and weaving all over the target. Much better. Arrrgh! Too cheap to buy a pistol rest. Resting the gun on the sandbags doesn't work...bounces on recoil even with light loads. Tried wadding up a towel and laying that on the sandbags. Excellent...flaming rags now all over the range! Down to the garage...snatched up a foot long piece of 1x6 and drilled 2 holes 3in. apart on one end. Found 2 carriage bolts 3/8 x 8in. long and shoved em' thru the holes...pointing up...like rabbit ears. Threaded on a pair of 3/8th. nuts and snugged em' down till they squeaked. Now I don't want anything solid holding the barrel steady so I grabbed a thick rubber-band and pulled it from rabbit ear to rabbit ear. Perfect! Easy to adjust for height to! Started poking nice little groups and smiling like a idiot...till the eyepiece fell off the new Nikon. But that's another story. Audie..the Oldfart..

[delt167502]

If you use a electronic scale and you use the gram test weight,be sure to reset it to grains before loading. it blows the primers out of the case,if you don't.( using bullseye)

[Rangefinder]

^^^HOLY SHEEP!!! Considering a quick conversion of 4 grams is just shy of 62 grains, what were you loading and how'd you get it in the case without noticing!!!???

[MANGYCOYOTE]

If you're under 35, you can skip the following tip. If you are an "experienced" lady or man this will improve your shooting. Guaranteed, never fail, gut cinch, lead pipe, better paper scores or sharper sight pictures every time! its so simple that I suspect many forget this simple rule: DON'T READ anything prior to shooting! No paper, no magazines, no computer, no hot cereal boxes, nothing! Our eye muscles don't respond as quickly as they once did when we get into middle/old age. If I read anything in the morning, then my distance vision takes forever to return to normal, hours! My eye Dr. said it was normal for an old geezer and just live with it. Whenever I'm going to the range-I don't read and it makes a huge difference!

[10 Spot Terminator]

SHEEZ !!!

Had to read all these posts to make sure I had some ideas not posted yet !!!

1. Attach indoor outdoor carpet on load bench top with velcro straps on corners and when gets dirty takem to the car wash and hangem on the clothesline to dry.

2. To stop powder cling to the drop tube on your dispenser or the pan on your scale , rub either one briskly with a dryer sheet to de-magnetize em.

3. When trimming cases on Lyman, Forster, RCBS etc. trimmers save one of the cases for a repeat sizing jig for next time , use an old junk case for this .

4. For stirring alloyed metals when mixing or fluxing try to find old wood handled spoons with holes in them , mix well, and if making ingots pour/cool right away .

5. Use thermometers in your melt pot as most will increase melt temp as level gets lower in the pot. Less volume = easier to heat , heat varies cast slightly .

6. Leave a non stick post it note in the tube of your dispenser with powder and weight drop even after load session done. Quicker getting onto next target load.

7. Dont toss out your zinc wheel weights. Get a seperate pot and cast sinkers . When you lose em to the river gods,,, who cares and the "greenies" cant gripe !

8. For vision impared shooters try this. Go to the phamacy where they sell reader glasses. When trying them on hold a ballpoint pen tip pointing up about 1 inch in your dominant hand at arms length as if you are holding a handgun. When you can see the point of the pen fairly clear as well as the signs at the end of the isle you have your magnification needed for iron sights. Find that power in the larger lenses and you have shooting glasses you can see out of ,,, ( this I know well ) .

9. When in doubt about your new "HOT" loads,,, get someone else to shoot them first ,,,

10 Spot

[Bladebu1]

Powder"s if you can stick to as few as possable ( Tight group)
always take Blue painters tape to mark the powder in the Measure when you empty it back in to the bottel that is behind it Take the tape and stick it back in the bottel of powder it will stick pack to the powder measure

Keep a book with each set of dies write down things like 230grain RNL with 3.6 grains of tight group with CCi LPP on feb 3 2011 made 400 then come back and write any issues you had like shot good or had two FTF keep a page per batch

if your as cheap as me I go to the range and collect old ammo boxes and put my reloads in them and lable the boxes like above make sure you date as well I color code my boxes Black for 9MM red for 40SW Blue for 38sp green for 45ACP and and makes it quick to sort what was your brass when you get back if you maker the back of the Brass too

[daddyseal]

When smelting range berm lead or ww. put them in an old deep fryer basket in the pot on the burner, heat up... shake gently now and then...the lead melts out and all the metal stays in the basket and comes out All At Once ...except for dirt that spoons out easily.

I've done this many times...and it works!
Very Quick and Easy~!!

[H.Callahan]

Storage hint learned years ago from my grandfather. If you are using jars with screw on lids to store things, take the lids and affix them with screws to the bottom of a shelf. Then just screw the jar to the lid and they will hang from the bottom of the shelf, taking no space on the shelf itself.

[Wayne Smith]

When you are at the range after a rain and picking up .45ACP brass be careful. I was tapping on against my hand to get the water out and out came a wasp!

Q-tips don't survive on my casting table. An old pill bottle holds a bunch of them and keeps them clean and ready to use.

[Jaybird62]

Styrofoam 50-round .45 ACP box inserts make great holders for my sized and lubed .458 boolits.

[ipijohn]

An old aquarium pump clamped to the primer slide on a Lee Pro 1000 keeps the primers moving down the slide when the level gets low.

[Casper29]

If you are just starting out with reloading, take the amount of space that you have picked out for your bench and at the very least double it, I started out with a bench with 3 shelves, then I began casting so I needed another bench with four shelves for this, next I added two shelves above each bench, and I still need more room, so I took over the closet in our spare bedroom for storage of climate controled items such as powder, primers, bullet lube ready to shoot ammo ect. and guess what? yep I could still use more room.

[frankenfab]

With it being back to school time, there are tons of composition books at Walmart for 50 cents each. I am going to start keeping a dedicated book for many of my firearms containing load data, round count, range results.

[largom]

With it being back to school time, there are tons of composition books at Walmart for 50 cents each. I am going to start keeping a dedicated book for many of my firearms containing load data, round count, range results.

I use a small 3 ring binder for each caliber. Dividers separate different guns of the same caliber. For each gun I list the specifics such as serial number and features. I made up load data sheets listing case, primer. powder & weight, boolit mold & weight, date loaded & tested, range, velocity, extreme spread, and group size.

Larry

[Longwood]

Some good advise.

[abqcaster]

I bought plastic nested funnels at the dollar store for, wait for it. . . a dollar!

I use them to punch boolits out of the solidified lube when pan lubing. The last boolit I push up into the funnel tube forces the previous boolit up, and eventually into the mouth of the funnel. The mouth of the funnel then becomes a reservoir of sorts for lubed boolits that I then run up my lee sizer.

Use plastic funnels so you can easily adjust the tube opening for boolit size.

[Catshooter]

Now that's a dang good idea abqcaster. And simple to boot! Thanks. And welcome to the forum too.


Cat