Pay Back Time

[Capn Jack]

Decided to try and beat the cost of copper Gas checks.
so I bought a gas check cutter. Right away I found it was very dificult to make it work in my RCBS jr., so I bought a 1 ton Arbor press. The Arbor press was great, but the cutter kept falling over, so I had to buy some oversized drills and counter bore the press anvil to hold the cutter.

Now for material.
My local Home Depot has aluminum flashing for $10.00 a roll and cut into 3/4" wide strips, that's 150 strips per roll. Being careful I can punch 10 GC per strip
giving me 1,500 gas checks per roll. That's a savings of almost $60.00. At this
rate I'll only have to shoot about 3,500 .459 cal. bullets to amortize the cost of
making my own gas checks.

Been thinking about saving some more money by buying a.....

Jack...

[Swede44mag]

What type of Gas Check cutter did you buy?
How thick is your aluminum?
It will make a difference on makin the checks crimp on properly.
That is unless you are doing PB boolits.

Be carefull holding and pressing the check material into the check cutter.
It can cut you real bad and those sharp points are like needles going into your fingers.

Good luck it is a lot cheaper in the long run at least I hope it is.

[Capn Jack]

Hi Swede,
I hope no one took my previous post seriously.

I just bought one of Charlies FreeChexIII in .459 and it works great!
I'm using .014 aluminum Flashing and the GC fit just a little snug on
my RCBS 300gr FN Boolits. Hope to have a chance to shoot some this
week.


You're right about the strips of aluminum. After they have been punched they're like miniature razor wire.

Jack...