Do it yourself

[watkibe]

Dean Grennel was one of my early influences while learning about this stuff, and he was big on making his own tools, gadgets, and gizmos. I have tried to do the same thing.
When I started casting, I needed something to knock the bullets out of the mold. RCBS makes something they call the Mold Mallet (bottom). I decided to make my own R.C.B.S. (Really Cheap Branch Stick) (top). I cut a branch to length, stripped the bark, and I've been using it ever since about 1988. I think it's time for a new one !

[higgins]

For about the same length of time I've been using a cut off hammer handle that would no longer hold a hammer head after another improviser split the head end all to pieces using nails for wedges.

[Le Loup Solitaire]

Deab Grennell was a gun writer extra-ordinaire and an early giant in the history of handloading. He wrote a series of editions in the series,"The ABC's of Handloading. He also did his own photography for the books. He was a great innovator for DIY tools and gadgets in addition to a lot of original ideas and of course good sensible advice on the various aspects of the sport/hobby. His writing style was also unique. He contributed quite a bit to designs for H&G molds as well. On substitutes for wooden mallets and ridiculously overpriced sticks of wood sold by RCBS and Lyman for hitting sprue cutters, sections of hammer handle axe handles, and those for sledges etc work as well or better as they are made out of hickory which is really hard stuff with a strong grain. Maple, ash, oak, beech and elm in a length of flooring (board) 12-14 inches long with one end whittled/narrowed down to hand-grip size does the job and lasts a long time. A section of hardwood tree branch is a real good idea...the price is right! LLS

[crabo]

I bought a hickory sledge handle. I made it a couple of inches longer than the Midway one, dilled a hole in one end and filled it with lead. When this one wears out, I still have 2 or 3 left in the handle.

[BarryinIN]

Dean Grennell...I always liked reading his articles. Whether it was on how to make your own screwdrivers, pistol grips, or bullets, it was interesting.

When I started casting earlier this year, I re-read his bullet casting article in the Gun Digest Book of the 9MM (1983? 84?). I've read a lot of casting articles over the years, and have been reading all I can get my hands on this summer, and I still feel that five or six page article of his had the most info jammed in the fewest pages.

He always amazed me at how fast he would jump all over a new cartridge and have worked up a bunch of loads for it before anyone else had a gun or box of ammo to shoot. It seemed like a new handgun cartridge came out every other month for a while there in the mid-80s to early 90s (10mm, 32 H&R Mag, 40 S&W, etc). The new caliber and gun would be the cover story of Gun World that month but they would have little info on the gun since it appeared just before the deadline...yet Grennell would have an article on loading it by the next issue...if not that same issue! And it wouldn't be four or five cautious loads either, but a page or two of data running from mild to max with several bullets.
It sounded like he didn't get preferential treatment either when it came to getting brass or data before anyone else, since he often wrote about having to carve up some other case to get something to load. He was getting Contender barrels rechambered or 1911 barrels specially made to have something to shoot it all through too.

He just seemed he would have made a great uncle for a gun-loving kid to have.
Besides, it's hard not to like a guy whose garage looked as sloppy as mine.

I remember seeing that H&G #938 bullet he designed for the 45ACP when I was about 18 and thinking it was the niftiest thing (although I still don't know why). This was the conical/pointed 170 grain 45 ACP bullet. So when I saw one of those moulds for sale recently, I jumped on it without hesitation, paid too much, and still don't care.

And a Mould Mallet? I'm using from a piece of furring strip that was handy the first day I started. I snapped a piece off that day, and got another piece or two since.
If my child-of-the-depression dad were still alive, I think he'd slap me if he thought I paid money for a stick.

[watkibe]

Yeah, Dean was great ! He could sure turn a phrase; when he got a gun grouping well, he would say it was turning out "wee clannish groups " ! I still have my ABC's of Reloading, and just referred to it last week. He said 4895 was the most versatile powder. I've never tried it before, but I looked it up, and Dean was sure right. It's listed for every rifle cartridge I load for, from 223 through 308, 338 Win Mag, and 45-70, so naturally I bought a couple of pounds.
He stuck with Gun World, which was sort of a second rate little magazine; I'm sure he could have got a job at G&A or ST in a heart beat if he had wanted too. He wrote the first article I ever read on a computer ballistics program in Basic, written for the little Radio Shack TRS hand help computer (the Ipod of it's day, lol) that he offered to anyone that sent him a self addressed stamped envelope. I sent one, and I got it back from him, a xerox of the program in his handwriting on paper from a legal pad ! I bought the little computer, entered the program, and had a good time calculating trajectories and velocities. The program was so simple, I figured out how it was written, and was able to add some modifications of my own.
And so what is this, some 30+ years later, and here we are on the Internet posting our recollections of Dean...WOW !
I'm not surprised I got old, just that it happened so fast !

[Buckshot]

..............Yup, ole Dean was the one and that's for sure. He had no pretences, and was just a genuine person who didn't wear 2 faces. I've seen a couple photo's of his garage and yes it was a wreck He had cigar boxes stacked on top of coffee cans on top of tupperware, on top of other junk. Amid all the "Stuff" you could just make out a couple reloading presses.

If I'm not mistaken he had 5-6 daughters so the man must have also been a saint. HIs poor wife also! Imagine never getting to see the inside of your own bathroom! I think he was really a fun loving guy as I've seen a few pictures of him clowning around with a couple friends. One picture had a bulletin board on the wall in the background and it was covered with cartoons. He obviously got a kick out of them. I don't think he took himself too seriously.

One time someone asked him why he always had odd powder charges like 6.7 grs, 7.2 grs, 7.4 grs, 7.9, and maybe 8.3 grs? He said it made as much sense as anything else. He'd just move the charge bar a bit, throw 10 charges in the pan and weigh it, then divide by 10 and away he went. No fiddleing around trying to get 6.5, 7.0, 7.5, etc.

In one of his books he'd made a sliding glass door lock on his new lathe. One of those you lay in the track. He thought it was a neat enough idea to include in one of his ABC's of Reloading. He must have made 10,000 nose punches and casemouth expanders along with other stuff. As mentioned he did enjoy using words, like if he was happy he was gruntled, as the opposite of disgruntled. I have several of his ABC's of Reloading books, and remember chuckling over his writting style, and then trying to find the next edition to read. I know he wrote a science fiction novel once, but he said it didn't sell well and the publisher quit talking to him

................Buckshot

[SierraWhiskeyMC]

Gosh, I'm surprised I don't remember Dean at all. I'd love to read some of his stuff. Guess I'll have to search out some old G&A rags and look up his ABC's of Handloading.

My sprue cutter isn't fancy - it's just a small pig of soft lead cast in a Saeco mold. Yes, yes I know, I KNOW ... WOOD ONLY, CRETIN! Well, that's the way Grandpa and Dad did it (Dad used a well-beaten bar of 50/50 solder), I'm just carrying along their tradition of mold abuse!

[dromia]

Och aye, Dean was indeed amongst the giants of gunwriters past.

His article on Lube/sizing cast bullets in the 5th edition of the ABCs of Reloading is indeed a classic piece fo writing, highly informative and entertaining.

Who else would reload with an Irish guardian angel called Mr Mulligan.

What has happened to all the great gunwriters, were they just an aberration of the 20th century? They far and few between in the characterless 21st century batch of gun writers thats for sure.

[Lloyd Smale]

thats what i do. I used to buy a shovel handle and cut it up into lenghts for a whacker but found i can buy wooden dowl cheaper.

I bought a hickory sledge handle. I made it a couple of inches longer than the Midway one, dilled a hole in one end and filled it with lead. When this one wears out, I still have 2 or 3 left in the handle.

[BarryinIN]

Gosh, I'm surprised I don't remember Dean at all. I'd love to read some of his stuff. Guess I'll have to search out some old G&A rags and look up his ABC's of Handloading.

You'll have to look in Gun World, not G&A. He did some other DBI (Gun Digest)books besides "ABCs of Reloading" too, so keep your eyes peeled. I have a copy of their "Handgun Reloading" book he wrote from 20 years ago that I still refer to at times even with all the newer manuals and data I have. There is a big section of data toward the back, divided by cartridge, and each load is shot in two different guns. It's interesting to see the differences sometimes.

As Watkibe said, he probably could have moved on to another magazine with wider circulation. My impression, however, is that the Gun World staff was like a group of shooting pals that ran a magazine on the side. That's just a guess, but any article I read by the regulars would have at least one of the other guys in the accompanying pictures, like they often went shooting together.
When I went to the NRA convention in St Louis in 1989, the Gun World staff stayed in the same hotel I did, so I saw them there and roaming the show aisles. They had these windbreakers with "GUN WORLD" across the back and one (Jack Lewis?) wore a big cowboy hat, so they were pretty hard to miss. They were always together, like any other group of shooting pals who went to the show.
So I think Gun World operated a little differently than other gun magazines, at least then.

[Patrick L]

I too am a HUGE dean Grennel fan. He was a great influence on me in my formative years as a reloader/caster. He had a very easy writing style; he was genuine. He did have a somewhat silly sense of humor that really came through in his writings. In addition to a few editions of the ABC's of Reloading, I cherish my copy of his Book of the .45, another great read. There's a lot of personal content from his youth and WWII experiences in the Army Air Corps that played a prominent role in developing his love for that caliber.

About 5 or 6 years ago, when I noticed his writings had completely disappeared from Gun World, I emailed the magazine to inquire about his wherabouts/health. I received a very nice reply from Jan Liboural stating that he had lost contact with Dean, and that he thought perhaps he had needed to move into a nursing home. He (Liboural) was planning on contacting Jack Lewis for further information, but I never heard anything else. Then a few years ago it was in the magazine that he had passed.

Which reminds me, it was in this month's issue of Gun World that Jack Lewis passed this past May.

All of Dean's books had a PO box address in the bio and a statement that he welcomed correspondence from readers. It is one of my lasting regrets that I never sent him any, and wish I had done so just to tell him how much I enjoyed his work. It was with that regret in mind that I purposely sent Mike Venturino an email about a year ago doing just that. He too was very gracious in his reply.

[Hardcast416taylor]

I`m not trying to change the theme of this thread, but why are you guys using such huge pieces of timber on your molds? If you have to whale on the mold that much or that hard then something ain`t kosher with it.Robert

[watkibe]

Hardcast, when the mold gets to just the right temperature, the force required to cut the sprue gets much less, and usually takes just one well placed wack. For the first few minutes though, it can take several pretty hard knocks to do it: at least that's the way it works with my aluminum molds, the only kind I have. It's not such a big piece of timber really, it's about 3/4 of an inch diameter and 10 inches long.

[Echo]

And back to the DYI thread - How about using a rock polisher for case cleaning, then using a 1-lb coffee can on it for case lubing? How about a ziplock bag with a smear of CD-2 for case lubing? And I had to wrap my dowel sprue-knocker in duck tape when it started splintering.
And I love the RCBS sprue knocker by Watkibe...

[Gaucho Gringo]

I too use a rock tumbler to polish my cases. It is an older one that is built like a tank, weighs about 30 lbs, all metal and it works great. My guess is that it would still be running in the 22nd century. I couldn't see paying money for a dedicated case polisher when I had something that would work just as well. I also use an old portable dishwasher for cleaning dirty parts(gun, automotive or ?).

[mooman76]

I switched to a small(4oz. I think) plastic headed mallet a few years ago. I used to use a piece of broom handle. An Ol reloader that been reloading as long as I've been alive showed me that. It tends to work a little better because the harnes of the plastic gives a sharper rap so it knockes those stuborn bullets out easier and it's not hard enough to damage the mould any. Plus the mallet works good for other things to like starting the slug when I slug my barrels without damaging the crown any.

[dukenukum]

I use a small plastic mallet my dad left me, he got it in a box of tools at an auction 50 years ago. I am NOT paying for a stick.

[Patrick L]

Back to old Dean, HE mentioned using some form of plastic/phenolic type mallet too!

I use a rawhide mallet. Gives a good rap, and won't damage things.

[WildmanJack]

I use a rawhide mallet, and that's only for my bigger 6 banger molds. Otherwise I just use my gloved hand..
Jack