Cast about 20 pounds of .45 boolits. Tried water dropping a few,but didn't like the resultant splashes. Never had tried it before.
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Cast about 20 pounds of .45 boolits. Tried water dropping a few,but didn't like the resultant splashes. Never had tried it before.
Today I got off my rear and turned 400 lbs of lino bars into ingots. Took about 2 hrs. Been meaning to get this done for about 6 months.
More case prep ...................
Jack
Loaded 2 boxes of 28 gauge. Gonna make the best of the last few days of wabbit season!
Sounds like something I ought to investigate.....
I use two towels. Top one ramps towards the back of the bucket and doesn't touch the water. Second one is below the first and ramps from the back of the bucket to the front. This prevents all splashes. Also makes it easy to get the bullets out w/ dumping the water or reaching in.
I cut off some brass to make 300 BLK w/. Got done deburring, I'm anal, and set the press up to form them. That's when I realized I only bought a neck sizer since I'm buying a bolt gun. Time to order more dies. I need to order a case gage anyway.
Haven't made it in there yet. May load up a few rounds for Scopekiller to see if the latest repair attempt holds. Or I could clear off the dining room table to get ready to do taxes......where'd those 35 Rem cases get off to? ;-)
I oiled the wheels on my portable heater. Now I have to go out and refill the propane tank for next weekend.
My reloading area is an area about 8'X12' in my basement shop. Junk (aka brilliantly clever ideas at the time) was accumulating throughout my shop, including my reloading, casting area. Over the last two days I have reorganized all of my shelves and drawers in my reloading area and thrown out 2 1/2 garbage bags worth of (at the time) brilliant ideas. Looks much nicer now.
For those of you wondering about ventilation. My reloading bench is directly below a window. When I started casting there, I repurposed an old two fan window fan, building a wooden frame around it that fits in the window mentioned above.
I set the fan to exhaust air out of the shop and open a window at the other end of the shop. Does a good job of moving in from behind me, over my little Lee 10lb bottom pour furnace and out the window.
I wish you all a good new year,
MichiganMike
Boxed up 35 boxes of 20 gauge shotshells that I loaded this week
on my Texan M reloader :)
Soooo went through about 50 pounds of wheelweights :o
Mike
I cast a few this morning. RCBS 25 85 CM, RCBS 32 98 SWC , and some Accurate ?? big fat .44's for son's 44 BH. I got the 44's and 25's weighed out and stored in boxes. Just making a pile of the 32's here lately but it's getting pretty big. JW
50 lee 309-170-F ahead of 28.2g of r-15 (long range match). What not to love, total cost $0.13 a piece vs $0.85 at Wally World.
Attachment 126389
Bob
Yet more case prep ............
Jack
Spent around 30 minutes just sitting there looking over all the powders, primers and cast lead boolits I have and hoped that someday soon I will be able to get back to casting and reloading...
Does looking at it through the back door count ;)
To cold to attempt to work in it. Only going to get colder as the week progresses. Is the bathroom a reloading room if you're reading Hodgdon's Annual in it :laugh:
This weekend I finished loading all the 45acp brass I had prepped. I need to clean and prep another batch and pour more BOOLITS for them! Next up will be prepping brass for 223 loads.
I sized a bunch of. 314 and 309 boolites. Too dam cold to do any molding. I got three molds and a sizer in the mail to me. Hope it warms up soon so I can get molding in the garage.
loaded up a bunch of 250 savage ammo for a friend. he was thrilled when he found out.
I loaded some light test loads for my 9mm. I haven't tested light loads for accuracy yet since the heavier loads work so well.
I loaded some Lee 356-120-tc boolits over light charges of Bullseye and WST.
I'll try them out this weekend.
Carried a Dillon order out to the man cave.
Stored about 100# of free lead.
Case prep still ....................... Thank goodness for Doug Giraud's trimmer !
Jack
http://i797.photobucket.com/albums/y...108_090833.jpg
Today I tumble lubed all of the .356 124's that I sized yesterday. Now I'm moving over to the presses to decap a few hundred .40S&W cases and load up some .451 230 grain TC TL rounds to test in my 1911. If the weather ever warms up I want to have some test loads ready.
Installed a Lyman M die on my LNL, put handles on my new NOE mold, reamed primer pockets on a few hundred Herter's 45 cases and installed the correct PTX expander after receiving a replacement from Hornady.
I probably wouldn't have bought the M die had I received the correct PTX expander in the first place!! I purchased a .451 and received a .355!!! I should have looked at the stamp on the metal. Package stuffer at Hornady wasn't paying attention when he loaded that one.
I added another 14 feet of bench space today,and working on a new floor now.
I sized 1300 H&G#68's on my Star.
Finally finished sizing and trimming .223 cases . Set up the annealing machine and ended up with just over MMMMD of them when it was all done . Off to final polish now .
Jack
I didn't keep track of the time and rather than using Hornady "One Shot" for lube I was using the greasy pad which took longer . Sizing and decapping on the Co-Ax , trimming with the Guraud ..... I'm guessing between nine and eleven hours . I played five movies in the background while the sizing was going on does that help ? ;-)
Today I finished up the polish after anneal step and sanded some cans to get them ready for paint and cut some cardboard for can liners .
Jack
Me neither............... But i do need to start annealing 22-250 brass because when i withdraw the expander ball from some of this brass, it screeches as i pull it out.
Decapped about 60 cases of 45 acp after dinner and will finish the prep and load them tomorrow. That will be the last of those at least until we get out of the deep freeze and I can shoot again.
I cast the Lyman sabot for my Remington 12 gauge slug gun. According to Lyman the mould is supposed to drop 525 grain slugs. I use salvage lead from a local business that buys scrap metal. My lead ingots include sheet roofing lead, lead pipe, dental lead, and other types of supposedly "pure" lead. Well, it may be close, but it ain't pure lead.
And some of the sabots were very light, some as light as 475 grains. They were pretty, nice, shiny, no ripples or pitting, nice crisp, clean lines. But light. I set them aside. And today remelted them, mixing them with ingots from three separate lead "smelting sessions. I use mini muffin tins for making ingots. I hoped that combining the light sabots with equal weights of lead of the three casting sessions would create a consistent allow with a reliable weight.
So far that seems to be working. My pure lead still isn't pure. But my efforts are yielding Lyman sabots around 490 grains with casting pot to casting pot consistency.
And in the middle of all of this my Lee 10 lb. bottom pour pot started a leak that I couldn't fix with the screw driver. So, I emptied out the pot, let it cool off, disassembled it, and cleaned out the pot and the bottom pour spigot.
Works like a charm! I was pleased with the fruit of my labor.
Finished painting my first bench. Have to work tomorrow so can't get to the store for bolts to mount a press. But hopefully have it mounted and functioning soon. Have a new carrier on its way for the Lee I got from brassmagnet.
Attachment 126874Attachment 126875
If not annealing works well for anyone I'm good with that . In this case I scrounged up every empty Federal brand case I had with some of them dating back to 1987 . Annealing them all does help me on the target I believe , in addition to adding a little bit of life before the necks crack . A sample loading of cases before annealing was a bit larger on the target .
Today I'm deciding on either paint and stencil the cans or just start loading and wait for warmer weather to paint .
Jack
Nothing yet, need to test some loads before I get to do any more loading. Doubt I'll make it to the range this weekend but I guess an hour or two cleaning, sorting and straightening up in there might help.
Funny Yet Sad: Somedays ( Like today, when I have not much to do and the weather is nasty) I just go down to my loading room & sit by my press. Dreaming of better days to come!:bigsmyl2: