Lets talk storage!

[Cloudpeak]

Wow, some of you guys are really neat and tidy

I'll second the Ocean Spray 3 liter plastic containers. When full of bullets, I seal the opening I cut with clear packing tape to keep dust & bugs out. They have really sturdy handles. I also use 3# metal peanut cans.

In the rows, left to right: Lee 105gr SWC, Lee 124gr RN, Lyman 200gr SWC. I'm set for awhile (But, that won't stop casting, I suppose. Winter's almost here and there won't be much else to do.)

[Ricochet]

I use a lot of the resealable plastic boxes lunch meat comes packed in.

(Don't tell that single action gunwriter I just used a preposition to end a sentence with.)

[MT Gianni]

BTT for a good read.

[Harter66]

I snag the 40and 45 trays from the range too for my loaded ammo. Boolits are currently in peanutbutter jars and miricalwhip jars (plastic). It works for now since I'm only casting 7 boolits designs. Each jar holds around 500. My cases go in freezer bags and a roll around plastic kitchen caddi intended for potatoes and onions.

[Down South]

I use the plastic food storage containers with sealable lids from the dollar store. I buy a few at the time. For just a few bucks you can sometimes get a set of five. I use masking or duck tape on the lid to identify what's in the container, lube used and date casted.

[John Guedry]

Clear plastic containers that peanuts come in for brass. Cast boolits, sized and lubed go in Altoids tins which are light enough to pick up when full, but heavy enough when stacked to use as a bookend for your manuals.

[largom]

+1 on the U-Line boxes. I use Them for bulk brass and boolit storage. After casting I sort my boolits by weight. Selected weights go into zip lock bags with a small tag listing date cast, caliber, mold No.,alloy and weight. Bags then go in U-Line box. I usually don't lube until I am ready to load.

Larry

[Crash_Corrigan]

I have a decent collection of surplus ammo cans from 30 cal up thru 40 MM. These along with pretty much any decent plastic container with a good top and zip lock bags are what I use.

I try to keep at least one 30 cal ammo can full of .45 acp, ditto for 9 MM and .38 Special. These are ready to shoot rounds.

The components I keep in a different area. I have a surplus navy metal filing cabinet with tiny drawers of about 8" x 12" and 2" high. In this I keep brass sorted to maker and caliber. Also boolits sorted to cal, weight, alloy, date etc and if I have only a small amount then they go into a zip lock bag and few go into the drawer. I also keep primers stored therin. This is kept in my kitchen.

The Powder is kept on shelves in my bedroom and living room. The dies and molds are also stored in the same area. Small tools and reloading stuff are kept in the reloading bench drawers. If I had a SWMBO still around she would have a coronary thrombosis.....however since she is still recovering from the heart attack when I bought a Motorcycle after she divorced me......I really do not give a damn!

I cannot believe the amount of stuff that I have accumulated over the last 16 years which is all connected in some manner to shooting and casting. It has taken over.

[a.squibload]

Old thread, new guy...

Peanut brittle cans, big ones. Keep a couple of 'em full of boolits in my gun box for ballast,
nobody can pick that thing up. I know, replace cans with guns, working on that.

[WILCO]

Old thread, new guy....

Welcome aboard!!!

[Meatco1]

Wheelgunner:

Thanks man, that was good information you just shared!!!

Richard

PS: Just place an order for 100 4x4 & 50 5x5 boxes. Beats the heck out of scrounging around for different sized boxes!!!!!!!!!!!

[BeeMan]

Clear plastic peanut butter jars are a good 'zero cost' option. They are sturdy and have nice screw on lids. The larger ones hold decent size lots of brass or as-cast boolits. I've also used the small ammo cans for castings, but I prefer to see at a glance what inventory I have on hand. I size only as needed for loading so small lots of lubed bullets are conveniently held in Cool Whip or similar containers. Loaded ammo goes in Midway's plastic ammo boxes.

[a.squibload]

Welcome aboard!!!

Thanks, already seen lots of good info here.

Love your avatar, is that a Cubana? No, I mean the cigar...

I need to upload my Meprolight pic...ah, there it is!

[Daves1]

I use the plastic tubs lunch meat comes in also, resealable and you can write on the top.

[Mephisto]

Coolwhip containers plastic freezer tubs for peserving fruit, or what ever is about in the way of a convenient container. powder primers and molds have their own shelf

[Jim_Fleming]

I *used* to use 3lb. metal coffee cans, years ago... They were/are tough as nails and of a convenient size to hold boolits. Sure they're heavy but they were free, (I used to drink coffee by the gallon, etc...)

Now, 20 years later, I don't drink coffee, but I still need storage containers after I got back in the hobby. The shop I work in has a coffee fund, etc... I now am using their empty, plastic, 3lb. cans. I get the empties about 1 every 6-8 days,.

Sure they're not transparent, but I use a Dymo Paper Label Maker and I know what's inside, and the cans, when full, are sturdy enough to stack only one canister on top of another, but my shelves/cabinets I made are spaced just tall enough for only one, so there's not room to stack them anyway.

Best of all the plastic cans have a nice molded in handle the empty metal cans didn't have.

[shdwlkr]

I have my stuff in plastic containers and having just moved I just might look at some other way of doing stuff.
Right now it is all stacked all over the place just to get to the real stuff clothes, food, furniture and what ever the wife decides is first.
The only good thing is that I now have a place for my stuff a two car garage and a place to cast that is away from the house if I can find a long enough electric cord. Which I like as that way the kids.

[grumman581]

If it is something that I want a fairly airtight seal on, I'll use the delitainers that I pick up from a local restaurant supply store. They make them in quite a few sizes.


http://www.instawares.com/products/l/l2508ns.jpg

The oriental restaurants use these for their takeout containers for soups and such, so if you eat at those restaurants, you can just recycle them from your takeout. Usually they poke a small air hole in them though, so if you want it to be more airtight, you'll have to buy new ones. They're fairly cheap though... Best I remember, they were something like $10 for 50 of them. I believe that I'm using the 12-oz size. This size will hold a bit more than 200 230 grain .45 bullets. As such, it's a pretty manageable number for reloading.

I've currently got a 5 kg electronic scale on order from DealExtreme. I'm planning on using it for a rough counting of my bullets so that I know approximately how many I have on hand instead of counting them and putting them in the plastic containers. I figure I'll just calculate how many grams would be necessary to reach a nice even count for each bullet type for that size container and weigh them out plus a couple extra just to be on the safe side.

After Hurricane Ike came through here, I ended up with a lot of spare cedar fence pickets when my fence was blown down. As such, I've used that quite a bit to create bins for nails, bolts, screws, brass, and other things around the garage and my reloading room. I first pressure wash the pickets and then let them sit out in the sun for a day or so to dry out. Then I cut them into whatever sizes I need for storage bins. I use 3 small nails and glue on every joint to hold them together. No fancy joinery, just butt joints. For most things, I just cut five 7" sections and those work well to hold a 5# box of nails and such. Here's what it looks like from the front without the end pieces installed:



The end pieces are exactly the same size as the side and bottom pieces. The grain of the wood is running horizontally around the sides and end pieces.

Quick and dirty box... I probably have enough cedar pickets for a couple hundred of these... I have no idea how many bullets one of these would hold... Assuming 50% bullet to air space, it would be around 44 lbs by my calculation... A solid chunk of lead would be around 88 lbs...

Plus, I can use the cedar saw dust as flux when I'm smelting...

I dumped a bunch of 158 gr .358 RN bullets in on of these boxes last night. A box of 1000 fills it up about halfway.

[jdgabbard]

Wow, this thread amazes even me! 2 Years old and still going strong...

[torker]

FWIW, What I do is stop by my local Post Office and for " Free " grab several priority boxes. They work just fine. sturdy cardboard, They also have free lables that have a large blank space for information on boolits. just place a square piece of cardboard between layers.