Thursday - July 16, 2009

And Drew Creates Another Junkie

Me and Doc had a “playdate” today, finally getting a chance to get all that reloading gear squared away and put to use.

Doc had purchased this entire firearms collection from the estate of some elderly gentleman who had suddenly died. He got a whole bunch of rifles, shotguns, and pistols for a few grand. Killer deal. And for an extra $300, here, take all these scopes and all this reloading gear and ammo too.

Part of the haul was a salad bowl full of cast pistol bullets, unlubed. And a nasty dirty grimy Dillon RL550 progressive loading press. He didn’t have much hope for it, figured he’d put it on E-Bay and get rid of it. But I convinced him to give it a try, and that’s what we did today.

It took us an hour or so to take the press fully apart, get everything properly clean, oil it up, and put it back together. This could have been a daunting task, but I’ve owned an RL550B press for 15 years or so now, and the slightly older RL550 model is pretty much the same. So we got it ship shape and properly adjusted, and the thing works as smooth as oiled glass. I have no idea how old this press is. 20 years? 30? Doesn’t matter. Dillon makes a superb product.

So we sorted through the old guy’s brass .. he’d been loading the same big batch of cases since 1978. .38 Special brass lasts just about forever, especially if you just load up mild little target ammo. We had a whole bunch of splits to throw out, and the nickel plated stuff was going bad, but we managed to save about 650 brass cases. And all the little plastic ammo boxes of course. So we got to work, out in the garage. For 3 solid hours. I’d lube up some bullets, give them a wipe, pass them over and he’d turn them into ammo. We made 600 rounds; 12 boxes worth. Used up every single one of that bucket of bullets. And now Doc is a reloading junkie. “Can I do my .30-06 on this?” Oh yeah, sure. Plus the shell plate is the same one for your .45 ACP. “What about my .22-250?” Yup, and that’s still the same shell plate. “5.56?” Hell, this thing is awesome with 5.56. And so on. Other than .50 BMG, if it has a primer, the Dillon RL550 can reload it. By the thousands, in a few hours.

We threw some steaks on the grill, had a couple beers, and had dinner with his family ... and he’s still wound up. “I’m not selling that thing. It’s awesome. I have to get my sons into this!” Next he’s going to try his hand at casting, since that pile of gear included a 20lb lead melting furnace, half a dozen ingots of lead alloy, molds, handles, flux ... the whole enchilada. And he was just going to sell it all for a quick buck. Not anymore!

Heh heh heh. Drew did it again!  Another reloading junkie and Dillon fan is born.

I spent a few hours a couple months ago showing my father in law how to make pistol ammo, and told him the same thing I told Doc today: Every box of ammo you make yourself saves you $13 compared to buying it. And 5 days later my FIL found a Dillon on CraigsList and bought it.

A Nation of Riflemen. And Pistolmen. And money savers. One used reloading press at a time. And I got 4 boxes of plinker ammo out of today’s work.

Now I have to go scrub my hands again. And again. I got pretty well lubed, and the goop is hard to wash off. It was worth it.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/16/2009 at 08:25 PM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control •  
• Comments (4) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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