How I started Handloading

Since the Reloading thread seems popular, it might be nice to see how we got our start.

As usual, I'm a little odd. We didn't have much money early on. Dad didn't go to law school, he read law under another lawyer and it took a while before there was money for incidentals.

I had a Savage 22 the lawyer Dad was reading under had given me and built a 410 shotgun out of water pipe and odds and ends. 22's were around .35 cents a box so I could afford to shoot it. I could earn ten cents an hour working for the local farmers. The .410's were expensive though so I started picking up empty hulls whenever I found them.

There was a science teacher named Towers, who was a tinkerer that figured out how to separate the anvil from used primers, flatten the primer face and add a very small amount of Mercury Fulminate to make a working but sensitive primer. He was kind enough to pass on both the knowledge as well as the MF to me.

Black powder was easy to find and cheap.

So...I started reloading with a block of wood as a shellholder, a nail filed to fit the primer as a deprimer, a wooden dowel to seat the wad and another larger one to press the crimp down, different sized pipe to cut wads and size cases. and a mallet instead of a press.

I loaded hundreds of .410's with that rig...and had a few accidents loading primers http://countryplans.com/smf/Smileys/...undecided2.gif

After Dad passed the Bar, he took on a murder case where the fellow shot and killed his wife who was trying to part his hair with an ax.
He won the case and as part of his fee, he got the shotgun. An old Winchester single shot 16Ga.

He gave it to me and I managed to buy a Lee Loader.

http://smith-wessonforum.com/attachm...leeloader1.jpg

Before anyone asks, I made my own shot too, using a cast iron strainer and a bucket of water. The old timers called it Swan shot because it was tear drop shaped and kinda looked like a swan. An old fellow named Frank Boyers showed me how to do that.

I got hooked on high power competitive shooting... service rifle across-the-course. I couldn't afford the 6000 rounds of .223 ammo that I was wanting to use annually unless I started reloading. Luckily our club bought bulk components and the cost was crazy low (8# of reclaimed 4895 for $60). My daughter and I started shooting sporting clays, so that was another 4800 rounds of 12 ga. a year.

I can build better than I can buy, and for less money.