CoalCrackerAl
Member
Short story muzzle loading. Longer version is... I was always afraid of reloading. It dawned on me one day. That muzzle loading is reloading basically. I wish i had reloaded now all along.
What Got You Into Reloading?
- Thread starter CavalierLeif
- Start date
It has been my (limited) experience that muzzle loading is much more dangerous than smokeless powder reloading
Zendude
Member
My stepdad wanted to start reloading for his guns and I needed an affordable way to feed a new 32 H&R revolver. So we bought a Lee Pro 1000 and went down the rabbit hole from there.
GoldieMI
Member
Combination of Johnny's Reloading Bench videos, The High Road, and not being able to find the ammo I wanted. Hated settling for what the LGS had on hand.
Kp321
Member
Economy was the initial reason I started loading when I was 14 (1962). My dad and I both shot 16 ga shotguns and even then good 16 ga loads were hard to find, especially in rural west Texas. Started with a MEC 400 I think. I know it wasn’t a 600. Ordered it from the original Gander Mountain.
About the same time, the jackrabbits were getting too wary for clean kills with a 22 so all my group went to center fire rifles for longer range shots. 30-06 factory loads were cost prohibitive in the quantities we were shooting so here came a Lee loader. As they say, the rest is history. I have gone through various single stage presses and progressive shotgun loaders. My last shotgun loader was a Ponsness-Warren which I finally sold after quitting trap shooting. I am down to about 10 calibers, from 30+ at one time, all on two Dillon 550’s. I bought my first Dillon, a 450, in 1980, by the way.
About the same time, the jackrabbits were getting too wary for clean kills with a 22 so all my group went to center fire rifles for longer range shots. 30-06 factory loads were cost prohibitive in the quantities we were shooting so here came a Lee loader. As they say, the rest is history. I have gone through various single stage presses and progressive shotgun loaders. My last shotgun loader was a Ponsness-Warren which I finally sold after quitting trap shooting. I am down to about 10 calibers, from 30+ at one time, all on two Dillon 550’s. I bought my first Dillon, a 450, in 1980, by the way.
I got into reloading because my father bought me a Universal Carbine (30 M1 Carbine), but because the 30 Carbine cartridge was considered a "pistol" cartridge (thanks, Ruger), you had to be 21 to buy the ammunition.
My father - ever the fiscal hawk - would only sign the register allowing me to buy a single 20 round box every week.
I wanted to shoot more. A friend mentioned reloading and I soon discovered that you didn't have to be 21 to buy powder, bullets or primers. And at the time, a Lee Loader sold for $6.97 at the local Walmart.
I was hooked.
And I haven't looked back.
I did ultimately upgrade to a single-stage RCBS press, but I still put my hands and my eyeballs "on the brass" several times throughout the reloading process.
My father - ever the fiscal hawk - would only sign the register allowing me to buy a single 20 round box every week.
I wanted to shoot more. A friend mentioned reloading and I soon discovered that you didn't have to be 21 to buy powder, bullets or primers. And at the time, a Lee Loader sold for $6.97 at the local Walmart.
I was hooked.
And I haven't looked back.
I did ultimately upgrade to a single-stage RCBS press, but I still put my hands and my eyeballs "on the brass" several times throughout the reloading process.
Nature Boy
Member
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2015
- Messages
- 8,254
I got into it in pursuit of more accuracy. It’s a rabbit hole that I’ll never climb out of.
I was 22. Had just purchased a Ruger RedHawk in .44 magnum. I got into reloading to load . 44 special. Guy at the gun shop sold me a Lyman t mag turret press, rcbs little dandy powder measure, and dies. He set the die’s for one bullet. Lead 240 swc, my powder charge was 6 grains of unique.
i loaded that one round for a couple years. After that I was hooked.
i loaded that one round for a couple years. After that I was hooked.
dobedo
Member
Because I am a cheap SOB however, I found out cheap was an oxymoron as starting it was not.
Saluki91
Member
As a wee little tyke, I used to watch my father and his father reload for their pistols. My favorite was casting wax bullets and shooting them in my grandfather's basement with just a primer... big noise and big fun!
A few years later I joined my father at his bench reloading for our skeet guns. This was merely a passing interest... a necessary part of shooting skeet. Around the time I figured out what all of those bumps and curves on girls were for, I lost interest in shooting sports. I came back to shooting again in 2019-2020, and it bit me - Hard! Within a few months I had joined two clubs, acquired a Dillon XL750, and a MEC Sizemaster for each of the common skeet gauges. Ha! What a time to come back to the sport... the 2019 shortages were in full swing, then came COVID and the Second Summer of Love (and all of the associated peaceful protesting...). Ours has never been what I would consider a budget-minded hobby, and it sure wasn't in 2019-2020!
I now load for 12ga, 20ga, 28ga, .410, .380 ACP, 9mm, .45 ACP, 30-30, and .308. Things have come full circle, as almost all of the guns I load for belonged to my father, grandfathers, great grandfathers, or great-great grandfather! 16ga and 6BR are coming soon. Before Illinois joined the new USSR (Union of Stupid Socialist Republics), I also loaded for .223 and 300 AAC. However, those cartridges are in time-out until common sense and Constitutional law return to the prairie... or we move.
CQB45ACP
Member
Me too. While the other man sticks it to us on primers and powders.
Stick it to the man as in goverment, right. Components are harder for the man to track , so far. Now, I refuse to read what people say about making their own primers. But I like reading about the people that make their own black powder for competition or what ever. Flint lock is getting close but even the mountain men had to come down for supplies.
LV Gun
Member
My father in law got me into shooting and reloading but not until I was 39. Finally after my wife convinced me to go with him I got bit and bit hard by the bug . Did not start reloading until about 7 months later, he gave me and old C&H C press and a used set of RCBS steel dies , a Ideal 55 powder measure which I still have and use periodically. I love reloading I am a very mechanical person that likes to see the results of what I did and I like working with my hands. Since I retired 4 years ago I have become almost obsessed with accuracy. The biggest value I have found in it is being able to load ammo that works with the gun I have gotten to be very precise in what I do and it keeps my mind sharp. I use a ammo cost calculator once in a while to see how much I am saving by reloading on some calibers it is not much but I have the time to do it and really don’t care anymore about the savings I just like reloading.
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westernrover
Member
- Joined
- May 4, 2018
- Messages
- 1,613
When I turned 18, I bought a bow instead of a rifle because as much as I wanted the M1 Garand at the gun shop, I had no where to shoot it. It was only $320 which I had but I was living in the suburbs and I had never heard of anywhere that it was legal to shoot a rifle without driving all day to get there. I bought the bow from the same shop and it would get me into bowhunting later, though I was never very prolific in that. I killed some boars.
Then, when I was in college, I was working on a ranch with some other young men and a few of them had rifles, mostly 10/22 or Marlin 60, but one had his dad's Remington 222. I remember visiting his dad's house later where us boys bar-b-qued an elk roast. In his dad's garage were some workbenches with two reloading presses -- they were green and I'm pretty sure they were RCBS. There is no question this made an impression on me. I perceived loading your own ammunition for your rifle to be serious business. This was contrasted in my mind with someone who just bought cartridges at the store like K-mart and didn't really know what he was doing.
Another time, one of these friends let me fire his brother-in-law's Colt AR-15 and 2" Colt Python with 357 Magnum cartridges. Another time, still another friend let me shoot his SIG P226 and his Ruger SP101. I appreciated all of that, but none of the guns really made any great impression on me. The Python was something that I had admired before in pictures and would later admire again when handling one in another gun shop years later, but they were beyond my means in price, and because I wasn't 21, it wouldn't be practical to acquire one from an FFL shop. I was in college when I bought my first rifle, a Mauser 98K in 8mm.
That's what got me into reloading. This was the time when K98's still filled the rough-and-tumble used gun racks on the floors of shops and were selling for $200. Cheap Yugoslavian cartridges were abundant but a broke college student still couldn't buy much. When I did get some money together, I needed something before I bought a lot of ammo that I knew would just burn up. I bought a Mossberg 835, a new model that introduced the 12 ga 3.5" magnum and was in my price range (and not worth a penny more).
Once I got a job that paid more than minimum wage, some of the first things I bought was an RCBS Rockchuker kit, and a MEC progressive shotshell reloader. I reloaded 8mm rifle and 12 ga, but mostly 12 ga. Shot was far cheaper than bullets and I had found places just outside the city to shoot clays. I loaded a lot of 12 ga target loads. I picked whatever powder the book said would deliver the highest velocities with heavy loads and I metered plenty of it liberally. It's a good thing the high velocities in published data are with slow powders. I punished that Mossberg severely. The extra powder was like glitter everywhere on the pad by the trap.
To this day, I wouldn't think of buying that stuff at K-mart. I load my own.
Then, when I was in college, I was working on a ranch with some other young men and a few of them had rifles, mostly 10/22 or Marlin 60, but one had his dad's Remington 222. I remember visiting his dad's house later where us boys bar-b-qued an elk roast. In his dad's garage were some workbenches with two reloading presses -- they were green and I'm pretty sure they were RCBS. There is no question this made an impression on me. I perceived loading your own ammunition for your rifle to be serious business. This was contrasted in my mind with someone who just bought cartridges at the store like K-mart and didn't really know what he was doing.
Another time, one of these friends let me fire his brother-in-law's Colt AR-15 and 2" Colt Python with 357 Magnum cartridges. Another time, still another friend let me shoot his SIG P226 and his Ruger SP101. I appreciated all of that, but none of the guns really made any great impression on me. The Python was something that I had admired before in pictures and would later admire again when handling one in another gun shop years later, but they were beyond my means in price, and because I wasn't 21, it wouldn't be practical to acquire one from an FFL shop. I was in college when I bought my first rifle, a Mauser 98K in 8mm.
That's what got me into reloading. This was the time when K98's still filled the rough-and-tumble used gun racks on the floors of shops and were selling for $200. Cheap Yugoslavian cartridges were abundant but a broke college student still couldn't buy much. When I did get some money together, I needed something before I bought a lot of ammo that I knew would just burn up. I bought a Mossberg 835, a new model that introduced the 12 ga 3.5" magnum and was in my price range (and not worth a penny more).
Once I got a job that paid more than minimum wage, some of the first things I bought was an RCBS Rockchuker kit, and a MEC progressive shotshell reloader. I reloaded 8mm rifle and 12 ga, but mostly 12 ga. Shot was far cheaper than bullets and I had found places just outside the city to shoot clays. I loaded a lot of 12 ga target loads. I picked whatever powder the book said would deliver the highest velocities with heavy loads and I metered plenty of it liberally. It's a good thing the high velocities in published data are with slow powders. I punished that Mossberg severely. The extra powder was like glitter everywhere on the pad by the trap.
To this day, I wouldn't think of buying that stuff at K-mart. I load my own.
Austin Albright
Member
Mine started about 1968 when I got a Ruger 357 Blackhawk. I was just a sophomore in high school. Mom had to sign for it. I bought one box of WW 357's with the Lead 158 grain bullets. I think the cost was $3.50. Way too much for my back account . A friend gave me 100 rounds of spent 38 special and I purchased a Lee "whack-a-mole". Grocery store in town carried Remington swedged158 grain lead bullets for $2.75 a 100.
We were off to the races.
Remember loading a box of 50 while watching "Gunsmoke" on tv with the family.
We were off to the races.
Remember loading a box of 50 while watching "Gunsmoke" on tv with the family.
Austin Albright
Member
A little like my first decent handgun. Dad give me a baby calf (bull), as he was a dairy farmer and only wanted a heifer calf. I raised that calf and used the money to buy a Ruger 357 Blackhawk.
I remember the Ruger's going for $87.50 but when I had sold the now grown calf and gotten the money, price had raised to $98.00. About all I had. Another problem no one had the Ruger 6.5 inche barrel model available. Heck the only Ruger I could even find had a 4 5/8 inch barrel so that is what I got. Still have it and would never sell it. Don't know how many 1000's of rounds have been down the pipe of that gun but it is a bunch. Probably 99% of the rounds though have been 38 special. That's the handgun that started it all.
56 years later and still at it.
Life is good.
jmorris
Member
- Joined
- Sep 30, 2005
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- 24,172
Yeah, he was a bull calf too. I figured having his mom die then I turned him into a steer, I had to name him "Lucky"...
Remington1911
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- Feb 23, 2022
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- 1,511
Same as others, surplus and "old" firearms.
GeoDudeFlorida
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- Dec 1, 2020
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