Reloading - Stored as separate Components or Loaded?

Blue water sailor here too- ASW Frigate.

But Dad made me a member of the local "Brown Water Mullet Navy" early on - I learned to handle that shallow draft mullet boat pretty good!
NOTHING can accelerate from a standing start and literally pivot on a dime like a well built mulletboat! A little modification, they'd make great insertion/extraction boats......

As to ammo - I go both ways - a lot stored in ammo cans, a lot of components stored for long-term. Best of both worlds.
And reloading is a nice way to spend winter evenings, relaxing and stress-relieving.......

 

I've a good friend who is a chief LEO. He knows I reload, one day he dropped by and said he had something for me. turned out it was about 3-4 gallon of brass. Most of it was 40 S&W, some .45 ACP, and lots of 9 MM. there was a few .380 and a couple other sizes but only a few of the aluminum cases. Anyway, I have more brass than I have bullets to load it with.

I have been reloading for several years, (about 20), and one thing I've always done, was to use up any opened can of powder as soon as I could. So, when i get in the need or mood to reload, I do a bunch at one time and when the can is empty, I open another only if I have enough components on hand to use up another can.

The only problem I see with loading up all your brass is, if you decide you need a different load, you have to pull your bullet and hope you have the right amount of powder to reload the new charge. Another issue would be once you fire a few rounds, you then have empty brass that needs a refill. So, yes, you can load up all your brass, but keeping extra components around, properly stored, is also a good idea.

 

Agreed except the pulling the bullet part. I see this as an excuse to scrounge the range floor or call in an order to Midway

(No, I am not above crawling on all fours looking for shiny things)

 

I take a collapsable rake i'm too old to crawl around with out someone to help me get back up...

 

Does anyone besides me occasionally get permisson to mine the berm on a closed range for lead. Military ranges are the best. Lots of 45 and 9mm full metal jacket bullets to cook near pure soft lead out of. We would use coleman camping stoves and cast iron skillets to cook the bullets. We would skim of the copper hulls (which we stupidly never recycled), skim the slag, and pour lead into 1lb gang ingot molds. I probably have 300 plus pounds of lead. We did this as a group project.

 

i have my own small range and yes, I have dug out lead and melted it down to use again.

 

I have mined the berm at the local WMA back in Louisiana. Have also liberated ww at junkyards as well.. I was bored, oilfield was slow..

any ideas on using battery lead? I got a blown battery outta my truck that I hate to turn in for thier "recycling" effort, rather recycle it myself.. Just havent gotten around to it, nor, looked into if the lead would be worth using..

 

Battery plates - a big NO-NO! They have cadmium and other deadly elements in the lead, and the plates aren't good to use anyways- they aren't solid metal plates like the old days. Stick with Wheel Weights, roof flashing and other scrap lead. Much safer.

 

I second that on battery lead. Stick with what Sea says, also I've used lead from plumbing sources. Guess most of that has now been removed from most homes. Was rather common back when I used to do plumbing work, like 40 years ago.

 

It may still be there in some older unoccupied homes, and industrial settings.... (non potable sources)

 

Ballast ingots of pure lead (cut it with your fingernail) of approximately 65 lbs each used to walk off navy ships for use in black powder firearm bullet making. I really wouldn't know anything about that however.........

 

Back in the time when I started plumbing, it was not uncommon to find homes with lead water lines. In fact, the house I grew up in had some lead pipes in it, but most had galvanized iron, only the rich used brass piping. We were installing a lot of copper pipes with 50/50 solder back then too. Plastic was around, but not well excepted by some yet.

Back to reloading,.., when I see a wheel weight laying around, I see it as how many cast bullets I can salvage from it. it is well worth the time to stoop down and pick it up. Mining the gun range is also worth the time, if you can get permission. I've actually used a small hand held metal detector to aid in this endeavor.

 

Just a thought

Rake Shmake.....use an Industrial sized vacuum cleaner to suck the suckers up!!!

 

You folks in Oz must have electricity at all of your ranges.... I unfortunately don't ... we have mechanicals at my range...

 

I didn't read the entire thread but I've got to tell you people that I've been reloading for about 30 yrs. now and the only reason a round didn't go off was because of something I didn't do correctly. I've had canisters of powder that had been open for 5 or 6 yrs. without a problem with either the powder or the primers that were bought at the same time. As for the question of components vs. loaded I don't plan on leaving unless I can take it all with me. And if I have to leave then that means there won't be anything to come back to get later.

 

Try one of these babies for collecting brass

Try one of these babies.......but once you start using one of these, everyone will want one, and you won't be able to do a tinker's cuss worth of shooting without some idiot running you over for the brass!

Karcher Australia | Sweepers and vacuum sweepers

 

I've got propellants that are over 50 years old that my grandpappy left me ... still good.

I've got cans and cans of powder that are years old, a couple of decades old even, still good.

Modern primers, if you keep them stashed away and dry and relatively cool, can be stored indefinitely.

Here are some of my components, shelved, in part of my "brass" reloading room ... I stuff hulls in another room dedicated to nothing but shotshell.

 

Airborne monkey I love your reloading room, I hope mine gets as well stocked as yours. What all calibers do you reload ?

 

Thanks

I pretty much load what my family, (wife, three grown daughters, one 12 yr old son), and I shoot ... 32 ACP, 380 ACP, 9mm, 38 Sp, 357 Mag, SIG 357, 40 S&W, 44 Sp, 44 Mag, 45 Colt, 45 ACP, 454 Casull and 460 S&W Mag in pistol calibers.

In rifle I load 223/5.56 x 45, 243 Win, .270 Win, 30-30 Win, 6.5-284, 7mm-06, .308 Marlin, .308/7.62 x 51, .338 Marlin, 30-06, 300 WSM, 300 Win Mag, 444 Marlin and 45-70.

In scattergun I load a ton of 12 gauge, some 16, quie a bit of 20 and lately a lot of .410 just for the heck of it because I had so many empty hulls sitting around taking up space.

I'm one of those classic cases of starting as a hobbyist decades ago and it later became an obsession. My grandpappy and I used to sit around and reload by hand for his 1911 and old 12 ga Remington Sportsman 58 when I was a kid in the sixties. Somewhere along the line, I just got sucked in totally ... lol. I used to hang around at the range just for the spent brass to feed my habit. If I did not come home with four or five 5 gallon buckets of brass on a Saturday I was disappointed.

When IPSC and IDPA came along, I was shooting so much that the Dillon 550 seemed the thing to do. Everyone was doing it. Then I sold that and bought the 650. That was like heroin to the drug addict. You get one of those and you had better be making plenty of money to feed the thing. I stopped short of the 1050 thankfully, and once I quit shooting competitively I slowed down and am back to doing most of it on the Hornady or the Rock Chuckers these days.

What you are seeing in the pictures above is just my rotational stuff, what I keep on the shelves to grab as I am reloading in batches. I've got a storage connex beside the barn that is full of everything from buckets of cast boolits to keg after keg of surplus 4895, etc., plus shooting chronies out the yin yang, my own range on the back forty, and on and on. I've been very fortunate to have the means to pursue a hobby that I have truly enjoyed for so many years.

My grandfather and father always instilled the need to be prepared, to always have plenty of ammo ... and that was reinforced by my military years.

I've been teaching my son to reload since he was 10. One of my daughters is as good as I am, even with the necked down stuff.