Not a good sign. One pass, fourteen fail and 985 to go. Cleaned for an extra hour to reach a semblance of shiney, this old brass sat in someone’s to-be-reloaded pile for years slowly growing cruft. The vibratory cleaner and brass polish yesterday removed a lot of it but the Martindale Gauge is now rejecting […]
Tolerance in Brass
This is the last of a five part series on tolerances in reloading. In previous sections we’ve looked at tolerances in the weighing of the miniscule amounts of propellant we use in handgun ammunition, the COL and crimp measurements we check frequently during reloading, and in the critical nature of bullet weight. In this the […]
Reloading Room
Reloading Table (Click to enlarge) The newest addition is that air conditioner in the upper-left corner. With daily temperatures already over 100 in late May, it’s what you may acknowledge as a necessity here in Phoenix Arizona. Some other features you may notice will include the “L” brackets holding the brass feeder on the top […]
Martindale Gauge
Martindale Gauge If you reload 45 ACP for automatics (but not necessarily for revolvers), you need one of these gauges from Bruce Martindale (kingsarcher2@yahoo.com). It’s basically a bored-out nut — made on a precision lathe — and you pass all your brass through it before reloading. If the brass passes, reload it. If it won’t, […]
The Value of Range Brass
Heretofore, I’ve picked up 45 ACP empties at the indoor range I use in Scottsdale AZ. The ROs have even been so kind to sweep empties from others in my direction (after the other shooters have left) because they had observed me doing so. Over many weeks and months, then, I’ve accumulated quite a collection. […]