Monday, October 01, 2007

Little things

I had last week off from work and managed to piddle a bunch in the garage doing reloading stuff. I sure wish Grant would have posted his reloading post a week ago... ain't that always the way?

I like the cat food bullet dispenser idea of his as well as the brass storage bins. I'll have to get some of those.

Basically, I spent the week rediscovering what a pita reloading is when you do it in bulk. I like the developing loads and figuring out a better way to skin a cat, but when it comes down to cranking out a couple of thousand rounds at the 550B or processing brass, my stomach for it fails. I keep interested by trying new stuff that I don't really need to do, like new powder measures and decapping dies and tumblers... you get the picture. My favorite thing is to buy something that saves me time, like the new Thumbler's Tumbler I bought, it holds three times the brass and does the job in the same amount of time, I LOVE that.

Reloading costs, as some of you know I'm sure, are going through the roof. My component cost (bullet/primer/powder) has gone up nearly 30% this year, that's insane! Oh well, its kind of like gas, you gotta have it. I've just taken a step to mitigate it somewhat by placing a bulk order for primers and powder via Powder Valley Inc. The thing about ordering those things online is that you have to pay a hazmat fee, so you have to order a bunch to spread the cost of the fee out. I ordered enough to bring it down to around a dollar per brick of primers or 1lb of powder and PVI's prices are good enough to make it worth the while. I just have to find a place to store all that stuff!

Now if I can only find a place that sells bullets cheap, those are the real killers in this equation, going up by $15/1k this year or 31%. Anyone know of a cheap place to buy good bullets? I've got some feelers out and if I find someone, I might place a big order so I don't have to buy for a while.

Other things I did? I put a true commander hammer on my Kimber Eclipse CLE II, not one of those skeletonized jobs, the real deal. I like it. I also bought some new ammo for it, Hornady's TAP 230g hollow-points, 950fps; 461lb/f. That should do the trick.

I bought some of the Blue Wonder gun blueing kit to try and protect my S&W 19-3 from rust. It didn't go well as I got even more rust!!! I must have done something wrong, but as I followed the instructions to a "T", I don't know. I may look into getting the entire gun refinished, there's a local guy with blueing tanks, but the gun really isn't worth it.

That's it, that's how I relax on vacation.

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