Yesterday's Weapons Forums

Stripperclip mentioned the old "Lee Loader" equipment that he started out with. It reminded me of my own modest start in reloading around 1974.

At the time, I was shooting trap informally with a friend and we were burning through the 12 gauge shotshells pretty fast. I don't know where I got the inspiration, but I picked up a very used Lee shot shell loader for not very much money. At the time, my shooting buddy wasn't into reloading and I really had no one to mentor me on getting into loading shotshells (way before the internet). The loading gear had come with a ragged spiral-bound manual, so that was all I had. I must not have read it cover to cover, because as I recall now I didn't bother with variables like different powder or shot bushings. I got a can of Hercules Red Dot and a bag of reclaimed shot from the Winchester trap range, and whatever primers "would fit." I used Remington RXP plastic hulls and I did buy the correct RXP wads. Shotshell loaders might tell you that if you've done everything right, you will get a nice crimp most of the time. Well, I got a pretty good crimp some of the time, but other times it might be a little caved in. (What's wad pressure?) Actually, the finished product would knock clay birds out of the sky about as easily as factory loads given my shooting skills of the day.

My wife and I had recently gotten married and rented an old 1920-ish frame house. Out back, there was a flat-roofed wooden garage that I got to use half of as part of the deal. I parked my 55 Cadillac in it, and there was just enough room in the corner for a little wooden bench which had been there when we moved in. I set up the Lee shotshell loader on the bench and worked under a 25 watt bulb.

As things happen, since I got married and my shooting buddy stayed single, we kind of slowly parted ways and I no longer needed a steady stream of shotshells. Another friend of mine later took the Lee shotshell loader to another gun show and it went out of my life just as it had come into it. I still have some boxes of those shotgun shells that I loaded back around 1974, and they still fire.

Not long after we bought our own place and moved uptown around 1977, I decided to piddle around with metallic cartridges. My first effort was with the Lee Loader sets. I had one in .38 Special and another in 7.7mm Japanese. I used them some, but not much. I had a can of DuPont 4064 (for the 7.7) on my workbench for several years, then got rid of the lot of it.

It wasn't until 1983 that I got serious about reloading metallic cartridges. I had issues with a couple of firearms that I had at the time (read "Contender") that required that I hand load for them. Around this time, my cousin Rich and I had been going shooting together quite a bit and I knew he was a reloader. He agreed to "show me the ropes" and got me off to a real good start on what is turning out to be a (rest of my) life-long pass-time.

I should add that I still have the capability of loading a few odd shot shells, but not in mass quantities. I have a little RCBS die set for 20 gauge that I can use on my Rock Chucker press. I also have hand-loading tools for specialty 28 gauge loads, like round ball and slugs which you cannot buy.

I don't do that much shotgunning anymore, so I don't need scads of birdshot rounds taking up space. Last summer, I went through my inventory of shot shells and took a lot of them to the gunshow for disposal. I have hundreds of rounds of .410 bore cartridges that I have stashed away over the years; this must be a carry-over from when I was a kid and couldn't afford to have many. As a result, I didn't part with any of those.

This is going to be tedious, but I have said it before. .410 shells have always been expensive relative to other gauges. Accordingly, this has been a complaint of mine for years. "Why does a .410 shell cost three times what a 12 gauge costs, yet it consists of one-third the materials?" One time, a gun shop owner opined that perhaps it had to do with the law of supply and demand, and they were expensive because not many people bought them. Immediately I came back with, "Maybe it's the other way around; perhaps not many people buy them because they cost three times what they ought to!" Really, considering they are a third the size of 12 gauge, they actually cost about six times what they ought to. Yeah, yeah, I know, there's transportation, packaging, handling, etc to add in there besides materials. I guess we're back to three times as much.