Home Forums Reloading Handgun Reloading Revolver hand loads

I have not dabbled in revolvers, yet.
But having done a bit of reading about the old west...
I have wondered about how the cowboys used to reload...
I recently ran across an ole Lee all in one rifle die set (no press required)
That got me thinking

Revolvers head space on the rim. Correct?
COAL is defined by the cylinder.
So were old west revolver die sets pretty much a n expander and a crimp die?

Look up tong tools. Winchester and Lyman cataloged a bunch of them back when and many had a built in bullet mold.

Skeeter Skelton wrote about learning to reload 44-40s for his Colt Frontier Six Shooter with one of these tools.

They can still be bought pretty cheaply on eBay and the like. Be advised that they generally don’t have a way to size the cast bullets and they don’t size the brass much. But these would have likely been what was used back before the 40’s.

I think Lyman actually purchased the tong tools from Ideal way back and rebranded them.

Old photos of towns show big signs for the gun shops. Likely the smith's at those places had tooling to assemble a variety of ammo for customers.

My dad has some...... where?
He collected old reloading stuff.
Sis and I might find em this weekend

Google "Lyman 310 Tool". I loaded a bunch of 38 Specials on a Lyman 310 back when I was 17 or so and couldn't afford a full size press. It's slow, obviously, but the ammo goes bang just fine. They use their own dies and basically do everything a normal press and dies do except full length resize rifle cases since there isn't enough leverage for that.


Instructions for Lyman 310 tool