Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters What got you into reloading your own ammo?

My Dad; He was a machinist in the Navy back in 56' and a damn fine one. From there he got his Masters and became a teacher and taught precision machining/drafting back in the day when that chit mattered in this country. So naturally he wasn't tolerant of sloppy factory loads of the day (60's, 70's and 80's) and he loaded his own ammo. Being a machinist he had to have his ammo just perfect. I started sitting at the bench with him when I was about 5, or younger, just watching and mesmerized from then on. So I have always had hand loads and have rarely shot factory ammo out of any gun I ever owned. I have also worked as a machinist for a few years until moving on to other careers and have always found reloading relaxing and worth the time invested to get my ammo perfectly matched to my firearm for optimum performance. So for me it's a more of a pride in workmanship thing and something to do to remember time well spent with my dad.

I got started in reloading in the early 70's when a co-worker was selling all his equipment due to divorce. I bought his entire set-up which was mostly RCBS for a song. Back then .308 ammo was $5.00 a box and powder was $7.00 a pound. I have done a lot of relaoding in the years since the 70's, upgraded from a RCBS Junior to a Rockchucker. I had a Bonanza press for a while, when Ponsness Warren unveiled their metallic presses at the SHOT show I decided I wanted a PW. It took a few years till I lucked onto a deal to purchase both the PW presses in a package deal, have used PW presses exclusively since then. I was loading handgun ammmo in 500 round lots and got tired of doing it on a manual press. So I found a design for a motorized press and I built it, I use it primarily to size and de-prime and do the other ops on the PW.
I have also designed and built several versions of pistol powder measures. Being a Toolmaker, I like to apply the thought process to take some of the effort out of the repetitive steps of the reloading process. Reloading has become a hobby for me, not just a way to cut cost of ammo and fine tune loads for your guns.

leomort, Originally I started loading out of curiosity and cost.
A neighbor got me started and enjoyed our reloading sessions. He was retired and I was his pastime. He was a great guy.

Bought my own equipment 26 years ago and started reloading again, being frugal I still have the same RCBS equipment I purchased back then.
Used to reload many calibers now just six various round mainly with ball type powders.

That got me into handloading? A Mosin-Nagant mil-surp rifle I bought for $10, and inheriting my grandfather's Steven 12-gauge side-by side. Both occurred at age 13, and to shoot as much as I wanted handloading was necessary, especially when my income was a paper route, plus whatever supplementary jobs I could find during summer. So I bought a couple of Lee Loaders, which 50 years later have expanded into a garage full of stuff.

Family tradition. Granddad loaded his Win 94 38-55 with a Ideal tool, Dad reloaded his Savage 99 250-3000 with a Herter's C press and dies.

I got started with a Lee Loader in 20 gauge when I was in high school just because the whole idea intrigued me. The support for my endeavor was non-existent on the home front. When I got out on my own, I found a person who was willing to help me get started in metallic reloading.

Started loading shotshells in 1967 as a 12 year old. In 1969 I bought a M93 7x57 and other than 2 boxes of 175 gr RN Remington factories nothing was available locally but mil surplus fmj from Century Arms. Sporterized the rifle and started with a RCBS Jr. and RCBS dies. collected everything I needed piece by piece. Read my Pacific loading manual more than my school books. Shot my first 3x3 whtl buck on my 1st license in 72 at 17. RP brass , WLR's ,48.5 grs IMR 4350 and 140 gr NPT's. One shot. by mid 70's I had 6-7 sets of dies and using all of them, Bought a used Ruger 357 Blackhawk one day and dies to learn why I needed to cast bullets to boot, 3 weeks ago I shot a 1000lb cow buffalo with my 50-140 Shiloh Sharps loaded with a 500 gr Paper patched bullet cast with 1 to 30 alloy over 143 grs of Fg. Reloading has taken me to places ordinary factory ammo buyers never get too or experience. Nothing else to say about it, reloading your own is operating on a higher level at it's finest. Magnum man

1. Simple economics
2. High school shooting sports program. Read... economics.
3. Then on to full blown looneyism.

When I started, it was a chore assigned by the old man...

I had a 30-06 and could not afford to shoot it much. Went to GrandPa Pidgeon's in Manchester , MO and got a Lee Loader, pound of powder, a hundred primers, and some bullets. I already had a wooden hammer.

A friend won a reloading outfit in a drawing at a sportsman show so we used his scale and a empty 30-06 case to make a powder scoop. I wrapped some copper wire around it and made a handle for the scoop soldering the wire to the case.

So with no book, only the instructions in the kit and my trusty wooden hammer I went to work on the floor in a corner of our basement. My non outdoors parents had no clue what their crazy outdoorsman fourteen year old was up to and had the common sense not to investigate. Dad was to drunk to care even if he were to catch me and mom wouldn’t have had a clue. That would have been 1963.

For what its worth, I still have both eyes and all ten fingers.

My Father who let me watch as he loaded 06 ammo for himself and 30-30 for Mother. When I went big game hunting for the first time I wanted to use my "own" ammo & so loaded a box of cartridges for Mom's 30-30 and off we went. It has been a life long hobby since the early 60's starting w/ a Lyman 310 tool and now as MD said a garage full of stuff.....

oh and the basement also!

For me, it is like putting petrol in a car.....simply part of rifle ownership. Aussies hardly ever use factory fodder which is ridiculously expensive there so you wouldn't be taken very seriously if you wasted money on it and also wouldn't be equipped to do much shooting in a country where you can shoot hundreds of animals a year.

I had an uncle who got me started when I was eight. Part of it was doing something good for me, part was free labor doing all the menial work of reloading.

Turned out to be an excellent trade for me.

Seemed natural. Started shooting trap when I was 10 or so. Dad scored an old MEC somewhere and we reloaded 12 ga so we could keep shooting trap/sporting clays. Had summers where between the 3 of us, we were over 30,000 rounds in a summer.

Rifle seemed to be an extension of that - course of nature. I enjoy it and find it to be a hobby in and of itself.

Don't reload pistol because it's a little tedious and 9mm is cheap enough to buy.

When I bought my CZ 550 Amercian 6.5x55. American made ammo was anemic and the good European stuff was too expensive.

Graeme,

Yeah, my loading gear has kinda oozed into places other than the garage too....

I was always a "gun nut".....even from the age of 8-10. At the time (late 1960's) when most everyone in my area considered gun to be a "tool" to do a job.....I considered them to be fascinating forms of art. I would tear them down to the smallest parts and put them back together.....just to see how they worked.

Reloading was a natural extension of my interest in guns. I was just as fascinated by the process of loading ammo as I was by the inner working of guns.

I was already involved in muzzleloading and black powder so reloading ammo was a natural extension of what I was doing with loose powder.

As far as reloading was concerned, I started with a Lee Load-All to load shotgun shells (which was the "main" gun used at that time). Shortly after I moved on to rifle and handgun ammo with a Lee press.

I never even considered the cost savings of reloading ....although it did become apparent that I could shoot a lot more with reloads than I could with factory loaded ammo. I also quickly discovered that I could load more accurate ammo than factory and choose the bullets I used rather than just take what was loaded by the factory.

The real appeal to me was being able to "custom" load my ammo for a particular purpose. I could load heavier than factory level loads for guns like the 7x57mm (which at the time was loaded VERY weak by the factories) or load light for use on small game.

Later I began to trade guns and try new things and reloading allowed me to never worry about the chambering of a particular rifle. You've never lived until you load for something like a 7.5x55mm MAS. I never even knew there were such things as a Berdan primers.....or the "tricks" needed to load one. Just try to find ammo for a .22 Savage High Power or .303 Savage (and be prepared to pay dearly).....or simply pull the lever and have ammo as quick as for a common .30-30.

Another real advantage of reloading appeared in the 1980's when "steel" shot was required for waterfowl. I've HEARD (but will never admit to taking part) that some reloaders used to load lead shot in hulls marked "steel"....until the Game Wardens began to carry magnets with them. The appearance of Bismuth made this unnessisary for older guns (except for the cost). SOME loaders might still be loading lead....so I've heard.

Reloading has become a lifetime hobby (although I do still use some factory ammo from time to time). I like the process of loading ammo as I like and experimenting with different loads cost is a factor, but not nearly the first consideration for me.

We did a lot of shotshell reloading from about the time I was 10 years old, so that's when it started. What really brought it about, in the mid 80's, was my father getting tired of me bumming money off him for ammo. When I was 14 he brought home a RCBS "Reloader Special" kit..you could say it took off from there, especially when started shooting centerfire pistols heavily a year or two later.

I could offer all the same reasons ....economics; better ammo; ammo you couldn't buy.... the real reason was that, since I was a kid in the sixties, reading Guns and Ammo behind thetextbook propped up on my desk in school, I realized that the "real experts" loaded their own. I wanted to be a "real expert." One of the first things I got when I got back from SEA and got a job (after wheels) was a reloading set up. Started with .222, then .25-06....never looked back. I probably load for 25 or 30 cartridges now.

As an aside, my son who has finally settled down and lives in Missouri wants to set up a Skype date with me so I can look over his shoulder and help him get started. He's got his stuff together for .223 and 7mm RM. He used to watch me when he was a kid, and help out with one step or another, still wants Dad's help to do it all himself though. Kinda makes me feel important.