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

Initially it was savings (like a Lee Loader). Now it's accuracy.

The Lee Loader was purchased from Clark Bros near Warrenton/Culpeper Va in 1964, and the owner said he'd give me a full refund toward better equipment when the time came. I asked him to write that down, and he made good on it when I came back in the 1980's to pick up a Rock Chucker.

I remember a hunting buddy at the time that tied his first round and rifle up in a tree and set things off with about 50 yds of kite string. He lived to tell about it.

Cost savings
Shooting metallic silhoutte matches
Loading 357 mag and 44 mag rounds

1970. Bought a NIB condition 3 screw RSB. It came with several sets of dies, a Lyman press, two holsters and some components. What was I supposed to do? $125.00 was a lot of money back then.

I am a third generation Rifle Looney/Handloader. My dad and grandfather got me started.

Heck, I was the only 8 year old in the neighborhood that knew what a .17 Remington and a .240 Gibbs were.

Saving money.. Plus I could load 100 rounds for the price of one new box.. I have a couple old primer boxes from the 60's, the price would make you cry..

When I was 12 years old, I walked into the toy store to buy some 22 ammo, but I ended up borrowing $50 from my best (older) friend and walked out with a rusty old mil-surp Mauser 98 with a rusty barrel. Probably circa 1908, and not a spec of bluing left on it, but to me, it was like finding a diamond.

Since it had likely fired a million rounds of corrosive ammo and still had battlefield mud inside the stock, possibly from the Russian front, there wasn't much could be done with the bore, but was rescued from the dead with a spare '06 barrel... but then reality hit me...

Now I had to make a choice. I could continue to shoot my 500 weekly rounds of 22 long and LR, or buy one box of '06.

All my friends shot mil-surp, but mil-surp 30-06 was not available, and you couldn't hunt with it, so with that, and my innate curiosity, I bought a press, dies, a scale, powder, primers, bullets and a bullet mold, all mail order from Herter's, shipped to my door for the price of a few boxes of Winchester Super-X...oh yeah, a Lyman manual too.

I think I was the only person within 1000 miles that re-loaded, and my friends, relatives kept telling me to be careful not to blow myself up...but they always said things like that about my projects.

Well, my ammo shot better than the factory stuff...it was a little hotter, but lessons learned, I never bought but those 2 boxes of '06 factory ammo my entire life.

Was 18 at the time. There were no re-loaders in the family and the word was said with disgust. Local shop owner helped me choose equipment and I read a lot. When the first 44 shell was loaded I went out back and tried it. Head turned, eyes closed, teeth clenched. It worked and did not explode. Breath now. COOL!!!

My Dad, when I was a little I would watch him reload. When it was time for me to start shooting/hunting I had to reload my own. Been at it ever since.

Have only bought a few boxes of factory shells as the loaded shells were cheaper than one could buy the brass.

- Curiosity.
- Learning process. Designing a bench, researching solid choices in equipment, learning how/why's of reloading, process improvements to discover, and the scientific evaluation of results.
- More financially sensible... in theory.
- Relaxing. Between "figuring," there're plenty of menial tasks to be done. I need some brain dead chit sprinkled in the day.

Fairly new at it still.

Love of the game.

Shooting IPSC on a college budget turned me into a reloader. With .45 ball running $13 per box at the time, the roughly $3.50 per 100 rounds I spent reloading made a ton of sense. I still have a deck of CCI 300s with a $.79 price tag on it for nostalgia. $11.25 for a pound of 231 was nice, too.

Simple economics.

I started loading on friends' equipment, so I could get more rounds for the buck with an '06, and then a 22-250.

Then my buddies and I each bought some of the needed tools. We would get together every other weekend for a Friday evening of reloading, followed by a Saturday of shooting.

Next came the discovery of the versatility offered by reloading. I found the 30 cal 110 gr Speer Varminter and started loading them in the '06 for extensive recreational shooting sprees.

It was better than ten years before I actually owned a decent powder measure and all of the tools to reload ammo without calling on my buddies.

When, at age 16, I bought a new M29 Smith and soon realized I could not afford to shoot it. That was 37 years ago. Still using most of the same equipment I bought then. Still own the gun too.

Economics and to be able to tailor loads for specific purposes.Don't think I'm saving money these days and I have stocked up on materials that will keep me fat in the event of long term shortages.

I bought a Model 700 ADL, .243 in '65 for $101.89 with money from cutting yards and at the time about the cheapest I could find ammo was $3.40/box. I can remember one time when I bought two boxes and I felt "rich"!

I was an avid reader of "Guns and Ammo" and "Shooting Times" along with some other lesser known periodicals and every issue always had articles about saving money by handloading, making more accurate ammo, shooting more, using better bullets, etc.

Well, I took the bait and asked for a reloading kit for Christmas. I got a kit with a Lyman Spartan press (which I still use) and dies and I was off to the races.

Now about fifty years later, it would take a while to count how many cartridges I load for but it's a bunch.

Am I making more accurate ammo? Yes, for the most part.

Am I shooting more? Definitely.

Do I use better bullets? Yes.

Saving money? NO WAY! I don't play golf. I don't fish, but handloading and shooting is just what I DO!

SAME here, 1976 I was 26 and a 243 Win, 100 gr load.


edited due to 'rusty memory'

It was 1975.

A Deputy Sheriff that also shot a 357 got me started. I worked part time when I was in high school and college with the local telephone co and had access to lead cable. He had a lead pot and a set of molds for the bullets. We would get together and cast up a bunch of bullets. My brother and I bought an RCBS Jr press in the late 60's and my son is still using it.

I don't particularly "enjoy" the actual act of handloading and I still shoot factory stuff in a good many of my rifles. However, trying buying 9x57R, .411 KDF, .401 SL, .375-06 JDJ, .256 Win, etc off the shelf...

More bang for my buck.

Started with a Lee Loader in 243Win. Didn't take long to really get high-speed with a priming tool and dipper kit.

When I was 15, a second cousin (who was older than my Dad) took me under his wing, taught me to reload and loaned me a scoped 243 to hunt with instead of the open sighted 94 and 99 I had hunted with the previous 3 years. Bagged my first buck and groundhog with that loaner.

I used his equipment until I bought my own at 18. I'm not sure what he saw in me way back when, but he did and turned me into the gun looney that I am now.

Dale