Cured Press Runs Well

Reloading went so well today I ran out of .45 brass.

Or so I thought.

I have something like 400 rounds ready to go. I finished filling an empty Sellier & Bellot box, and I figured that was the end of the brass. I looked around and found a few cases, but I couldn’t find any boxes to put them in. Last time this happened, I put loose ammunition into a Laser-Cast box and scooped it out as needed, but I didn’t feel like it this time, so I took the .45 things off the press and put the .38 Super things on. I have a new box of Starline brass I want to fill.

Horror of horrors; I was out of the small pistol primers required for .38 Super. But while I was looking I found a bunch of ammunition boxes full of empty cases. So I had taken the .45 stuff off the press for nothing, when I could have kept on reloading.

Bright side of the situation: last time I went to the nearest gun dealer, they had Winchester primers. That just happens to be the brand I use for .38 Super. So I think I’ll roll by tomorrow and buy three thousand or so. That should keep me in .38 Super and .357 for quite some time.

It’s extremely important to load up on primers and powder locally whenever possible, because you avoid the obscene hazmat fees they charge when you order online. Also, primers have been hard to find lately, so you should probably grab them while you can.

I still have almost 100 .357 rounds I have to take apart. Last year I tried to shoot them, and some of them were so weak the bullets literally fell on the ground before hitting the targets. I can’t figure out what caused that. The recipe said to use small pistol primers, not magnum primers, so I don’t think that was the problem.

I really have to get a gun safe. I’m not really worried that people will steal my milsurps or my .22 or my Sweet Sixteen and start holding up liquor stores; these are weapons only desperate and unfashionable criminals would use. But the pistols would definitely be useful to a crook, and maybe the Saiga and the Vz 58 would be, too.

I suppose it’s conceivable that a real loser would saw up a Sweet Sixteen for a holdup gun, but I think it’s extremely unlikely. I can just picture some 65-IQ street doofus trying to shove 12 gauge shells into the magazine.

The Hornady is nearly problem-free now, but I have realized that its chief design defect exacerbates my own errors. When the eject wire pins a round against the shell plate and obstructs the press (completely Hornady’s fault, as their redesign shows), I sometimes fail to push the lever firmly after I clear the round (my fault). That means the primer doesn’t seat, so I end up with a bad round that has to be taken apart. Happened four times today.

Maybe I should go ahead and order the redesigned parts.