Free Lead

Just made another 49 rounds of .45 ammunition. Why 49? Because I ran out of lead.

Sort of.

As I said yesterday, it looks like Oregon Trail includes extra rounds in their big boxes of bullets. I shot 50 rounds, I ruined a few more, and then I made a total of 449 rounds. They must have given me a dozen or so more than I paid for. But I still ruined so many I was not able to come up with 500 good ones.

I came in here to check Alliant’s site for reload data on my Hornady jacketed hollow points, figuring I’d crank out one more round and put it in the box. Unbelievably, I forgot about the 500 Laser-Casts in the second box. Ha.

Still, I have a problem. I have a Speer manual, which is biased toward their bullets. It has load data for a jacketed 230-grain hollow point, but how am I supposed to know the OAL? For all I know, the Hornady bullets are longer or shorter than the Speer bullets. Sooner or later, I’ll have to get the figures I need.

Maybe there’s some info in the mini-manual Hornady gave me with the press.

I may as well go ahead and buy whatever pistol primers are available locally. Everyone tells me the size of the primer, not the brand, is what matters. Hope that’s correct.