What do have waiting for you in the reloading room?

Pile & piles ... & piles ... of stuff.

Haven't been reloading for awhile and, well, ...

The Good News is that most of it is neat, new stuff acquired over time at excellent prices and just "temporarily" placed on/under,beside the bench until I get time "this weekend" to sort it all.

Walkalong said:

250 fully prepped and primed .308 cases that have been ready to load for 10+ years, and yes, I’ve had the bullets all this time.

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No hurry there guy. They ain’t going no where.

Not much right now, just 2 loads of dirty brass ready to be wet tumbled!

Ugh, I've been sitting on 1k pieces of brand new 7.62x39 brass, some Hornady SST's, 20lbs of home cast, PC'd/GC'd 155gr bullets, 8lbs of 2400 for the cast, IMR 4198 & Re7 for the jacketed for months and haven't even opened the bags of brass yet.

What's waiting for me in my reloading room? Usually an ornery 16 lb. black tom cat named Book, after the character Shepherd Book in Firefly. He follows me around like a dog. I have tried to teach him to pull the lever on my Dillon, but he resists.

Those are tufts of hair, not claws, on his back feet. Photo shows his summer coat; there is twice as much hair in the winter. We figure he is about 10% Maine Coon Cat and 90% unrepentant illegitimate something unprintable in an online forum.



...and now back to more serious projects.

70 .243 prepped cases ready for primers, but I just discovered that my Lyman easy hand primer tool is out of whack.
Let me explain: The tool does not seat the primers all the way down, and I have used 3 different shell holders. I have used it to prime some 200 rounds with it since I bought it. I want to think that Lyman will honor their warranty to their products, but I could be SOL.
So, for now, my reloading is on stand-by.

I have enough powder, bullets, and primers to load about 200 more rounds of 35 Remington. But no brass. So getting some that doesn't cost as much as the rifle is on the list.

More important on the list is expanding into new calibers. 2 years+ is a long dry spell for factory and handloading ammo. Before this year is over I want to get into 9mm and 5.56 at the very least.

I need to finish up prepping a 500 case bag of 38 Special brass. Got about 100 left. I haven't been priming all my prepped cases 'cause I've only got 2.5 thousand SP primers left (but about 600-700 primed and ready handgun cases waiting)..

60 pieces of a friend's once fired .30-06 brass that he says he wants to reload with me to see the process, but every time I ask him if he wants to come over and load them he begs off. Even bought bullets for him and have the primers and powder waiting. I guess he's not really that interested so there they sit.

I am moving this week, and my reloading room is 100% deconstructed. I’m also building a new reloading bench for the next house, so my reloading room has that waiting on me. Once the new bench is built, I have 2500 pieces of 6 Creedmoor brass which needs annealed, and then batched out as ammo for a new barrel.

It's been so long since I stood behind the bench, I forget what I even have up there.

I have every single piece of .348WCF brass I own in a USPS box waiting to ship to a friend for annealing.

I had toyed with the idea of loading up 1000 rounds of .45ACP... that's probably what I'm lowest on.

I know there is a bunch of brass that needs trimmed.

But what I really have is a pile of guns that need to be cleaned... and I PROMISED myself I would clean them before I started reloading again.

After a few years of accumulating I now have all the parts needed to start reloading 556/223. I was gathering up stuff well before getting a rifle in that caliber. This all started when I got a few thousand CCI #41 primers in a trade.

Bobaloo22 said:

I've got 35 pieces of 38 special brass waiting (I'm new at this it's all I've got),

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Bobaloo -- PM me your info, I can get a small FRB full of 38 Special brass in the mail to you next week.

As to what's waiting -- a couple of gallon bags of range brass to sort and clean. Gotta load a couple hundred 38 Specials. After that, probably some 45 ACP, and then some 32 S&W Long. And, I have to dedicate a day to casting.

Nothing really waiting.....
I do all my reloading in the dark months of Winter,

whughett said:

Basically hand loading is a winter occupation for metallic center fire smokeless rounds.

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Yup!

Varminterror said:

I am moving this week, and my reloading room is 100% deconstructed. I’m also building a new reloading bench for the next house, so my reloading room has that waiting on me. Once the new bench is built, I have 2500 pieces of 6 Creedmoor brass which needs annealed, and then batched out as ammo for a new barrel.

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I feel your pain. We made 9 moves from 1976 to 2005. Besides moving the normal household goods, the shop equipment and through the last half of the moves, the reloading room, was always difficult and extensive. The last two moves using commercial movers required two moving trucks. Plus, much of the firearm related gear was moved by myself.

I've been retired for the last 15 years and hopefully have made my last move. Now, we just have to get the kids to move their excess furniture in storage at our house to their house. Then I can fill up the empty space with more reloading gear.

I have a set of 6.5X55 Swede dies and a box of brass and bullets for same, along with a few dozen loaded rounds waiting for me to get another rifle in that cartridge.

Cemetery21 said:

Four batches of brass from a recent prairie dog shoot. All are cleaned, one batch sized, need to anneal 2 batches and check all for trim.
Not sure if I will load them back before a fall hunt. I have plenty of components from way before the covid.

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Where did you hunt? I've been hearing dog numbers are way down in Montana where we go.

What's waiting for me is a mess. Health issues have kept me sidelined for over a year. When I get back in there I'm going to rent a D8 Cat and front end loader to clean things up.

My room (shed) is waiting for me to get the new space ready (inside). I hate to say it because it sounds like a broken record to even myself by this point but it's the truth. Every other day, every weekend a little more progress on that front.

After all that, loading wise:

Load development with SW Heavy Pistol in .357 for JHP and cast, hopefully with better results this go around.
Load development with AA#5 in .357 in cast for back pocket info, since I have 4ish lbs and could be handy to know.

Other:

Building a casting & coating station in the old reloading room (shed) for the fall so when the weather is a bit nicer I can dip my feet and ladle into casting my own.

I don't really have brass to sort since 99% of what I'm using is already in rotation and the rest is new Starline waiting in the wings in their respective boxes, counted and bagged. With the building I am behind on some fired brass to prep but it can wait. Before I do that I have some range scrap I bought that needs to be inspected/sorted and stored first (it's on my current bench taking up all the space!)

Maybe re-organizing my chest of drawers that keeps all my dies and accessories, that could definitely use some attention. But that's going to wait until the move when I'll have more space to put stuff since I won't be self confined to just the shed workshop.

Honestly more to do than comes to mind at first. Always busy, busy busy when it comes to the loading.

GeoDudeFlorida said:

I have found Maine Coons generally avoid anything like work.
View attachment 1086944

This guy was my little loading buddy for almost 15 years. He passed this past Spring.

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That's about right, Mine did her best to keep from doing any work also, but was a legendary mouser.
If Main Coons didn't cost so much I would have another one.
This was my constant companion when I still lived in PA.

Wasn't much of a lap cat, which is good because she didn't jump up on me while I was reloading. But she was always setting there watching.

I don't have anything waiting for me that I know of. Every thing that needs loaded is already loaded,
Not cleaning up my bench either, I want to find my stuff when I need it.

I have 2 new molds ready to cast. Seems other priorities keep showing up. And I need to make a book shelf.
Other then that, just waiting to go to the range.

I kinda like having something waiting for me in the reloading room.

It's my little "fortress of solitude".

Gives me something to look forward to.
I'm like most of you, I like to reload (it's NOT just a 'means to an end' for me) and all the other attendant activities that go with it.

It's interesting and I always have something to do.

Even if I can't be shooting, at least I have something gun related to keep my mind off other things