I started pretty early, around 9 or 10, reloading 45 ACP and 20 Gauge with Lee Loaders, a twenty-penny nail, a wooden dowel and a wooden mallet. We got our powder from the Western Auto weighed out in paper sacks. Herco had a plant right down the road and everybody used Herco for everything.
Primers were $1 a tray, $10 for a brick. Didn't matter pistol or 209s ... same price for whatever.
I think my one misconception early-on might have been that my Grandpappy, a WWII Vet and the best wing shooter I ever knew, was a man god. He reloaded his own then took game with those 20 gauge reloads. And he carried that 1911 with him in a Calvary Man's GI issued holster ... I once saw him down a chicken hawk in flight off the hip with that 1911. We ate so much wild game and farm raised meat growing-up that store bought meat tasted funny and I didn't have my first fast food, a McDonald's burger, until I was in the 6th grade.
There were three or four sacred things my Grandfather did that I thought were magical. Reloading his own ammo, sharpening knives, noodling catfish and ..... I actually felt sorry for doves when he was in a dove field.
Anyone else remember paper grocery sacks full of new paper high brass hulls? Hey, paper hulls most certainly can be reloaded.
I never once saw him use a scale. He always used one of two or three homemade dippers that he made out of leftover copper pipe. He was an HVAC man by trade and he almost drove himself nuts trying to make 22 ammo, long and short, out of copper tubing he would salvage from old units ... he repaired refrigerators too.
