Front Sight, Press

No, I don’t sell my reloads very often, but with the price of ammo these days, reloading is like printing money. I stopped by the local range to pick up a couple of boxes of ammo on the way to a match. It was two boxes of S&B 230 grain FMJ. The clerk rang up the bill: $38. I think my heart stopped. Ten years ago, I was paying $6/box for the stuff. As Daddy used to say, “When I get screwed, I at least like to be kissed.”

In the late 90’s when I and both of my sons were shooting two IDPA matches a month, I did a lot of reloading. That’s when I bought this rig and learned the art. The guys got older and kind of lost interest, and I got lazy and found that for my needs and busy schedule, it was just easier to stop by the range and pick up a few boxes of factory ammo for a shoot. Time passed. Eldest son rediscovered his fondness for shooting; my bride got her CCW permit, and suddenly, I’m consuming 500 rounds a month of ammo again. What’s different now is that the war happened; ammo got scarce; metals went through the roof, but I don’t want to give up shooting because ammo has tripled in price. My aching pocket book brought to my remembrance the reloading press that had been carefully packed away and stored in the basement.

This press is a Dillon “Square Deal B.” I bought it, in part, because I didn’t know jack about reloading and everyone said that Dillon was the way to go. I haven’t been disappointed. It only loads pistol cartridges, but I don’t shoot enough rifle to justify a reloading setup for rifle. I still go with store-bought when I’m going to go hunting or something. I have a Doomsday stash of 7.62×39mm so I don’t worry too much about reloading rifle. If the hobby thing really gets a grip on me, I may try an RCBS rig for rifle, but right now, It’s hard to see the point.

This press is about ten years old now and I estimate I have loaded about 20,000 rounds on it. For the most part, it has been relatively trouble-free. On the rare occasion when a small part has broken or been damaged, Dillon has replaced them on my word alone, at no charge. Their “No B.S. Guarantee” really is. But even the vaunted Dillon is not totally perfect. It helps to have a bit of mechanical aptitude to operate one of these machines. This evening, I loaded 200 .38 Special hollow-points. For some reason that I still don’t completely understand, the primer feed began to act up. After an hour of messing around, cleaning, adjusting and cussing, it finally smoothed out and quit missing.

Reloading is a bit of work, but what I like about it is that it is one of those “zen” things. You get into it — get into the groove — and the rest of the world and its worries gets shut out. You have to concentrate when you’re reloading. Reloading requires focus and attention to detail. One needs to be willing to think in thousandths of an inch. It’s not the ideal activity for those with short attention spans. But, if you’re the kind to get into the process and enjoys the act of producing ammo that is better and cheaper than anything you can buy in the store, reloading is fun.

Besides the savings, the other tremendous benefit of reloading is that you can custom tailor what you load to the application you have in mind and the gun you will be using. If you want to be hard core and load stuff that kicks just like the carry ammo, you can do that. If you want to “game it” and load cream-puff loads that just barely cycle the gun but get you back on target quickly, you can do that too. You can’t walk into a gun store and buy that at any price.