We are one week out from the big move. The garage is looking cleaner, the house is looking emptier and we are counting down the days. It is going to be a big change for me, I’ve live in Utah for about 40% of my life. Basically all of my adult life, so moving to Texas is going to be a bit of an adjustment.
However this recent cold snap, has convinced me that maybe Texas will be a welcome change this time of year. Winter sure came on quick and it came on hard. It’s likely going to pick our route for us, while I am incline to go I-70 thru to Kansas and then hit I-35 south through Dallas, the recent winter storm is making me think perhaps going south through Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas might be the better option. I’ve gone both routes, and I like sticking to the highways, but going over the continental divide towing a trailer, in a possible snow storm is not my preference. We will see.
We are trying to make a push to get moved prior to the election results being announced. I really do not want to have to drive through anywhere that people might be acting out there opinions over who won, and who lost. This means we will likely be hitting the road on Monday, and arriving to our destination east of College Station Tuesday evening. So there will likely be no update to the website next week, given that I wanted to take a moment to update it tonight.
In packing up much of my reloading stuff, I’ve come across many gems. One of them I posted to Instagram the other night. A Littleton Shotmaker. I bought it sometime in 2014, about the same time I bought my Benelli M4, and a Lee 1oz slug mold. The obvious thought here was that I was going to start churning out my own shotgun ammo. Well, I don’t think I loaded more then two or three dozen shells, and had several failures before I decided perhaps I’m not as into shot shell reloading as I am in metallic cartridge reloading.
To be fair I will likely revisit the shot shell reloading hobby sometime in the future. However I do not know that I’ll fire up this shot maker unless I have something close to an unlimited source of lead. I felt like it took me at least 1/2 hour for the thing to start making shot, and then another 1/2 for it to make “Good” shot, and by the end of an hour I had run 20lbs of lead through the thing, and I had a hell of a time figuring out how to QA/QC the darn stuff. Clearly I need to spend some more time working with it, but at the end of the day I just don’t shoot enough shotgun shells to justify it.
Someone once offered to trade me a Colt HBAR for the shot maker. At the time the shot maker was too new. I was still convinced I just needed to spend a bit more time with it to justify the expense, I pass it up. Now in hindsight, I wish I had not. If you are someone who is decent at casting, would like to take on a bit of a challenge, and has a lot of time and lead on hand, you might think about emailing me. I might be convinced to part with this for the right deal.
Everyone has that story, where they wanted to take things to the next level, and then found out, maybe they were fine with the level they were at. Another conversation I have had with more then a few people is how much time and to what level of precision to prep brass with. I used to be there, where I wanted to get everything just right. Ever single case needed the exact same overall length, the powder had to be weighed out to the exact same charge, and the flash holes had to be completely burr free. If a case looked out of place, I lost all confidence that the batch would shoot well.
Working in the industry cured me of that mentality, quick. Brass could be +/- .005in on case length, bullet seating could be off as much as .010in from spec, and the charge weight’s could very as much as a grain but yet everything produced tight clover leaf groups. It almost became a curiosity as to what parameters were the most important in order to get accurate ammunition. In the end, I decided what was most important was a quality bullet, a good rifle, and good rifleman.
While we bicker over what will tighten a group up by .1in, the reality is, that is really difficult to measure. Bench rest shooters sometimes times win or lose by .01in, but that is not reflective of what our rifles, and what we as shooters can accomplish in most scenarios. Do we need honestly need to fret about that .002″ or .003″ variation in case length? I would argue no, but I know there is one thing at play here that is hard to measure. It’s a mental game to many people, a form of OCD. If they do not feel they have taken every measure to produce the best ammunition they feel they can produce, then as they line up on target, a little voice in the back of their head will say “That extra .2gr of powder is going to send this shot high.” The shot inevitably will go high by a .25 MOA, and you will never forgive yourself, regardless if the flyer was resultant of a 0.1% difference in charge or not.
That is all I have for thoughts this week. Just a reminder, my new email address is jay@theballisticassistant.com, if you forget, jayandrew338@gmail.com still is live. If you have a new load to submit, the sheet it found here. If you feel like saying “Hi” shoot me an email or check us out on Facebook.
Stay Frosty out there, and as always, stay safe.
The Ballistic Assistant