Category: Uncategorized

This past week did not go as planned. I thought I was nearly out of the woods as far as my ankle was concerned. Fate had other plans. I started getting sick on Tuesday, and by Friday I was having emergency surgery. Turns out I developed a Staph infection which pretty much knocked me on my butt, and is still kicking my butt.

As a result I have not gotten anything done in regards to the website this week. I apologize, definitely not what I was hoping to report. Such is life sometimes and I am glad the outcome is not as bad as it could have been. Even still I’ve gone back to almost square one on my healing. I’m back to crutches and have to take it pretty easy for awhile. We will try and get updates done in the mean time.

We do have some exciting news, we will be moving closer to the new job and into a place that has a proper garage and workplace. Which means for me, a little more time and independence on some of the projects I am able to work on. I am excited to be able to set up the hand loading equipment again, and work on stuff from home rather then a corner work space at work.

In the end all good news for the website. Just, with all good things, it will take some time.

That is all for the update this week. As always if you have suggestions, comments or questions you can email me directly at jayandrew338@gmail.com, check us out on Facebook or look us up on Instagram. Thanks for subscribing!

Stay safe out there!

The Ballistic Assistant

Two days ago, launched one of the greatest military operations of all time. The scale of which is unmatched in modern history. Unfortunately due to COVID, this was the first year in the 75 years since D-Day, that a memorial was not held.

Over the weekend I participated in a Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) match. While I do not own a M1 Garand, I was able to admire many marvelous examples of these historic rifles. I shot my M1A along side, a Johnson rifle, Mauser, Springfield, and other fine examples of both modern and historic military rifles. There is something about a rifle, that connects the shooter with the history, and I believe shooting it well honors those who used the rifle to preserve the free world.

This past week we did do a bit of an update. We had an opportunity to try our bullet lube, and while there are some tweaks I’d like to make to the formula, it worked splendidly. We want to try to dilute it down to from a 1:5 ratio of lube to alcohol to a 1:10. Here’s where the update was posted.

Homemade Case and Bullet Lube

The recipe I used probably made a life time of lubricant which should be good for case sizing and bullet sizing. There’s a few more tests we want to run it through, but the results are promising so far. We’ll continue to update things as we put it through it’s paces.

We still have updates to write on how polishing the Lee die went, and it’s results. It has occurred to me that if we’re going to do all the work of polishing the die, we probably ought to discuss making our own die. I suspect we can tweak this die design a little bit to make something that is as good as the Lee dies, but with a few tweaks to make things a little better.

Life continues to be busy, but we’ll continue to do our best to bring updates on our projects as I am able to work on them. As always if you have comments or suggestions please reach out to me at jayandrew338@gmail.com, or check us out on Facebook. If you want to see what we are up to in real time, we occasionally post photos on our Instagram page. Thanks to all those who subscribe!

Thanks and stay safe out there,

The Ballistic Assistant

Just when you think things are calming down…

While I haven’t formally updated the website in the past week, I did want to do some informal updates to you all with the promise I’ll be formalizing the updates this week. The home made sizing lube at the 1:5 ratio worked splendidly and provided a little bit of lubricant to help ease the bullets through the polished Lee Bullet Sizing Die. What has yet to be seen is if we can use our homemade sizing lube with a standard factory sizing die. We also want to see if we can dilute the lubricant down to a 1:10 and still get satisfactory results. My aim is to use just enough lube to do the job, and not have a bunch of residual lubricant to clean off. There is still some work to be done to wrap up these projects.

As you can image I have been quite busy over the past week getting settled into a new job. Couple this with a fairly long commute and it has given me very little time to work on any thing else. Which is why there isn’t a formal update to articles over the past week. I’ll likely have to shift gears and steer away from some of the more involved projects for awhile and work on projects and write ups that do not require much in the ways of workspace or tooling. We will have to see what time allows for.

In the mean time, stay safe out there. I, like many others, have been watching keenly the happenings going on in our country. I do not doubt that the events and the consequences of 2020 will be felt for sometime to come. Be vigilent.

As always if you have comments questions or suggestions you can email them to jayandrew338@gmail.com, or hop on to our Facebook page. We are also on Instagram and post photos of what we are up to long before they hit the site.

Thanks for subscribing!

The Ballistic Assistant

I’m always a little bit unsure how to address Memorial Day. It feels odd, to say “Happy” Memorial day, as it really shouldn’t be a day of happiness. Rather I feel it should be a day of somber remembrance, and while most of America see’s it as a day marking the end of winter, I see it as a day to be thankful for those who given all.

This past week we continued to make progress on a few project. We tried making our own homemade sizing lubricant. This is a mix of Lanolin, Castor oil, and some isopropyl alcohol. I’ve already tried it, and can say it works quite well. Here’s the write up on what we did.

Homemade Case and Bullet Lube

There is some work to finished up this write up, look for the conclusion this week. That also goes for the work we did polishing the Lee sizing die. These projects really were a two prong approach as solving our sizing die issues. Both projects are wrapped up, so I’ll be posting the results this week.

In other news, I have taken on a new job, at a new mining company doing the same type of stuff I did for the previous mining company. The unfortunate thing is that much of my free time I have been using to maintain the site is about to go away. I’m going to have to figure out how to balance the time at the new job and continue pushing forward and write ups that I’ve been working on.

I’ll continue to try and meet the goal of some sort of write up once per week. Stick with it, we have lots of stuff we’ve been working on and I haven’t abandon any of it.

As always if you have any comments or questions, feel free to email me at jayandrew338@gmail.com. You can also check us out on Facebook, or at Instagram.

Thanks for Subscribing!

The Ballistic Assistant

Good Monday Afternoon/Evening,

I’m trying something a bit new with my project updates. Most of my projects are broken down into steps. Each step usually is a write up, however sometimes it take me a bit of time to complete a step. I might need to order some materials or tooling that I didn’t anticipate needing, or I may break a leg, and then not be able to do anything for weeks on end. Well, to change things up a bit, and to try and continue to deliver content I decided to post what has been done, despite not quite completing everything. See an example below.

Bullet Sizing Troubles – Polishing a Lee Sizing Die

This approach is a bit different for me as I generally only like posting completed stuff, but as I make progress I’ll update the article. This keeps me working on the website, hopefully provides people with something to read while seated on the toilet, and perhaps, it gives an opportunity for people to give me some ideas, that may change the course of the project, or save me from disaster.

We are now on Instagram. So much of what we do, deals in photos. So Instagram gives us a platform to share in real time what we are up to. Undoubtedly you’ll see photos that later get used in a write up, but you’ll get a chance to comment or interact with use as we do new things.

Many of these idea’s were purposed by friends of the site, so I appreciate the feedback and the help people have given me. If you have anymore feed back, shoot me an email at Jayandrew338@gmail.com, give us a shout out on Facebook, or now check us out on Instagram!

Thanks, stay safe out there,

The Ballistic Assistant

This should be the last week with no updates. I am up and about, limping along, and am able to do stuff. It’s likely I won’t be completely back to my old self for a few more months, but I should be able to tackle some projects. My goal is one per week, and I plan to try and stick to that. I appreciate everyone’s patience, this has been a less then fun experience. However some good has come of it, so I’m not complaining.

Here in South Western Utah, spring has sprung, we have officially started our garden. We will see how that goes this year. Last year we lost the battle with the squash bugs. With spring comes Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) matches. If you haven’t looked into participating in a CMP I would highly encourage you to give it a try.

I have found the club in Cedar City, Utah to be very welcoming to new comers and they bend over backwards to help get you up to speed. The competition is geared towards self improvement, and you compete with military rifles both modern and historic. It is a great opportunity to connect with like minded individuals in an relaxed and fun environment. Due to this virus many matches have been canceled, but it looked like we will be doing a D-Day commemorative match on Saturday June 6th.

Participating in a CMP club also qualifies you to purchase a M1 Garand from the CMP. I have has my heart set on one, and hopefully I can get one ordered soon. In the meantime I typically shoot my M1A, but I’d like to also shoot my Lee Enfield. There may be a project in the future for getting that rifle ready to shoot in CMP Matches. We will see.

I have read the terrible news coming out of Canada, what the government is doing there is shameful. There are a lot of good rifles, and shot guns, that will be forced from responsible citizens. We try and stay away from politics on this website, but I feel it would be a dereliction of duty if we did not pay attention too, and support, our northern brothers. I fear these may be a type of things to come if we do not continue to fight to maintain the rights we so enjoy.

That is it for this week. No new updates, but I do plan on easing back into projects at time and as my ankle allows. I need to polish up the Lee Sizing die, so expect to see a write up on that, and hopefully it solves the problem with sizing our Hi-Tek coated bullets. As always if you would like to leave some feedback, have suggestions or comments, email me at jayandrew338@gmail.com. Also check us out on Facebook, and soon, Instagram.

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The Ballistic Assistant

It’s hard to believe that it is May already but here we are.

As many of you know, a little over a month ago, I broke my leg. Things are healing nicely, I am now about to put weight on it, and walk around some. This is quite exciting for me, as it means I’ll be back out creating mayhem and havoc in no time. This benefits all those who enjoy reading about my latest adventures.

You might think with being laid up, I’d have all the time in the world to work on the website, but alas, life has kept me busy with other tasks. So there have not be any website updates this week. I am anxious to get back out there and get working on projects again, it will happen in due time.

I hope everyone is staying safe and sane out there.

As always if you have a suggestion or a comment shoot me an email over at jayandrew338@gmail.com. Alternatively you can post something on the Facebook page and share your quarantine project!

Stay Safe Out There!

The Ballistic Assistant

Unfortunately there was no updated over the past week. I did work on some content for the website but did not finish any of it to the point where it is publishable. The one hurdle I am running into is images to use for the site. As much as possible I try to use images that are examples I have on hand.

Occasionally I do use stock images of products that are from websites such as Midway, Brownell, or the Manufacturers own website. However when it comes to cracks on brass, or showing the burr’s after trimming brass, I’d like to use my own photos. With this broken leg, I have been severely limited in my ability to take photos since most of my examples are not at the house with me.

Perhaps this is a long way to share that the next few weeks will be a bit slow in updates. I’ll do what I can but until things heal up to where I get clearance from the doc to drive myself places, I’m stuck with what I have on hand.

With all of that said I hope everyone is keeping sane with the “Stay at home” orders. In my case this is probably the best time could have broken my leg. With that said, I very much wish I could be outside enjoying this spring weather.

As always, if you want to reach out to me my email is jayandrew338@gmail.com, or you can check out the Facebook page. Feel free to share what you are doing to the kill the time during this unprecedented period of self isolation.

Thanks,

The Ballistic Assistant

Good Monday Evening, this update is coming a bit later then usual, due to me having my cast removed this morning. It is such a good feeling to get rid of that cast and get into a walking boot. Ankle is still pretty tender, and I’m still very much laid up, but I’m a little more comfortable.

This past week was a bit crazy for me, and this week is shaping up to be a busy week too. I did publish a write up on Friday of last week. We talked about some of the cleaning methods and went over sizing dies. I combined the two topics as a lot of people clean once before they size and then after they size to get ride of the size lube.

Handloading Your Way: Cleaning and Sizing Brass

I will likely revisit this write up in the future and add some photo’s to it. Unfortunately with me being laid up, I’ve been unable to get to my box of examples. Some photos, such as press set up, and examples of defects in brass, didn’t make it into this write up prior to publishing. Look for a revision in the future to see photo examples.

This week I’ll continue to try and get at least one write up finished. It likely won’t be until closer to the end of the week, we will see what time permits. I appreciate everyone who has subscribed, it’ll be a few weeks but we’ll start back into some of the project we’ve been working on. As always if you have any suggestions, comments or criticisms, feel free to email us at jayandrew338@gmail.com. You can also check us out on Facebook.

Thanks,

The Ballistic Assistant

It’s Monday again. Hope everyone survived the past week.

Everyone has a different approach to reloading, using different tools, methods and techniques to produce their own quality loads. We continued our series of “Handloading Your Way” taking a look at some of the tools used to get rid of spent primers, prep the primer pocket for a new primer, and inserting a new primer. You can read the write up at the link below.

Handloading You Way: Ready to Prime

I am still waiting on this broken ankle to mend, so many of the projects that I’ve been working on are on hold. Instead I’ve been working on planning and research for current and future projects. Hopefully I can get back and at them in the next few weeks. In the mean time I’ll continue to work on the “Handloading Your Way” Series and other projects that I am able to do largely from the comfort of my couch.

Like many of you I am keeping a close eye on the current virus situation and the market trends and responses. Some might say it’s a good time to be in the firearms industry with all the demand, however many factories and retail outlets have been forced to close. As a result there are many in the firearms industry who have not benefited from the recent “Run on Guns”. Hopeful we are past the apex of this crisis and we will return to normal soon.

As always if there are questions, suggests, comments or concerns please feel free to email us at jayandrew338@gmail.com. Alternatively we can be found on Facebook, and we love to engage with our readers there as well. Thanks for subscribing and stay safe out there!

The Ballistic Assistant