A Texan's view on all things tactical

For a long time now I have been interested in reloading. I read lots of stuff on the intraweb about it but it seemed like I was reading a foreign language. I’m fairly mechanically inclined but just didn’t know enough of the terminology that was being used to really grasp what others were talking about. An opportunity to do some horse trading came up and I ended up with some basic reloading equipment.

After looking through what I had things seemed to make some more sense but not all the fog had been lifted. At this point figured the best thing I could do was head over to one of the local stores and pick up a reloading manual. I had heard good stuff about the Lyman manual, they don’t make reloading components (bullets, primers, or powder) so their load data contains a good mix of components. It has a fairly large section in the front of the book dedicated to explaining how to reload and going over the various pieces of equipment. Finally things started to make sense and I could actually visualize how all this worked. Another book that I picked up later and wish I would have started with is “The ABC’s of Reloading” it contains no load data but is all about the process of reloading for both handgun and rifle rounds. It even goes into different subjects such as casting your own bullets.

After looking over everything and setting up all my equipment I poured over the load data in my Lyman manual and decided on what I wanted to start with. I loaded up 100 9mm rounds with a fairly conservative load. After I loaded them I spent a week walking by them wondering if they would destroy my gun (or my hand) when I finally went to shoot them. I must have weighed and measured every one of those rounds at least 5 times before I finally worked up the moxy to take them out to the range. Since I had done my homework and paid attention to what I was doing that range trip ended up being fairly uneventful. Nothing bad happened, the rounds all worked they way they were supposed to and I got some extra satisfaction out of hitting targets with bullets I had made. When it was all over I collected my brass (and a little extra) to take home to feed my new hobby.

Over the next couple of weeks and days check back for some more articles where I’m going to talk a little more in-depth about what equipment I’m using and what I have learned in my reloading journey so far. Hopefully this will include some pretty good pictures to.

Thanks for sticking with the site even with my extended absence.

Keep up the good fight
-Rob