A productive day

[earlmck]

A grandkid called me yesterday, said if I was going to be around he would bring his older brother and they would like to do some bullet casting and lube-sizing. Holy smokes! Of course I was "going to be around". In fact to gainfully employ two fellows I needed a head start so I fired up the alloy melting pot and spent my time limit (about 45 minutes to an hour is all my old crickity back can stand) casting some 38/55 bullets so I'd have bare bullets ready for the sizer.

They showed up this morning and I put one to casting 357's and the other lubing those 38/55 bullets. They wrapped up the "entertain gpa" part by noon to avoid the heat that was building today and here's the production:

BulletProduction9724.jpg

Bullets on the left are the 140 grain gas check bullet we use in the Rossi rifle. It is short enough to stabilize to "way out there" in the stoopid slow rifling of the Rossi. The right side is the 255 grain .380 bullet for the 38/55's. And in the background is a nice pile of 111 grainers we'll size .313 for the 32/20. Grandson Jeremy is supposed to come over tomorrow morning to lube those babies and also load some 357's and 32/20's. I had let myself get low on vital stocks of some frequently used bullets and this makes me look much better!

An interesting note on the sizing and the Star sizer. Which I have owned for 35 years or so and ... well you never totally master those Stars but I thought I knew just about everything. But learned something new today. This was grandson Jason's first time using said Star and we were struggling with the 357's because (as you can see in the picture) they are a "Ranch Dog" style with multiple close spaced lube grooves and the lube holes in my Star die don't line up well with close-spaced grooves, so not getting good fill on those grooves, but were probably "good enough". Then Jason figured out that if he worked the lube lever slower and spent a longer time in the final "push" the grooves went ahead and filled nearly all the way. Left bullet here is the "slow push" and right bullet is one of my "whump the lever down" bullets. Yep -- I'd never realized the danged Star gave a rip about how fast I worked the lever. Young dog taught old dog a new trick!

GrooveFill677.jpg

[gamekeeper]

Time well spent

[Bill in Oregon]

Congratulations Earl! As John says, that's time well spent with grandsons indeed.
I have only had Lyman and RCBS lubrisizers but always admired the Star.

[earlmck]

Congratulations Earl! As John says, that's time well spent with grandsons indeed.
I have only had Lyman and RCBS lubrisizers but always admired the Star.

I got the Star years ago when I was shooting revolvers a lot and being able to triple my lubed bullets/hour seemed important to a guy who was still working for a living. As an old retired guy it is merely kinda' nice to have faster production at the lube-size stage. But where the Star really shines is in the production of gas-checked rifle bullets. It is so much nicer to gas check on the Star I bought a batch of duplicate sized dies just so I'd hardly ever have to use the old Lyman to produce a gas checked bullet. I still happily use the Lyman for lubing several plain based bullets but haven't produced a gas-checked bullet on it in years.

Using the Star you don't have to worry about how the check fits on the shank. Bullet in die, press down about level, slide check over top,"whump" it is applied. With the Lyman you could easily enough put a 6.5mm check on a .257 bullet as per Sixgun's recommendation. With the Star (if you so desired) you could probably put the 25 cal check on the 6.5mm bullet. (I'm not recommending that, just saying it'd do it). And it would be put on straight.