old shooter Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 I was going through some of my reloading stuff yesterday, and really got a laugh. I like to save a buck whenever I can, and found possibly the cheapest thing I had ever done. Sure, it doesn't bother me picking up brass, and reloading is another way of saving money, and I might one of the last people that still cast bullets but..... Thinking that bullet lube was way overpriced, I mixed 12 sticks of bullet lube with 3 blocks of "Gulf Wax", you know the kind used in canning foods. I melted it down and poured it back into the clear plastic tubes and stashed it away. It seems to work ok, not any more smokey or dirty than "undiluted" bullet lube. So, I was thinking, what is the cheapest thing you have done, shooting related of course.......... Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tightloop Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 Mike I guess the cheapest thing I did shooting related was to dig out the bullets I fired into the berm to remelt them and recast them. I am a bit beyond that now, but I remember the day when I graduated to "buying" wheel weights to melt them down. It was a relief not to have to explain why I had my pistol and my shovel... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianH Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 When I first started shooting ages ago, I low-mounted a Millett adj. rear sight with a hand file... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dunn Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 Back when I was monetarily challenged I picked up a half-dozen .45 acp mags at a gun show for about 5 bucks a piece. They were in military wrappers (or so I thought) and I figured, hey, they're not Wilson's, but if they are good enough for Uncle Sam, they're good enough for me. Every one of those mags lasted for about fourteen rounds before the feed lips spread to the point the mags wouldn't eject and had to be pounded out of the mag well. If you squeezed them back into dimension they would malfunction in less than 7 rounds. Lesson learned. The other cheapskate memory is a bit fonder. It is of loading hundreds of rounds of .41 mag in my folks livingroom on my Lee hand press using the Lee calibrated dippers, and conning my brother into helping out when the blisters started. This style of reloading is recommended for the dirt poor only! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wide45 Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 I'm hoarding about 50 thousand once fired primers to put up for sale on the classifieds. My range bag is a bowling bag. $15 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricW Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 When I was in Junior High and High School, I reloaded the HARD way: with a Lee Load All, a totally manual reloader. There was no press, you hammered a shell into the sizing die, then pounded it back out with a metal rod on to a priming station to seat the primer. Slow...and dangerous.... I loaded a gazillion rounds that way. I still have stuff I havent shot up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlos Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 Well, making 9mm ammo out of junky old stuff I was GIVEN was pretty cheap (not worth it to reload 9? Blah! free is free). Here is the post: http://64.62.172.100/~brianeno/index.php?a...=ST&f=10&t=5944 Some other skinflint stunts I have pulled: -reloading .45 Russian Wolf steel cases - they are boxer & worked for 2 or 3 relaodings before cracking - got the idea from a '70s reolading manual's statement about how you can reloade old WWII US made steel cases & extractor wear w. steel is just an old wives tale. -Reloading .45 Blazer - good grief, is that cheap or what!??! Trust me on this - you really do not want to try this one. -running out of primers & pulling apart someone else's discarded .45 reloads picked up after a match to salvage the primed case (I always pick up loaded rounds left after a match so that kids don't get ahold of them - I usually throw them into the range box or dump them into the "duds" can every once in a while). I would never use somebody else's reloads, thats not safe - - but I might use their primed cases. -going through my 6x fired 9 Supercomp brass & finding some w/ loose primer pockets, then recycling it into mild 9 Largo loads for an old Astra model 400 blowback from the '30s I have. Thats cheap! Man, it sucks being middle class sometimes (ha ha). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Patrick Sweeney Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 Top this: Burning a pile of used and busted bowling pins to scavenge the lead out, then casting them using old candle stubs as flux, and lubing them with Alox lube bought at a yard sale (the owner has no idea what it was, except it wasn't good for canning; the food acquired a funny taste) then loading them in salvaged .45 cases from the Detroit PD Thompson SMG practice/qual day (no, Ididn't get to shoot, I just go the brass, after sizing the bulge out by driving them through a tapered die with a rod and ball peen hammer. And then paying $37.50 for a Physics textbook. Man, college was an exercise in extremes. I almost forgot: and doing the loading and casting (and studying) while drinking coffee where the filter wasn't changed, just rinsed and re-used. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TBF Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 This all sounds like normal behavior...What am I missing? I pick up FMJs in good condition, salvaged from bowling pins in the hopes that one day I will have enough to make it worth my while to reuse them. You probably think I am kidding, I'm not. Travis F. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Ulberg Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 I have to laugh at cutting the bullet lube with parafin... I had thought the same thing, but haven't cast in quite a while. I couldn't see forking over $30 each for safariland mag pouches, so I bought a sheet of kydex on the internet ($20 delivered) and fashioned my own with a set of tin shears, a butane torch and rivets. After usign them a few months, I found a good set of three 771's for sale used for a good price, but my Cheap Bas!&@*'s s (CB's for short) still get a lot of looks. I still have enough maerials for bout ten mor pouches! I am still working on my AR mag pouch for 3-gun.... So far I have yet to buy anything new gear-wise for this game, excepting some gun parts/replacements and reloading components. But I have to say, my used gun and holster are awesome! Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhgtyre Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 I made a kydex holster for my 625 To say that it is butt ugly is a slander to butts everywhere. It does work though and I do have a bunch more kydex so I am going to try a second revision. I did make an AR mag pouch but it is too big and blocky to be of much use and the ugly factor is out of the park! I have some thinner kydex now so a second shot at that is likely. The dumbest cheap guy thing I have done, in the shooting world, may be the lot of wadcutters I bought for my 586. They were a great deal but are just hell on reloads! Oh well, they make nice holes when I just want some target practice. -ld Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duane Thomas Posted June 2, 2003 Share Posted June 2, 2003 -reloading .45 Russian Wolf steel cases - they are boxer & worked for 2 or 3 relaodings before cracking - got the idea from a '70s reolading manual's statement about how you can reloade old WWII US made steel cases & extractor wear w. steel is just an old wives tale. I do the same thing. I get them for free from a local shooting range. I don't use them for the cost advantage though (I also get my brass for free from a local shooting school - what can I say). And I don't reload it more than once, I leave it on the ground at matches. Because that's the entire reason I use the stuff - to have something I can just leave on the ground. I got tired of having to pick brass at matches, or taking the time to mark my brass to try to get it back, or watching my brass mysteriously disappear every time I had other .45 shooters on the squad even though it was marked. A day when I don't get back all my brass is like a day without sunshine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFD Posted June 6, 2003 Share Posted June 6, 2003 I'm still pretty cheap. A local commercial caster has locked up 99% of the wheel weights in the area. To keep my bullet supply up when that last 1% doesn't come through I go to the club after it rains and attempt to scrape more bullets than dirt into my supply of 5 gallon buckets. Later I use what I call a "sluce box" to separate the bullets from the dirt and then smelt the bullets into cleaned ingots. I can now reclaim around 200 lbs of cleaned ingots in about 9 hours from berm to ingot mould. I shoot around 1600 .45s a month, so this range scrap is usually good to go as-is. I can always add some linotype to perk it up if need be or take the horribly time consuming route of separating hard cast bullets from jacketed bullets (save the cost of the linotype). Final cost for my bullets is around $5 - $8 per 1000 max. The end result is my wife (Mrs. You-have-too-much-gun-stuff) knows I'm doing my best to keep costs down so I no longer get bugged about what I spend. Can even get away with new guns here and there. Now if I could just get her to figure out that there is no such thing as "too much ammo" and that having our spare bedroom turned into a reloading room is perfectly normal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongHair1957 Posted June 6, 2003 Share Posted June 6, 2003 When I was in Junior High and High School, I reloaded the HARD way: with a Lee Load All, a totally manual reloader. There was no press, you hammered a shell into the sizing die, then pounded it back out with a metal rod on to a priming station to seat the primer. Slow...and dangerous....I loaded a gazillion rounds that way. I still have stuff I havent shot up. I Started reading the psts and was going to tell of my days with my load-alls, till I saw yours...I had one in .222 rem, .38-.357 and one in 30-06 that was my dads...I still have the 30-06 model, cause it was dads, I also have his old lee primeing tool for 30-06 size...it is the old kind that does not have a primer feed...you place one in by hand then place the case and squeeze...Boy that reallly speeded up the load process from just the load-all!!! The neat thing about those was that they were easy to take with you to the field or range!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry White Posted June 6, 2003 Share Posted June 6, 2003 I got started reloading with lyman tong tool for 22 hornet ( the rifle was a stevens single shot break open) when I was 12. I would hoard those cases like they were the last ones on earth. I can remerber being down to 6 cases one time and looking for one over an hour before I found it. Christmas that year I got a box of factory ammo, 200 bullets & primers and a can of powder, I was in heaven. I have't owned a hornet in years but at the range last week there a bunch of once fired cases just laying on the bench, I took 6 just for old times sake. Larry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Intel6 Posted June 6, 2003 Share Posted June 6, 2003 Ikytx, You should get yourself another Hornet. The cartridge has had a resurgence and it quite popular now with lots of factory guns available in it. I happen to be a Hornet nut and have 4 rifles and two handguns chambered in it. They are still great fun and I enjoy them all the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
actionshooter Posted June 7, 2003 Share Posted June 7, 2003 A few years ago I was shooting a evening league at a gun shop/range. I was watching a kid sweep fired brass up and shovel it into cardboard boxes. Then I asked what they did with it. He took me out behind the range and told me I could take all I wanted. TWO Suburban loads later!! I have a ton and this stuff is a mess! I real pain to seperate. I figure some day the price of brass will go up like gold Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a-44978 Posted July 6, 2003 Share Posted July 6, 2003 I've heard of reusing cci and wolf cases(hard on the decapper i'm told)and yes i too have spent waaaay too much time bullet pulling,powder saving,primed case reusing. I had a thought about using spent primers as shotgun shot hummmmm,maybe not I got a whole kydex rig i made and as soon as people realized i made um i got swamped with orders Bladetech quite selling it in sheets Too much coffee,too much beer i dunno but i kick myself when i think "I should have been doing dryfire practice"instead of spending 20 mins chasing one good primer accross the shop floor DOE! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j1b Posted July 6, 2003 Share Posted July 6, 2003 Truly my cheapest moment came when I was shooting my .45 and was low on cases. I had a pile of new casings but wanted to save those for big matches so I developed a system. All used but relatively good brass I used in local matches. All cracked brass and used brass that was getting a little old I used in practice. Never really had a problem with the cracked brass - however in Open I never did take the chance. JB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GunDoc Posted July 7, 2003 Share Posted July 7, 2003 When I was shooting a lot of magnum revolvers, I used to separate the ones that were splitting at the mouth, and trim them down to special length, and keep on loading them at the lighter pressures till they finally gave up all together. Doc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dajarrel Posted July 7, 2003 Share Posted July 7, 2003 I haven't found a steady source of tire weights yet so I still find myself at the range mining lead out of the berm. Work intensive, but cheap!!!!! Dennis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reneet Posted April 20, 2005 Share Posted April 20, 2005 It's funny you said not to use it. For a bit I considered just scooping out the solid waste and salvaging the rest. Common sense got the better of me and I tossed the lot and started fresh. Is that like the cheapest thing in the world, or what? Actually debating with yourself whether crapped on media is still good or not. Sometimes I'm not quite right. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's pretty funny. Wondering what else you've done or thought about doing to save a few dollars. I'll have to think on it for me personally. But Jerry M has reloaded blazer (aluminum) cases and shotgun wads. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
et45 Posted April 26, 2005 Share Posted April 26, 2005 And here I thought I was the only one who reloaded Wolf steel cases.I 've had some FTF jams with them so I don't use them in a match. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reneet Posted April 26, 2005 Share Posted April 26, 2005 (edited) [edited] Pretty funny FLEX... but How is that shooting related? Edited April 27, 2005 by Flexmoney Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flexmoney Posted April 27, 2005 Share Posted April 27, 2005 I edited out my post, and some that followed. Not everybody might have got the joke and found it funny. Don't want to offend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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