Bagman
Winter Handloaders Must Be Resourceful
The blue bag with the gold trim may have once held a bottle of spirits,
but in their second life, such bags can be invaluable to winter handloaders.
Okay, it’s mid-winter in the Pacific Northwest where, if it isn’t raining, it is getting ready to rain, and if the mercury dips enough, it will snow.
For a poor serf like me, being resourceful in the effort to shoot, wet tumble and dry one’s brass becomes paramount to continued shooting when the weather conditions allow. I was working on a handloading feature with the venerable .45 Colt as the object of attention. So, when there is no other quick option for keeping my cases cleaned, primed and powdered, I discovered some time ago that pouring the shiny empties into a used flannel bag and hanging it on the brick wall next to my wood-burning stove produces reloadable brass overnight.
I’ve come to prefer wet tumbling because my empties come out of the bath much cleaner than they did out of dry corn cob media. My damp empties go into a distinctive cloth bag for drying.
These handsome blue bags with the gold trim come wrapped around bottles of a really good Canadian whiskey. Over the years, I’ve managed to acquire several of these bags — not all as a result of my own consumption, I’ll have you know! — and I’ve discovered they are actually rather useful for all kinds of chores.
For those who didn’t have the childhood advantage of growing up on a diet of television westerns — at one time they outnumbered detective shows about 3-to-1 with such titles as “Cheyenne,” “Maverick,” “Gunsmoke,” and “Have Gun, Will Travel” — it was impossible for any kid worth his weight in cap guns to not drool when Marshal Dillon or Paladin pulled a hogleg and went to work.
A genuine Colt SAA being invariably beyond my meager budget, when the Ruger New Vaquero came along some years ago with a 7 ½-inch barrel as an option, I raided the piggy bank and went shopping. In the years hence, I have never been disappointed, nor have I experienced an inability to have cartridges available at a moment’s notice.
Dave hangs a cloth bag filled with wet-tumbled brass near
the wood stove to expedite the drying process.
Useful Accessory
My guess is that the producers of the fine distilled spirits north of the border may not have imagined some backwoods yank would put their bags to such a practical use as drying shiny brass. The material is conducive to quick moisture evaporation, and hanging the bag about 18 inches from a hot stovepipe makes fast work.
I keep one of these bags stashed in the console of my truck for picking up brass, either mine or stuff left by sloppy people in gravel pits. All it takes is a good tumble, maybe some trimming after resizing, and in a few hours, I can have the equivalent of a brand new box of ammunition. By my rough count, a typical bag will hold about 150 empty .45 Colts, the same number of .45 ACPs or .41 Magnum empties, and if one squeezes, maybe 175 .38 Specials or .357 Magnum cases.
I suppose if one were really pressed for time, tying the bag closed tightly and tossing into the clothes dryer could speed up the process, but I’d rather not have empties clinking around inside the machine for an hour or two. I’m not in that big a hurry, and domestic tranquility remains intact.
I’ve done this with cartridges in several calibers, mostly straight-walled pistol brass. Being able to brew up fresh ammunition that shines like new when finished has always been personally rewarding, and I presume over the years I’ve saved a lot of money better used for gas and groceries by not rushing down to the sporting goods store to purchase factory ammunition.
The bags aren’t just handy for holding spent or tumbled brass. There are a couple hanging over the reloading bench with “stuff” inside, maybe screws or cleaning patches; something for which I no longer have an original box or bag.
The .45 Colt is a formidable and accurate round, as this image illustrates.
Gun is a Ruger New Vaquero with elk antler grips from Eagle Grips.
About the .45 Colt
As an aside, the .45 Colt is an interesting, and in my opinion, under-rated caliber by too many people who think polymer components and double-stack pistol magazines are all the technology anyone needs to survive an extended emergency.
With the right load, this old warhorse (introduced more than 150 years ago) is a formidable fight-stopper. Don’t believe me? Take a stroll through some Old West cemetery and you might run across monuments to people whose misbehavior was abruptly cut short thanks to the .45 Colt. The cartridge has been involved in some interesting historical incidents, such as the Little Bighorn, the O.K. Corral, the James-Younger fiasco in Northfield, the Dalton Gang’s disaster in Coffeyville, and so forth. The caliber has been associated with such names as Wyatt Earp, Luke Short, Bat Masterson, George Patton, and many others.
The cartridge can be loaded with a variety of propellants, and various bullet weights. Pick up any reloading manual and you will find dozens of load suggestions, for everything from mild recreational shooting to Cowboy Action competition and even hunting. It’s a surprisingly versatile cartridge, and to suggest it is obsolete would be heresy.
Win For Young Adults
Last month, young adults in Pennsylvania won more than a symbolic victory when a three-judge panel of the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided to remand a case back to the District trial court with instructions to issue an injunction prohibiting the state police from arresting 18-20-year-olds for openly carrying firearms during a declared state of emergency.
The case is known as Madison Lara v. Commissioner Pennsylvania State Police. It was brought by the Second Amendment Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition and three private citizens in the affected age group.
What’s interesting about the ruling is the way it confirmed how elections matter. The two judges siding with the plaintiffs were Kent A. Jordan and D. Brooks Smith, both George W. Bush appointees. The dissenting judge was L. Felipe Restrepo, a Barack Obama appointee.
“SAF has maintained all along that 18-20 year olds are unquestionably part of ‘the people’ contemplated by the Second Amendment who have the same rights to keep and bear that any other adult has,” said SAF Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack in a prepared statement.
“There is no language in the Second Amendment that applies only to some age-exclusive subset of the people,” added SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb.
National CCW?
Last month’s introduction of the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2025 (H.R. 38) by Congressman Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) has given anti-gunners, especially governors in restrictive “blue” states, collective heartburn.
President Donald Trump promised to sign a bill if it reaches his desk. Virtually every Second Amendment organization supports the legislation. More than a hundred lawmakers signed on as co-sponsors.
It appears to have momentum, which also alarms the gun prohibition crowd. Readers may want to keep an eye on this bill. Insider is doing likewise.
