Reloading: Lots of Fun — Until Your Kid Starts Shooting

I began reloading ammunition decades ago, initially using an old Lee Loader, a set of those plastic powder measures and a great deal of patience.

Over the years, metallic cartridge reloading has saved me tons of money by not having to purchase factory ammunition. It has been a truly educational experience, and in no small way, humbling. When I shot in competition with either .357 Magnum (using .38 Special loads), 9mm or .45 ACP, the press was always busy.

I graduated from a single-stage to a progressive unit for all of my handgun ammunition, in every caliber except .32 ACP. My fumble fingers have their limits and those small cases are my downfall.

I’ve got loading dies from RCBS, Hornady, Redding and Lyman. Ditto, loading manuals from all of those guys, plus the Nosler volumes, of which recent editions include some of my prose about certain cartridges.

Fun On The Bench

Spending hours at the loading bench is an enjoyable pastime, made even more so by memories of nice mule deer, whitetail and coastal blacktail bucks which fell to my home-grown ammunition. Among those reminiscences is a 355-yard cross-canyon shot on a broad-beamed 2×3-point mule deer buck I tumbled with one shot from a Marlin MR7 in .30-06. The bullet was a white-tipped 180-gr. Nosler AccuBond propelled by a maximum charge of Hodgdon’s Hybrid 100V. My witness was the landowner, who was properly impressed.

There was the 4-point whitetail I sacked on a gloomy November afternoon hunt with a single 120-yard downhill shot using a .257 Roberts launching a 100-gr. Speer boattail pushed out of the muzzle by a full charge of IMR 4895. He staggered and dropped to the snow.

You simply can’t imagine such adventures —you’ve got to live them, and the journey begins at the loading bench.

Topic Galore

This new manual includes one article I suspect my son will find fascinating. It’s Ned Christiansen’s “Building An AR — Assemble Your Own ‘America’s Favorite Rifle.’”

Readers will also find a treatise on “Suppressor Basics” by J.D. Jones plus a separate Jones article on handloading for suppressed firearms, another piece by Christiansen covering gas system lengths and an informative essay clearing up “AR15 Cartridge Confusion,” written by longtime pal Stan Skinner. Lyman’s own Tom Griffin, a fellow whose credentials as Lyman’s technical service manager and head of the company’s Ballistic Laboratory made him the perfect man for the job, edits the book.

Lyman put this volume together like an expensive magazine with a glossy cover, no doubt the handiwork of Lyman’s Elizabeth Friedman, who was graphic designer on this project. It’s perfect bound, with cartridge diagrams and precise measurements for trimming brass. There are several blank pages in the rear for notes and plenty of photos.

Lyman’s AR Reloading Handbook 2nd Edition should be considered a “must-have!” book for anybody who owns a modern sporting rifle and wants to reload his or her own cartridges. As a guy who has turned more than a few pages in reloading manuals, I found this specialty volume to be a gem.

Hopefully, this book will inspire the kid to do his own cartridge work, thus freeing me to follow my own pursuits. It may give him hours of enjoyment, no small amount of pride, and an appreciation for the self-reliance all of us reloaders enjoy.

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