by minnhawk on Sun Aug 18, 2013 10:41 pm
Mentored my nephew (26) today with his first steps to reloading. Started from scratch, had him set up the progressive with two stations, powder and bullet seating. It took him about 20 minutes on the balance scale to get 5.0 gr of 700x to drop, but he hung in there. I had to show him that breathing heavily affected the scale, and I think that convinced him that precision weighing is not easy but critically important. 5 gr. isn't much powder, and overloading or underloading can have some pretty nasty outcomes. He knows accurate powder loads are a BIG deal.
We then worked on OAL and how to accurately set the depth of the 230gr RN projectile. As I had separately sized, primed and belled the brass earlier, he was able to start reloading slowly on the progressive. He got the hang of checking the level of powder dropped into the brass, CHECKING EVERY ROUND. He also got the hang of the rhythm of running a progressive through the two stations. He checked the powder drop on the scale every 10 rounds, and he randomly would drop a finished round into the "go no-go" gauge to check if all was good.
Well, I got him hooked. He reloaded 200 rounds in short order, did the math, and realized this reloading business could save him a lot of money as well as calm his nerves and give him something productive to do on those long winter nights.
My plan was to let him go with a guided "hands-on" approach to have him touch, see, and feel the process. He is a hands-on, visual learner. I sent him off with 50 rounds and the Hornady manual to read through before he returns next weekend. Now that he has experienced part of the process, he will be eager to experience the sizing, priming, and belling, and what he reads in the manual will make sense and be less abstract.
We also ran 60 rounds through the Thompson, just to keep the neighbors on their toes; I love to pick up Thompson-fired brass...
Eleven-Bravo, 1/4 INF, 3ID