Hunter usually does the navigating for us. I don’t tax my little brain over it. We’ve ridden motorcycles thousands of miles on unmarked dirt roads never failing to arrive at the correct spot in the end. Every now and then I’ll ask hunter where the hell we are and he’ll point to his GPS screen and say, “Right there, on the trail.” I didn’t want to appear damaged, it gets rough on the trail once they know you’re compromised so I’d nod my head and mumble something about waypoints, acting like I saw something on Hunter’s GPS other than a featureless grey screen. Thing is, you can’t always have Hunter with you all the time or even most times.
I’ve bought several GPS navigators over the years and all of them suffer from the same deficiencies: they are too small and the monochromatic, grey-on-grey screens are too difficult for my terrible eyes to see. This Christmas CT bought me a Garmin Zumo XT. The XT is a motorcycle-specific GPS that is supposed to be rain tight and the touch screen will work using a gloved finger, they say. It’s not a cheap unit but if you added up all the useless, invisible GPS receivers I’ve bought over the years I coulda bought two of them.
The XT has a ton of features. It will Bluetooth to your phone and give you traffic and road conditions. I guess you can get spoken directions over your intercom thingy. None of that is important to me or is the main thing the XT does best. This Zumo is bright. Garmin’s TFT screen has fantastic contrast and color. I can see the thing in direct sunlight at 80% brightness setting. It’s brighter than my iPhone 11 by several hundred lumens. (Note: I made that up. I didn’t actually measure the lumen output.)
The Garmin Zumo came with a nice handle bar mounting bracket, the kind with the two ball joints and the center tensioning cups. While a good system for street bikes, I had issues mounting the XT to my 2008 Husqvarna. The Husky has ¾-inch to 1-inch tapered handlebars and on the 1-inch diameter section the supplied U-bolt was not quite long enough for the provided lock nuts to actually screw on far enough to lock. Not a big problem as I hacksawed a thin baloney-slice off of the ball mount part and while still not right at least the plastic locking part got a few threads on the U-bolt.
Once I had the bracket mounted on the right side I decided I didn’t like the GPS sticking out in the breeze waiting for a hole to be busted in the housing by one of the many loose rocks Hunter kicks up into my shins, headlight, face shield and fingers. I would pass him if I knew where I was going.
I moved the Zumo to the left side of the handle bar and tucked it behind an accessory LED headlight I installed earlier. Turns out the new position used a narrower section of the handlebar so I didn’t need to hacksaw the bracket after all. Those of you who turn wrenches for a living or sport will be able to predict what happened next.
I was snugging the U-bolt down a little each side-to-side when the bracket broke in two. Rats. With the bracket now useless I had to dig deep into my long history of crappy motorcycle repair. I ended up sawing off the rest of the busted bracket leaving only the ball joint and a chunk of pot metal to serve as a base. Then I through-drilled the ball joint remnant with a ¼-inch drill bit. Once I had the thing weakened beyond all hope I through-bolted the ball Joint to an existing angle aluminum piece. The squared off base contacts the top handlebar clamp, I’m hoping this stops the whole GPS from rotating on the ¼-inch bolt.
It seems to be fairly secure but I’m going to add a small cable with a quick release clip to help keep the Garmin Zumo XT attached to the bike in case something comes loose on the trail. I don’t have a lot of faith in Garmin’s snap-in mounting plate. A couple small tabs of plastic are all that hold the XT to the handlebar bracket.
The wiring is easy on the Garmin Zumo XT, a positive and a negative to 12VDC. I incorporated a power switch so that I can turn the Garmin on or off without using the ignition key. I like to stop and study the screen once and a while and it’s nice to be able to do that with the rest of the bike off. I’ll have to remember to shut the thing down though, hopefully the big red indicator light on the switch will remind me. Another note: If you want to move the Garmin from bike to bike or to your car you’ll need to buy more installation kits. It’s too much trouble to disconnect all the wiring and broken bits of mounting hardware.
It all made for fairly clean installation and I can’t wait to try out that super bright screen on the trail. I’ll do a follow up story on actually using the Garmin Zumo later. Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to find where Hunter stashes his used tires.
Gougers. People who overcharge simply because they can when supplies are low. Someone who takes advantage of a bad situation. There’s a lot of that going on in the ammo and reloading components business today. What’s driving it is extreme demand induced by the pandemic, the breakdown in law and order in some urban areas, a change of administrations, and the resulting ammunition and components shortages. People are buying guns and ammo in unprecedented numbers because they are afraid. It’s being fueled by uninformed and malicious folks on the Internet.
Me? I’m not worried. We’ve been through this before. The pendulum swings both ways, and it always returns to center. It may take a while, but common sense always prevails.
Before all this shortage business began, primers sold for about $34 or $35 per thousand. Gougers have kicked that up to around $100 per thousand, and even at that price, they are difficult to find. Thanks, but I’ll take a pass. I’ll wait it out. It’s that pendulum thing I mentioned above.
I imagine it’s tough being in the ammo business these days. For the most part, the folks who make ammo are the same folks who make reloading components, and with the unprecedented demand for ammo, their components are necessarily being consumed by their own factories. I get that, too.
This video from the CEO of an ammo and components company popped up in my feed yesterday, and I think it’s a good one. You might want to watch it.
I get it, Mr. Vanderbrink. The trolls who start rumors, spread rumors, and post stupid stuff on the Internet are as despicable as the gougers, and I give Vanderbrink a lot of credit for calling it like it is. I’d call the trolls morons, but that would be an insult to morons everywhere. You folks in the ammo business keep doing what you’re doing. We’ll be here as loyal customers when the shortages end, as they always do.
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You’ve thought about reloading, you’ve read stuff from us and others about the benefits of reloading, and you want to do it. But how?
Hey, I was born into it. My Dad was a reloader and I had a pretty good idea what to do when I wanted to start, but the urge to do so didn’t hit until I was a young guy in the Army at Fort Bliss. I was lucky. The guy who ran the Fort Bliss Gun Club (Roy Johnson) had a room set up for just that purpose and he walked me through the process some 50 years ago. But Roy has gone on to his reward, you’re probably not stationed at Fort Bliss, and you want to get into the game. That’s what this blog focuses on, and in particular, the equipment you’ll need to get started.
Inside the Fort Bliss Gun Club. This is a fabulous place where I spent a lot of time as a young Army dude. Next time I’m in El Paso you can bet I’ll stop in again.
Reloading Advantages
There are three advantages to reloading: Cost, accuracy, and availability.
Generally, reloaded ammo costs less than factory ammo, and in some cases (especially for more exotic rifle ammunition), the savings are huge. For example, factory .416 Rigby ammo costs $170 for a box of 20 rounds; I can reload .416 Rigby ammo for well under a buck a round.
From an accuracy perspective, reloading is the only way to go. You can tailor a load to a particular firearm by varying bullet type, bullet seating depth, crimp, powder type, powder charge, brass, and primers to arrive at a combination that delivers superior accuracy (and it’s fun doing this). I have rifles that shoot 3-inch groups at 100 yards with factory ammo; with my custom reloads, I can get half-inch groups.
Today, if you reload and you’ve laid in a good stock of components, you can reload your way through any ammo shortages. Nobody has .45 ACP, 9mm, or .223 ammo in stock right now; I have enough components on hand to reload thousands of rounds. I’m on the range two or three times a week enjoying my shooting hobby while other folks are online whining about not being able to buy ammo.
What You Will Need
The things you will need to start reloading fall into two categories: The reloading equipment, and the reloading components. The reloading components are the things that combine to bring an empty brass cartridge case back to life (that includes the bullets, the propellant, and the primers). The reloading equipment includes the gear you need to take the components and turn them into a ready-to-fire cartridge.
If you want to get into the reloading game, I believe the best way to do so is to buy a complete equipment reloading package from one of the suppliers like RCBS or Lee. That’s the RCBS kit shown in the big photo above. I’ll talk about it, the Lee kit, and a couple of others further down in this blog. First, let’s review each bit of gear.
The Reloading Press
That’s the lever-operated press that accepts the dies (more on that in a second) for reloading your ammo, and sometimes the press includes a mechanism for seating primers in the cartridge case after the old primer has been removed. In other cases, a separate priming tool is used. Presses are offered by RCBS, Lee, Lyman, Hornady, and other companies.
The Lee Challenger press. It’s a decent unit at a decent price, and an ideal way to get started in reloading.
Dies
The dies are cartridge specific. For handgun cartridges, the die set usually includes three dies; for rifle cartridges, the die set usually includes two dies. The good news is that die threads are pretty much standardized, and every company’s dies will fit every company’s reloading press. In other words, if you buy Lee dies, they’ll work on an RCBS press. If you buy RCBS dies, they’ll work on a Lee press. Dies are offered by several companies, with the most popular brands being Lee and RCBS.
A three-die pistol set from RCBS. The first die knocks out the old primer and resizes the fired case. The second die flares the case mouth to accept a new bullet. The third die seats the new bullet and, if you want, crimps the bullet in place.An RCBS two-die rifle set. The first die knocks out the fired primer and returns the case to its original dimensions. The second die seats the bullet and, if desired, crimps it in place.A three-die pistol cartridge set from Lee Precision. Lee includes the shell holder with their die sets.
Shell Holder
You will need a shell holder for the cartridges you wish to reload. That’s the piece that holds the cartridge case in place so the press can push it up into the die and then extract it from the die. RCBS does not include the shell holder with their die sets (so you’ll need to buy RCBS shell holders separately); just about all other die makers do (when you buy their dies, the die set includes a shell holder for that cartridge).
A shell holder. You need to buy these separately if you buy RCBS dies.
A Powder Dispenser
This is a device for dropping a precisely-metered powder charge into each cartridge case. There are fancy (read: expensive) electronic powder dispensers, but you don’t need those to get started and a lot of folks (myself included) don’t like them. A simple mechanical dispenser will work fine (as mine has been doing for 50 years). Both RCBS and Lee offer good powder dispensers; the Lee is substantially less expensive.
An RCBS powder dispenser on the left, the Lee powder dispenser on the right.
A Powder Scale
This is a simple balance beam scale to allow you to measure the weight of the propellant charge and adjust the powder dispenser to throw that charge. There are electronic scales, too, but they add complexity and considerable expense where none is required. Again, the dominant brands are Lee and RCBS.
A simple Lee balance beam reloading scale. These scales can measure to a tenth of a grain.
Cartridge Trays
When we reload, we use a cartridge tray (to hold the cartridges as we work through the process of reloading). A variety of manufacturers offer these.
An RCBS cartridge tray. These are available from several manufacturers. I’ve been using mine for nearly 50 years.
A Case Lube Pad
This is a simple foam pad. You put case lube on the pad and roll the brass cases on it to lubricate the exterior prior to running them through the resizing die (the first die used in the reloading process). If you have a straight wall pistol cartridge, you can buy tungsten carbide dies that don’t require lubing the cartridge cases. If you’re going to reload 9mm, .38 Special/.357 Magnum, .45 Auto, or .45 Colt, my advice is to spend the few extra bucks and get the carbide dies.
An RCBS case lube pad. You put a bit of case lube on the pad and roll the brass on it to lube the cases prior to running them through the resizing die.
Case Lube
This is the lube used as described above. To mention it again, if you’re going to reload straight wall pistol cartridges and you buy tungsten carbide dies, you won’t need case lube (or the case lube pad).
RCBS case lube.
Alternatively, you can buy spray-on case lubes, which eliminate the need for the case lube pad. I’ve tried spray-on case lubes and I prefer using the pad and case lube instead. Other reloaders like the spray-on approach better.
A Primer Seating Tool
Some reloading equipment companies incorporate a primer seating tool in their press; others offer separate primer seating tools. I have an RCBS press that came with the primer seating tool, but I like using a manual hand priming tool instead. Several manufacturers offer these; I use one from Lee.
The Lee hand priming tool. These work well. You can feel each primer seating and better control seating depth with these hand priming tools.
A Bench
You may already have a sturdy workbench where you can mount the reloading press; if not, there are reloading-specific benches available.
A Lee reloading bench. These work well if you don’t have a workbench for mounting your press.
A Reloading Manual
There are several available, including the excellent offerings from Sierra, Speer, Hornady, and Lyman. Don’t think you can skip this; a good reloading manual is a must-have item for any reloader. They all explain the reloading process at the beginning, and they include safe recommended load levels for nearly all cartridges. I’ve acquired several reloading manuals over the years and they are all good; my favorites are the ones from Lyman. Others are published by bullet manufacturers (these include the manuals from Hornady, Speer, and Sierra) and those manuals include loads only for their bullets. The Lyman manual is more generic. But like I said, they’re all good.
I have reloading manuals going back 50 years. The Lyman manuals are probably the best.
That’s the reloading equipment. In addition to that, you’re going to need the ingredients for the cartridges you want to reload. That includes the brass cases, the bullets, the powder, and the primers.
Brass Cartridge Cases
You can buy virgin brass online, you can buy once-fired brass at the range or at most gunstores, or you can do like most of us have done: Save your brass when you shoot factory ammo and reload it.
.35 Whelen brass waiting to be charged with propellant. This ammo costs $43 for a box of 20 factory rounds (and you can’t find anybody who has it in stock right now); I can reload it for under 50 cents a round.
Bullets
You’ll need bullets to reload your ammo. There are lots of options here, and they basically break down into either cast or jacketed bullets. I’m a big fan of cast bullets for handgun and reduced velocity rifle reloads, and I use jacketed bullets for full-bore factory level (high velocity) rifle loads. Most folks these days order bullets online from reloading suppliers like MidwayUSA, Graf’s, MidSouth, Powder Valley, Natchez Shooting Supplies, and others. Smaller gun stores are disappearing, and you usually don’t find decent prices at the big chain stores.
Cast bullets waiting to be loaded into .45 ACP cases.
Propellant
For lack of a better term, we usually call propellants “powder,” and there are a wide variety of powders available. The reloading manuals show which powders work best for the cartridge you wish to reload.
Unique propellant and my RCBS powder dispenser. The reloading manuals will help you select the powder you need. Unique is a good general purpose propellant I’ve used for a variety of handgun cartridges and a few cast bullet rifle loads.
Primers
The primer is the component that lights the candle when you pull the trigger. There are several primer suppliers. The trick today is finding them, as there has been a run on primers since the pandemic began. If you can find primers in a local shop, buy them. The same suppliers listed above for bullets also sell primers (they are all out of stock now, but that will change as supply catches up with demand).
Winchester primers being loaded into my Lee hand priming tool. Other primer makes include Remington, CCI, Federal, and a few more.
The Best Equipment Approach: A Complete Kit
As I mentioned at the start of this blog, I believe the best way to get into the game is to buy a complete equipment reloading package from one of the reloading equipment suppliers. My advice if you are a new reloader is to go with the Lee package. It’s the least expensive and if you decide that reloading is not for you, you’ve minimized your cash outlay. I should add, however, that I don’t know anybody who ever tried reloading who didn’t get hooked on it. It is a marvelous hobby, and I believe it is as much fun as shooting.
I’ve used reloading equipment over the years from all the manufacturers. My personal setup is centered around an RCBS Rockchucker, but equipment from any of the suppliers is good. Basically, you can’t go wrong in this game from an equipment perspective. With that said, let’s take a look at what’s out there.
The Lee Challenger reloading kit. These were sold out on Amazon (and everywhere else) when this blog was published. Keep an eye on the Amazon site; it’s a good place to order the kit.
There’s only one problem with the Lee Challenger reloading kit: It’s such a good deal (well under $200 for the entire kit) that literally everyone is out of stock right now. As you know, we’re going through unprecedented times in the shooting world (guns, ammo, and reloading components are sold out due to the civil insurrection in many large cities, a new anti-gun administration on the horizon, and the global pandemic). That will change, but at this instant, no one I could find has the Lee kit in stock.
The RCBS reloading kit. RCBS makes high quality equipment that will last a lifetime. It costs more, but it’s worth it.
I’ve been using RCBS equipment for the last 50 years, and I believe it to be the best. It is built to last. If I couldn’t get the Lee package as a newbie, or if your budget will allow it, I’d go with RCBS equipment. At about $400, it’s just over twice the price of the Lee kit, but it’s still a great deal compared to buying all the different equipment items separately. The RCBS package shown above includes an electronic scale instead of a beam scale, a powder trickler (it allows you to finesse adding individual powder kernels to attain a precise charge weight), and a couple of case preparation tools that the Lee kit doesn’t include.
Lyman is another outfit offering a complete reloading kit:
Lyman’s reloading equipment package.
What’s a bit different about the Lyman kit is that it comes with a turret press, which allows you to mount all the dies in the press head and rotate them as you progress through the various reloading steps. I’m not a big fan of this approach; other folks are. The Lyman kit is just under $1000; the turret press and the inclusion of a case trimmer are what drive the price to that level.
Hornady’s reloading package. I have the least experience with Hornady reloading gear, and I’m not wild about their dies. Hornady bullets are fantastic.
The Hornady kit is about $550. That’s substantially less than the Lyman kit, but more than either the Lee or the RCBS kits.
So there you have it. Remember that no matter which reloading kit you buy, you’ll still need dies and a shellholder specific to your cartridge. You’ll probably want to purchase more equipment as your reloading interest develops, including more dies (so you can reload more calibers), case cleaning and polishing accessories, a micrometer, and more. But what we’ve outlined here will get you started and keep you in the game for years.
In this blog we’ve covered the equipment you’ll need to get into reloading. If you would like to read about how to use this equipment, we have you covered there, too. We have a bunch of information on reloading various cartridges on our Tales of the Gun page, and a complete series on reloading handgun ammo that you can review here:
With all the home projects I’ve been doing lately I haven’t had much time for motorcycle hijinks. Poor Berk is having to carry the blog’s content-load all by himself. While I may not have moto-content I do have a few new toys to review, one of them being the APW2700C pressure washer.
Normally I like electric power for infrequently used power tools and I have a Harbor Freight electric pressure washer that does everything I need it to do with only one hitch. That hitch being the amperage the washer draws is so great it doesn’t like running on a long extension cord. That’s a problem at the Love Shack where the (unpowered) carport is 100 feet from the shack. Pressure washing out there is impossible unless you have a fairly good-sized generator to run the washer.
Another place the electric washer won’t work is on Christine, the MGB GT project as it is a fair distance from the shed at Tinfiny Ranch. I could move the car closer but there is so much rat guano inside I’d rather field clean it where she sits. In anticipation of your next question, ”Why not move one of the 35,000 generators you seem to have stacked at Tinfiny Ranch?” I say that kind of attitude will get you no new tools.
I bought the APW2700C pressure washer because it was cheap, had good reviews and it’s a horizontal crankshaft engine. The vertical crank pressure washers are ok, I guess, but if the high-pressure pump quits the engine is pretty much useless. The horizontal crank prime mover can be repurposed into any number of mini bikes, go-carts or log splitters.
I got mine on sale for around $200 and that’s really cheap compared to the average $350 price tag for a gas-powered washer. Shipping was free also! The quality looks really good with jewel like bits and pieces scattered all over. The unit even came with a quart of oil.
The APW2700C pressure washer is delivered broken down in a smaller box so there are a few parts to assemble. The handle snaps into the frame of the washer and a wand holder bolts on the side. Other than that, connect up the hose, wand and choose a tip and the unit is ready to go.
When the time came to blast the rat poo out of the MGB GT’s engine room the pressure washer started up second pull and ran perfectly. There are three different tips to alter the spray pattern but I’ve only used the wide pattern. The high pressure hose seems plenty long and the machine came with a soap dispenser bottle should you decide to mix detergent with the spray.
I’m happy with the APW2700C pressure washer, and I’m amazed at how good this pressure washer looks for only 200 bucks but since most of my possessions are junk I may have a skewed idea of what good means. The 2700 in the product name refers to the amount of pressure the unit supposedly makes. I have no way of measuring the output pressure but it’s plenty strong. It blew the paint off the MGB’s valve cover but didn’t remove the body color paint on the sides of the engine room.
I’ve got a few more pressure washing jobs for the APW2700C pressure washer and then I’ll drain the fuel until I need it again. I have no idea how long the washer will last but with my home-shop duty cycle it might be years before I find out.
This could be a long blog read or a short one. It’s your call. I have two YouTube videos today that are pretty amazing, in my opinion. One is short and one is long.
By way of background, my first job as an engineer was on the F-16 program at General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas. The reason I guess that’s significant is a few years ago I came across this video, Six Turning Four Burning, and as I watched it, I recognized the General Dynamics plant where I worked in the background. The video is an excerpt from Strategic Air Command, a 1950s movie starring Jimmy Stewart. It features the Convair B-36 bomber, an airplane with six radial piston engines and four jet engines (hence the six turning, four burning title). I think you’ll enjoy it.
Yesterday, I was channel surfing on Netflix and I found a documentary about the B-36. That had my attention, because when I worked at General Dynamics 40 years ago, there were still guys there who had worked on the B-36 engineering development program. They spoke about the B-36 in reverential tones, and to them, it was perhaps mankind’s greatest accomplishment.
Everything about the B-36 was Texas sized. It had a wingspan larger than a 747. The tail was so tall they had to raise the aircraft nose 18 feet to get the tail to clear the Convair plant exit as these giants came off the assembly line. I don’t know what impressed me more…the aircraft itself, or the way those oldtimers talked about it.
The last B-36 built at the Convair plant in Fort Worth, Texas. The nose had to be raised to allow the tail to clear the huge doors at the end of the mile-long indoor assembly line. I worked in that plant on the F-16.
The B-36 documentary I found on Netflix is also on YouTube. This video is about an hour long, but it’s a good one, and if you like the kinds of things you see here on the ExhaustNotes blog I think you’ll enjoy it. I sure did.
Even though I lived in Fort Worth and spent a ton of time on the Carswell AFB runway working F-16 issues, I had no idea how prominently Fort Worth and a man named Amon Carter figured into the B-36 story. The B-36 movie above educated me on that topic. When I lived in Fort Worth, I visited the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, which has perhaps the world’s greatest collection of Frederic Remington paintings and sculptures. One that really spoke to me was Remington’s Old Stagecoach of the Plains. It was a huge painting, so realistic I could almost see the stagecoach moving and hear it creaking and rattling. It was awesome.
Frederic Remington’s Old Stagecoach of the Plains, on display in the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas.
If you are ever in the Fort Worth area, I think the Amon Carter museum on Camp Bowie Boulevard is a “must see” destination.
I’ve used many different types of rust removers in my somewhat futile effort to keep old clunkers on the road. Ospho is okay on metal but not so good on aluminum, cider vinegar is great but very slow working and is acidic but the best one I’ve found is Evapo-Rust.
This fairly large container of Evapo-Rust can be bought online for less per ounce than the local big-box stores. If the stuff weren’t so expensive I’d use it to clean the inside of rusty gas tanks. As it is I can buy a new gas tank for about twice the cost of enough Evapo-Rust to fill the old, rusty tank
I’ve soaked zinc carburetor bodies in Evapo-Rust for a week without eating the soft base material. Rubber parts seem unaffected after a bath in Evapo-Rust. I don’t think it will eat carburetors ever but I haven’t tried it as long as ever. Evapo-Rust cleans the gooey carb residue along with the powdery zinc corrosion equally well. The brass carb parts come out looking like new. I haven’t found any metal the Evapo-Rust won’t clean. I’m sold on the stuff for carbs.
Evapo-Rust is great for chrome or zinc plated nuts and bolts and all the little doo-dads that need de-rusting during a motorcycle restoration. One example is the chrome headlight fork ears on the old Kawasaki 900. They were lightly rusted between the folded parts of the ears and there was no way to get down in there to clean them. A few days soaking in Evapo-Rust saw them nice and clean. After washing the parts with water I give them a shot of oil and they haven’t re-rusted. (Note: I live in New Mexico so rust is not much of a problem out here.)
Like most things in life there are a couple catches: You want to avoid leaving parts in an uncovered container of Evapo-Rust for a month like I did. The Evapo-Rust evaporates down into a thick, dark, almost plastic mass that glues itself to your part and the container. It’s a real chore to pull the part out of the container. The freebased Evapo-Rust is the consistency of really strong taffy candy. That gunk is harder to get off than the original rust! Check your parts every week or so and seal the lid if you can.
Evapo-Rust does not work as well on parts too large to submerge. I tried it on some rusty corrugated roof panels. Following Evapo-Rust instructions I soaked rags with the product and laid the wet rags on the rusty spots. Then I covered the rags with a large sheet of plastic to keep the area moist. After a couple days the rags were stuck to the roofing. I used water and elbow grease to pull the rags off. The rust was somewhat cleaned up but I think regular Ospho works better on large surfaces.
If you’ve followed the story about my resurrected Star reloader, you’ve read about good buddy Bruce Williams’ Star Machine Works. Bruce bought the fixtures and other production equipment from the original Star Machine Works company, and he has made a business of restoring complete reloaders and offering parts for these grand old machines. He is the go to guy when it comes to Star stuff, and his work is stunning. My Star resurrection is a ham-and-eggs approach by a guy who really didn’t know what he was doing bringing a Star back to life; Bruce’s work is the gold standard. Bruce sent a few photos to me of his restored Star reloaders, and I thought I would share them with you here.
Here’s a photo of Star that came to Bruce for restoration in the “before” condition:
Here’s an “after” photo of that same fully-restored Star:
Here are a few closeup photos showing a few of Bruce’s other restorations:
Bruce’s prices on a restored Star reloader are, in my opinion, way too low. I know the amount of work I put into mine to get it working, and there’s no way I would sell it for what Bruce gets for one of these machines. Had I known what a Star reloader is (and what the machine can do), I would have just bought a restored Star from Bruce. His work is impressive.
Check out our reloading and other firearms-related stories here.
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In between pouring slabs of concrete inside the shed I managed to get started on the MGB rat poo clean up. Several more doses of bleach were splashed around the interior of the car and wearing gloves and a N100 mask I started hauling junk out into New Mexico’s bright, November Sunshine. I’m hoping the Sun’s radiation will partially sterilize the hanta-contaminated bits.
And what a collection of bits! A cylinder head with the valves installed upside down along with a complete rocker assembly is the big score. I haven’t found any valve springs to go with the head but I’m guessing you can still buy those parts.
I wonder if my GT had the head replaced at some point and these are the old pieces or maybe the engine is shot and these were planned replacements? We will have to find out later because the owner died before he could finish the GT project. If you’ve ever read Steven King’s Christine you’ll have a good idea of the eerie vibe that comes from linking together the abandoned logic chain of a dead man’s life.
A real oddity is the front engine plate. These never go bad so why would an extra plate be under 6-inches of rat guano? I also dug out a tiny clutch and pressure plate that I assume fits the GT. I found several pulleys that look like they belong on a water pump and a harmonic balancer.
Two more wheels were inside, giving me 6 total. The extra wheels will come in handy as some of the tires are dry rotted and won’t hold air. I like the pressed metal Rostyle wheels, they look very mid-1970’s and are both strong and simple. Having been stored inside the car the extras are less rotted and should inflate enough to move the car from its sunken grave.
Included in the haul of parts are two carburetor heat shields, an intake manifold and a rocker cover. There’s a piece to the transmission that the shifter connects to and another shifter stick. I’ll have to get under the car to see if the transmission is all there. Then there’s the crankcase breather that bolts onto the side of the engine.
Under the back floor is a well to hold the spare tire. These tire changing chocks and emergency reflectors were nestled next to the spare. I wonder if they are original equipment?
A snazzy 1-into-2 tail pipe with muffler was inside the car also. The car was full of junk but the front seat area is relatively clear, if you don’t mind sitting in rat poo.
Christine’s original owner included three straight, non-rusted wheel trim rings with his Devil’s deal. I’m totally set for wheels now.
The funny part about all this junk is that the engine in Christine looks to be all there. Maybe the thing was rebuilt and the junk is leftovers. I can’t say, but it looks like I have plenty of parts. I have another plastic box of GT stuff still to look through. I saw a Weber carb in there and some other items of interest that we will get to later on in this resurrection.
You’ve been following the Star resurrection, and if you haven’t, you can get the earlier Star stories here. This blog wraps up the last few bits and pieces on the Star. The resurrected Star is fully operational now and I’ve been making ammo on it. In a future blog, I’ll do a video showing the machine in action. I would have done it for today’s blog, but I’m out of empty cartridge cases. That’s a good problem…I’ve got to get to the West End Gun Club to shoot up some ammunition so I can reload again!
This blog covers the last few details, the last few bits and pieces I cleaned up, a part or two here and there, a few adjustments, and mounting the Star on my reloading bench…so here we go.
Mounting the Star
I needed to secure my Star reloader to my reloading bench. That necessitated drilling four pilot holes for the mounting screws, and two holes beneath the reloader (one for the finished rounds to drop through, and the other for the old primers to drop through). Here’s what the holes in the bench look like (the upper hole is for the finished rounds and the smaller hole is for the old primers).
When the Star reloader operates, finished rounds drop from the bottom of the machine, which is why I needed that bigger hole you see above. When used primers are punched out of the fired case (we call this decapping), they, too, drop from the bottom of the machine. That’s what the little hole in the photo above is for.
The finished Star mounts to the bench with four countersunk wood screws. It looks really good.
Tool Head
The tool head is the piece that holds the dies, the powder dispenser, and a few other things. It was basically rusted all over. I went to work on the sides with Scotchbrite and Kroil, and the tool head cleaned up nicely.
The arrows in the above photo point to key components that mount on the tool head. From left to right, we have the double charge safety (more on that in a bit), the priming lever actuator (which also mounts the came for the Hulse case feed mechanism), the decapping and resizing die (this brings the case back to its specification dimensions), and the case flaring die (this puts a bell on the case mouth to allow the new bullet to enter the case).
Primer Feed Cam
The primer feed cam is a knife-like looking thing that mounts to the tool head. As explained in the blog on the case feed mechanism, this cam moves up and down with the tool head and actuates a lever, which in turns pushes a slider with a primer underneath the decapped case. The primer feed cam was rusty so I cleaned it with Scotchbrite. The part was originally blued, so I applied cold blue to the part to bring it back to near-original condition. It looks good.
Powder Dispenser Corrections
When you reload, one of the things you have to pay attention to is the powder charge. Too little, and you can get a bullet stuck in the barrel; too much, you risk blowing the gun up. With propellants like Bullseye (which occupy very little of the available cartridge case volume), that’s a real serious concern. One of things I wanted to do was make sure that the Star’s powder dispenser was dropping the right amount of propellant. You may remember from our blog on the powder dispenser that my Star has a powder bar marked 2.7 GR BE, which is the bar for 2.7 grains of Bullseye. That’s exactly what I wanted, so it was time to make sure that’s what the dispenser was serving.
I added Bullseye powder to the powder hopper, cycled the powder slide a few times to throw a charge, and then I cycled it once more to capture a charge in my RCBS powder scale pan to weigh it. To my surprise, I found that the powder dispenser dropped about 2.2 grains of Bullseye instead of the 2.7 grains it was supposed to dispense.
I had an idea about what might be causing the problem, but before I tore into the powder dispenser, I thought I’d check with good buddy Bruce at Star Machine Works. Bruce knows more about these machines than any man alive. Bruce told me that in his experience, the Star 2.7 GR BE slides throw over the specified weight to give 2.9 to 3.0 grains, not under as I was experiencing.
I thought this for a bit and realized I probably had residual oil in the dispenser from when I cleaned it, causing the Bullseye powder to clump up, and I was right. Take a look:
I cleaned the dispenser with alcohol to get all the oil out, let it dry, reassembled it, and tried it again. Yep, Bruce was right…it was throwing right at 2.9-3.0 grains of Bullseye. I thought that would probably be okay (0.3 grains of powder is probably about what a fly poops), but I knew that 2.7 grains was the secret sauce for good accuracy in 38 Special in my Model 52 Smith and Wesson, and that’s what I wanted. I was thinking about when I looked at the powder slide again, and what do you know, I was once again blown away by how clever these Star folks were. There was an adjustment in the powder slide. It’s a little set screw in the powder slide, and by screwing it in or out you can adjust the volume of the powder slide cavity (and therefore the charge weight). Very clever, indeed.
I screwed the set screw in to reduce the cavity volume by what I guesstimated would be 0.3 grains, and I got it right on the first try. The dispenser drops exactly 2.7 grains of Bullseye now.
On that issue of overcharging a case: The real concern is that you inadvertently double charge a case. That could be disastrous. The risk could be heightened, I think, by the fact that you have to manually advance the Star’s shell plate after each pull of the lever. The mechanism does not automatically advance each time, and if someone wasn’t paying careful attention, an inadvertent double charge could occur. Well, the Star folks thought of that, too. The Star reloader incorporates a gizmo called the safety cam.
The Star Reloader Safety Cam
This thing is very clever, which seems to be a hallmark of everything on the Star. It’s a toggling guard sort-of-deal on the left side of the reloader that I cleaned with Scotchbrite and Kroil. You can see it in the photo below.
Take a look at the red and yellow arrows in the photo above. That blued-steel Y-shaped toggle guard translates back and forth on its pedestal. There’s a wire spring underneath the guard that makes it naturally flip to the position you see the photo above. Now, look at the post beneath the tool head (the yellow arrow points to it). If you attempt to operate the lever and lower the tool head (which would also operate the powder dispenser and drop 2.7 grains of Bullseye into the cartridge case beneath the powder dispenser), that post will hit the toggle and stop further tool head downward motion. When that happens, no powder will drop. We want that, because the case sitting below the powder dispenser has already been charged with propellant.
Okay, this is going to get a little complicated, so bear with me. The Star reloader’s shell plate does not automatically advance. You have to manually advance the shell plate as a separate action (it isn’t slaved to pulling the reloader’s lever). Now, imagine you’ve pulled the lever in the previous step, doing all the things that makes happen (knocking out the old primer, resizing the case, inserting a primer in the next case, flaring a case mouth, dropping 2.7 grains of Bullseye into the primed and sized case, and seating a bullet and crimping the case). Wow, that’s a lot. Now it’s time to manually rotate the shell plate to the next position. When we do that, the finished cartridge (new primer, new powder, new bullet, crimped bullet) advances into the safety cam toggle, rotating the toggle toward us.
You can see all this in the photo above. The safety cam toggle rotates toward us (indicated by the red arrow), pushed there by the completed cartridge case just before that case drops through the reloader (the case is indicated by the yellow arrow). When the safety cam toggle moves toward us, the post mounted on the tool head (indicated by the green arrow) now has a clear shot at a hole in the shell holder (it’s no longer obstructed by the safety cam toggle), and the tool head can be fully lowered. The new cartridge drops through the reloader, through the hole in the reloading bench shown at the top of this blog, and into a box waiting below the bench. When the completed cartridge drops through the reloader and the lever is raised, the safety cam toggle’s spring pushes it back to the natural position, and the lever cannot be fully lowered again until the next cartridge case pushes the safety cam toggle to the safe position. It’s clever and it’s complicated, but it’s simple and it prevents dropping the tool head twice on the same cartridge (thereby preventing a double charge).
Seating and Crimping Die Adjustment
The final die in the tool head is the seating and crimping die. It does two things. It seats the new bullet in the cartridge case (it pushes the bullet in to the correct depth), and it roll crimps the cartridge case around the new bullet.
Seating depth and crimp are made through two adjustments. There’s a locknut on the seating die beneath the tool head to lock the die in place, and there’s another locknut on the seating post to lock it into position. Crimp is adjusted by positioning and locking the entire die in the tool head, and bullet seating depth is adjusted by how far the seating post is threaded into the die body and then locked in place with its locknut (see the red arrows in the photo below).
Case Feed Tube Support
The last item I needed to add was the case feed tube support. You may remember that I jury-rigged an external support from a coat hangar. It was definitely a bit of Bubba engineering, but hey, it worked. Good buddy Mike saw that, felt a wave of pity and a willingness to help, and asked me if I wanted a part that he had. I said yep, Mike shipped it to me, and here it is installed on my machine.
This project has come together very nicely. I just loaded another 50 rounds of .38 Special with the Star. I used a different bullet (the Hursman 158-grain cast flat point, which is what necessitated the bullet seating depth change described above). The Star sure did a nice (and fast) job. I loaded 50 rounds in less than 10 minutes. This thing is really cool and I am getting used to the tempo and the hand-eye-coordination/feel of the thing. At first, I felt like I almost needed another hand to operate the Star because there’s so much going on, but I got the hang of it very quickly. You only have to do three things each cycle:
Advance the shell plate one position (you do that manually on these machines; the mechanism doesn’t advance the cases).
Put a bullet in the charged shell at the back of the press.
Pull the lever down and then bring it back up.
While doing the above, you need to pay attention to the powder magazine, the primer magazine, and the case feed tube to make sure each has not run out of the components it feeds. The Star reloader really is a slick device, and it works great.
As I mentioned in one of the earlier blogs on the Star, these machines ruled the roost for high-volume reloading for a cool half century. At one point back in the day, a Star reloader sold for north of a thousand dollars, and there was a 2-year wait to get one. It’s easy to see why. This is a nice piece of equipment. If you’re a gearhead, a gadget guy, a shooter, and a reloader (and I check all four boxes), you can’t help but love a Star reloader.
Do you enjoy reading about bringing old stuff back to life? You’ll love the Resurrections page!
Like the title says, this is a story within a story. It’s about using primer pickup tubes with my resurrected Star reloader, and how Lady Luck smiled on me yet again.
First, a bit of background. There are a few approaches in the reloading world for transferring primers from the primer box into the reloader. In our general series on reloading, I showed how to use the Lee primer tool, which is what I generally use when I’m loading on a single stage press like my RCBS Rockchucker. Another approach is to use a primer pickup tube and a primer tray. See, the deal is that you don’t want to touch the primers with your bare fingers. You might get skin oils on the primer, and that could make the primer inert. As explained earlier, in this game, you want all the primers to be “ert.”
The first step is to transfer primers from the box they come in into a primer tray, like you see below.
That green circular deal on the left in the photo above is the primer tray. It consists of a base and a lid. You take the lid off and drop the primers into the base, like you see below.
When you do that, though, invariably some of the primers will face up and some will face down. We want them all facing down in the tray’s base, and we get that by jiggling the base. There are little circumferential ridges molded into the base, and when you jiggle the tray, it makes all the primers face down (see below).
Get ready for more cleverness here, folks. What we do next is put the lid back on the primer tray, invert it, and then remove the base from the lid. That leaves us with the lid, and all the primers in it are facing up (see below).
At this point, we pick up the primers from the tray using a primer pickup tube like you see in the photo below.
The tube you see in the photo above is an RCBS primer pickup tube. It’s a hollow tube with a spring catch on one end and a spring clip on the other. What you do is take that tube and push it down (spring end down) on top of each primer. That stacks the primers, one on top of the other, in the tube. Then you invert it over the primer magazine on the Star reloader, remove the spring clip, and all the primers in the pickup tube drop into the Star’s primer magazine.
Star reloaders originally had a brass primer pickup tube, but that didn’t come with the one I have. I’m not complaining; my Star reloader was free. And I figured I’d just use an RCBS primer pickup tube, because I knew had three or four of those stashed away somewhere. But I couldn’t find the things. Then I remembered I had put a bunch of reloading odds and ends in a 50 cal ammo can somewhere, and I went through maybe 10 ammo cans before I found it. I used the RCBS primer pickup tube and I had to hold it carefully in alignment with the Star’s primer magazine when transferring the primers from the inverted tube, pulling the pin, and letting the primers fall into the Star brass primer magazine. It worked just fine. It wasn’t the original Star gear, but hey, you go to war with the Army you have.
After I did that, I went on to other things. I thought I was doing pretty good, you know, finding those RCBS primer pickup tubes, but the box they were in kept playing over and over again in my mind. Something was tickling the neurons, but I didn’t know what it was. Then it hit me. I remembered earlier in the day when I took the RCBS primer pickup tube out of the box. I could see it clearly in my mind:
There were two other brass primer pickup tubes in that box. In my eagerness to get the RCBS primer pickup tubes (the ones I was looking for), I reached right over the brass tubes. Could it be? I put that stuff away a decade ago, way before I ever had the Star.
I went back to that box immediately, and son of a gun, there were not one, but two Star original brass primer pickup tubes. Two! I think they came from Sue’s Dad before he passed away more than 10 years ago (he was a reloader, too), and I got a lot of his old bits and pieces. He never had a Star reloader that I ever saw, but he must have latched onto these two primer pickup tubes somewhere along his journey through life. How about that?
So, back to the story du jour…and more of the Star folks’ cleverness. Star used a slightly different approach than did RCBS. For starters, they made a cross cut in the pickup end of their primer pickup tubes to give the spring tension needed to hold the primers in the tube.
I started picking up a batch of primers from the primer tray lid with my newly-discovered Star primer pickup tube.
When you get that last one, you push it the rest of the way in with a probe (not your finger). With apologies in advance for the inadequate photo depth-of-field, here’s what the last primer looks like in the Star tube.
Then you invert the tube, so all the primers are at the other end. The spring clip keeps them from falling out. There’s a flange on the end of the Star primer pickup tube. It interfaces with the Star reloader’s primer magazine to keep the primer pickup tube aligned with the primer magazine tube.
Here’s the top end of the Star reloader’s primer magazine, with the primer follower in place. I removed it and placed the primer pickup tube on top.
At this point, I then removed the spring clip, and all the primers that were in the primer pickup tube transferred (gravity feed!) into the primer magazine.
So there you have it. The Star is up and running, and I’ll post about cleaning up a few more details on this magnificent old machine in the next Star blog. Stay tuned!
I’ve used many different types of rust removers in my somewhat futile effort to keep old clunkers on the road. 
