Being Deaf Activities

[Griff]

A full month in and I'm still fighting this ear infection in my right ear... I'm deaf in my left, and this is the current condition on my right. It'll ease up for a few days, and I think... excellent, my hearing aids can go back in. Nope! In just a few short hours, 8-12 usually, it's back to hurting from the pressure. Yesterday, I had planned on attending a Wild Bunch mate, but after finding that I only had about a ½ GI can of 45 Auto, I decided to prep some brass. Since I also had less than ten 45 Colt (no BP rounds) and only a couple hundred C45S in BP, and less than 20 with smokeless, and NO .44-40 at all, (which is what my Lightning is chambered in)! So I decided I better decapped and wet tumbled about 300 45 Auto, and about 200 .44-40. The C45S & 45 Colt, I'd done on Friday. After getting the 45 Auto in the tumbler, I went to decap the .44-40 and found I couldn't find my shell holder. Went to the nearest toy store and bought a Lee. Which is appropriate as I use a Less Handloader to do all my decapping. I've modified mine to dump spent primers without having to pull the shell holder off. (I still need to spend some time with the dremel to smooth it out inside, but it works well enough):

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The .44-40 decapped brass:

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The deafness means I don't hear the tumbler rattling around, the brass and stainless pins in it's plastic drum, and I can watch my favorite You-Tube channels with the closed captioning on and the volume turned up to levels annoying to normal humans.

[JimT]

Every dark cloud has a silver lining ..............

[AJMD429]

Every dark cloud has a silver lining ..............

or....in this case.....every thunderous cloud has it's quiet spots....

[Griff]

Anyway, the 45s, all three flavors, are all cleaned and dried, and put away in their airtight plastic buckets. Should keep them looking clean & bright, till I get around to loading them.

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The bad part, is that I have like around 2-3,000 rounds of new and clean brass for each out in the reloading shop ready... Just not enough bullets to load... and here I am cleaning more brass!

I'll start the .44-40 off in the morning before I go see the Doc about my ear.

[Griff]

Didn't get to see the Doc today, but will return in the am. Got the .44-40 brass all cleaned up tho!

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[AmBraCol]

That is the most annoying part of the Lee hand press, having to remove the shell holder to dump the spent primers. That's an interesting mod. Do you decap over a tub or how do you catch the primers?

[Griff]

I generally hold the tool horizontal & dump after decapping 15-20 rounds into a small trash can I keep by the chair. Until I start decapping, brass stays in it's range bag (cut off legs of my old worn out Levis about 8-10" deep, open end sewn shut), after decapping they go into a empty 1-½ gal ice cream bucket, to await their turn in the tumbler. I used to keep my old primers, but the recycling place would only pay contaminated prices on it. So now, I just keep the brass that non reloadable brass for scrap sale... crushed or cracked. And they need to be pretty badly crushed before I'll not attempt to straighten 'em out!

[Streetstar]

I am dealing with an ear infection now as well - blew out my eardrum in the service 3 decades ago and it has become subsequently easier and easier to perforate it now and seems to always be in a state of healing

But it has occurred to me that if i get too much more hearing loss --- any of my activities will be "being deaf activities"

[Griff]

Take care Doug... It's ominous when I think that my formerly "bad" ear, is not my "good" one!

But, on a lighter note, I made a small dent in my ammo deficiency yesterday. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 rounds, split between 45 Colt with 200 boolits for cowboy action, and 160 grain Cowboy 45 Specials for the same game. All loaded with TiteGroup. I say "in the neighborhood" as several primers got flipped sideways and were crushed in the seating cycle. On today's agenda are my 200 grain cast for the C45S and 45 Auto... hopefully I"ll get to the .44-40 also.

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Yesterday morning, you could see the metal bottom of the middle two cans! Now both over half full! But, it supposed to reach 81ºF here today, so we'll see how far I get!

[LeverGunner]

Will keep your healing in prayer.

Interesting mod on the Hand Press. I drill mine deeper, so it will take more than the 20 or something that it normally takes. I can't remember if I've drilled my current one, but I drilled the previous. I got stupid and sold that one, and I couldn't live without it so I got another.

I'm thinking about going to the other extreme and getting a Dillon 550. Do the Hand Press when the notion strikes me, use the Dillon for most things, and retain the single stage for those odd jobs.

What is "C45S" ?

[Griff]

The C45S is an abbreviation for the Cowboy 45 Special. A 45 Auto length round based on the 45 Colt. Think 45 Auto with a 45 Colt rim. A cowboy shooter (and member here), known as Adirondak Jack had 50K of 'em made up by Starline with the exclusive rights to market them. Several orders later they became quite a popular semi-wildcat among the cowboy action crowd. Those rights got moved around, until they reverted back to Starline. It allows shooters using 45 Colt revolvers to shoot loads, as low a 125 grain, but more commonly 160 RFN, and be a bit more competitive with those shooting 38 Specials. Some shooters leave them solely for the pistols, but others, like myself, have modified rifles to use this cartridge also. In my 1873 Uberti rifles and 1860, I use a special carrier that has a little hinged flap that holds the shorter case in position to keep the rest of the magazine in the mag. Some folks report they work as is in a 1892, but I haven't tried that. In my Marlin 1894, I modified the carrier by building up the bottom of the carrier to speed the timing a little, and created a second "step" for the C45S to have a stop aimed at it's length. Loading it is super easy. On my Dillon 550, I use a 45 Colt sizer die, the standard 45 caliber powder die and powder funnel for expanding & belling, and a combination 45 Auto seater/crimp die. Charges run about ½ grain less than the minimum for 45 Auto in keeping with the "mouse phart" mentality of Cowboy Action, but do run some up to a couple of tenths of a grain under minimum for some self defense for jacketed HPs when I EDC a SAA. My 200 grain JHP load runs right at 800 fps at a calculated 12,000 psi. I've loaded them with RedDot, Clays, and most recently with TiteGroup. The TiteGroup loads for both Jacketed & cast are about a 30% of case capacity. In the Marlin, I've loaded up a few rounds up to 45 Auto full specs, at least just shy of 20K psi, (well above limits for a Colt SAA; but haven't gotten around to test any with the chronograph or on paper. I figure if a 45 Auto in a pistol can take hogs, a carbine gotta be more better! (Maybe)?

Ever since I started wet tumbling most of my brass, I decap it all before it goes in the tumbler. Love those shiny bright primer pockets. It's about the only thing I use the Lee Hand Press for. I also use it at multi-day BP matches to decap my brass before going into a pre-cleaning bath, especially if traveling more than a ffew hours home afterwards. I've used a couple of time to load extra ammo with, and my mobile reloading bench is inconvenient to travel with. I'm limited on .40-90 Sharps BN brass. And a full match means I might have to reload by day 3. (Any tie breakers, or pre-match practice too close to the actual match severely strains my inventory. All my pistol ammo gets loaded on the Dillon. I keep a Rockchucker for the vast majority of my rifle stuff. Only the .556 gets loaded on a Dillon. In fact, in doing some reloading out in the shop today, I found 2 1-gallon buckets of 45 Colt brass that I dry tumbled about 3 years ago... man, do they look dirty in comparison to the wet tumbled brass! I brought them back up to the house to decap and retumble in the liquid media!

[LeverGunner]

Thanks for sharing. I thought that might be what it was. I don't have experience with it, but I've heard others talk about it, though it's been a while since I don't do CAS.