Reloading

I have a summertime hobby named a motorcycle that eats up free time like a bad habit. What I did not have is a hobby to chew up the boring hours between winter and spring. The price of ammunition has been going up steadily for the last 8 months or so. I used to buy boxes of .45acp for around $8, now you can hardly touch it for less than $16. Naturally, I'm not going to stop shooting, so I began reloading ammo a few months ago.

I'm still working on making up for the initial investment, but we're getting there quickly. It's a very relaxing, methodical hobby. Doing something repetitive with my hands after a long day at work in front of a monitor, while listening to music, or watching a crappy old movie.

Aside from cost, the other payoff is that you can tailor a cartridge to your firearm. The target below was 5 rounds shot from about 40 feet freehand out of my Springfield 1911. I wish I'd have shot one with some factory loads for comparison. I can put a full magazine into one of these targets at that distance, but they're all over the paper, not centered this well. The load here is a Speer 200 grain semi wadcutter bullet with 7 grains of Accurate no. 5 powder.



Just for fun, here's some 230 grain cast lead bullets in nickel cases that I picked up cheap at a gun show, these don't group nearly as well as the wadcutters, but they do make it look like I'm getting ready to go werewolf hunting.