Minor Details

My brother bought an old Damascus barreled, hammered double 10 gauge shotgun last month.  The picture is one like it that was on Gunbroker a while back.  I told him that I could keep him in low pressure ammo without too much trouble.   Shortly after he relied on my promise and bought the thing, I priced a 10 gauge conversion kit for my old MEC press and about had a stroke.

My next bright idea was to go on Ebay to look for either a press that was set up for 10 gauge or an antique tool that I could use to assemble a few boxes of shells.   Searching "10 gauge" brought up about 3 pages of stuff with none of it related to shotguns.  I tried a few other combinations of words and eventually gave up and just searched "reloading." 267 pages of stuff with over 13,000 hits showed up.  

I waded into the project with high hopes of finding something among all those returns but what I found was that at least a quarter of the listings for MEC loaders or any other shot shell loading tool don't bother to mention what gauge shell the things are set up to load.  Seriously.  People are listing all kinds of shot shell loading stuff without mentioning what gauge the stuff loads.   Lots of people. 

If I was going to list a MEC press for sale and hope to get a hundred or a hundred and fifty bucks plus shipping out of it, I think that amount of money would be enough to induce me to look at the friggin' die and read what size it loads.  Its just a minor detail but its kinda important unless you're just listing the stuff to waste everybody's time.

Finally, along about page seventy, like Chief Inspector Hubbard,   I "had a brain wave."   I don't need to resize a hull until its been fired so what I need at the moment is loading equipment, not  RE-loading equipment.  Another minor detail.

I hit  Ballistic Products' site and ordered some 10 gauge hulls, a hull trimmer, wads, a roll crimper and a couple of data sheets on loading low pressure loads for vintage shotguns and loading in shortened hulls.  They were out of 10 gauge over shot wads but I may be able to find a substitute before my brother visits this month.  I need to support Hobby Lobby anyway.   They may have some kind of card stock and a punch set that would be suitable for making the wads.  If they have no punch set, perhaps my old lathe could help me make one.

The only problem, if it be one, is that I presently have no 10 gauge shotgun to use for test firing the loads.  I suppose that I'll have to remedy that sometime this week.   Just another of those minor details.