Ice day

  Feels like a January.  Ice on the metal spiral staircase but really not anywhere else.  Had the air conditioning guys come by today to check the central air unit.  Everything normal including the stack of dessicated dead roaches that accumulate in the bottom of the unit.  Too bad they don't have ivory tusks.

  Making ammo but trying to slow down.  I have plenty of brass already waiting and a thousand rounds of match ammo standing by.  Instead of going through whole buckets and trying to do it all I'm thinking about shooting the same 100 cases over and over for a bit, say all this spring for me and the Kid, then tossing them.  Probably six reloads on top of what there is now.  Might get a feel for how things are wearing.  LC 97, for instance, seems to crack necks more than any other.  The neck will break off and stay in the chamber.  Takes a rod and brush to get them out.  Strictly practice cases, even if they look fine.

  Doing the brass myself means it goes through multiple steps in my hands.  Quite the process.  Sort from the mixed brass in the big buckets, tumble clean at the studio, lube, size and deprime, clean primer pocket, clean or de-burr flash hole inside, champfer and bevel the case mouth, brush inside of neck, prime, sort by headstamp.  Ten steps....just for brass.  No wonder I liked RVO.

  It doesn't feel like work at all any more than reading does.   Just a process.

  You would think I would find every flaw.  I drop a sample in the case gauge every now and then, especially if they don't go into the Sinclair Priming Tool without any problem.

  Broke two flash hole deburring tools.  I had an plastic green RCBS, saw a wood-handled Lyman and liked it better and bought that.  The Lyman has a cutting tip swaged into the end of a rod.  It started spinning.  No remedy.  I switched to the older RCBS, which shows a lot of wear and broke the guide end off when I thought I could use it to tap out a stuck primer.

  And nobody has these.  Not Academy, not Gander, not the gunshows nor the gunshops.  I gave everyone a chance and finally ordered a Lyman from Midway last night.  Twelve bucks.

  Not the sort of thing you would ever thing you would break and I killed two in a week.  I've been limping along with the crippled RCBS.

  Stacking up the slightly-waxy ready-to-load brass. (Universal Sizing Wax)  Thinking about adding some more dies so I can load a few other calibers.  Nervous on that 30-06 Garand ammo.  Like to load some Swede 6.5.  Thinking about making my own M1 Carbine load.  Promised someone I would load some .308.

  Xavier having a sick day so he is blogging like mad.  You might check by and see what he's up to.  I'm having a lazy middle of the day but going to pop quiz and work my two classes tonight at the college.  Usual classroom dramas up there.  Kids texting & surfing in class.  I think one student is turning in a print tonight that she didn't shoot.  The usual stuff.  Constantly trying to find ways to motivate and inform.