Sunday at Reed's

Sometimes it’s just nice to get a break and spend a few minutes wandering around the gun store.  I almost forgot much of the enjoyment of firearms revolves around the purchase of gadgets and odds and ends. Unfortunately, it’s too easy to start off looking for a package of cleaning patches and end up…

Ammo: I was pleasantly surprised to find Reed’s in San Jose was significantly lower in price than Midway USA. In fact, I believe this is the first time in almost a year I’ve found this to be true. I’m not a quantity reloader, the work is too tedious for practice ammo, so I try to buy suitable products when I can. 

In this case it was Winchester for the 125 grain .357 SIG at under $15/50 and Federal American Eagle for the 155 grain .40 S&W and 230 grain .45 ACP. The later cartridges were $9.95 and $12.95, respectively per box of 50. That’s about 20% less expensive than Midway USA and available locally – inexpensive for practice and a source of brass for more serious work.

Cleaning: I’ve been shooting a lot of relatively strange material through my guns lately; moly, solid copper, that Barnes blue glop and some of the Combined Technology frying pan Teflon gray. I have to admit, the extra cost and effort has resulted in…..no reliable velocity increase or accuracy, but that’s probably just me. I have noticed, however, a decrease in focus on bullet coatings and a reemphasis on bullet construction which does seem to make a difference. 

The tangible byproduct of these low coefficient of friction coating materials is a bore that looks like half the bullet jackets had been left inside, but painted over to look nice. I’ve had very good luck with two cleaning products; Shooter’s Choice Copper Remover and Sweets 7.62 Solution. Sweets seems to work a little faster and get rid of a wider range of gunk, but Shooter’s Choice seems to do a better job removing copper fowling. Sweets contains ammonia, so it smells, and it needs to not stay in the bore longer than 15 minutes and care must be taken to oil the bore and any other contact surfaces when the cleaning is complete. At $8 per 8 oz, both will last a long time, longer if you’re lazy. I was thinking I might be a little concerned with Sweets, it comes from Australia, so I kept thinking, “What if these guys are ticked about losing their guns while we still have ours….” No dissolving barrels to report as yet.

I use to make these great chamber brushes from shotgun bore swabs and brushes, connected to a standard cleaning rod with a set of thread adapters and rods made in…I don’t know…some place else. Then I discovered if I found a shop like Reeds that carries .50 Caliber LARS Rifles, I could buy .50 caliber bore brushes and use them for my large magnum chambers. So for $1.95 each I’m all set, as long as I don’t use them with cleaners designed to remove copper build up. These, along with some standard size bore brushes were less than half the cost of Internet shopping where they are listed with other items for the $10 a bullet crowd.

Odds and ends: I’m told the .416 Weatherby may actually show up, so I began to accumulate reloading supplies. I ordered loading dies over the Internet, there was no local stock for this cartridge, but I was able to pick up the odds and ends at a decent savings. Items like trimmer pilots, decapping pins and shell holders are about half the price of Internet sources, regardless where they are ordered. Over the 20 miscellaneous items of this type I purchased, I saved over $20. Hey, don’t knock it, with the money I saved I can buy…..4.44 bullets for the .416 rifle, or 100 rounds of 40 S&W. Why did I buy that rifle again ?

Powder: Not sure why, but powder is not a place to save money on local supply. At $20 per lb there are less costly sources, at least in volume buys. This extreme H1000 has been a major improvement over H870 in my large capacity loadings. When the weather breaks and hits some of this mid summer temperature, I hope to run some velocity comparisons for cartridges I’ve squirreled away. Extreme products are suppose to show very little pressure and velocity difference over a broad temperature range and from one lot to the next. If this holds up I may have one powder I can use for the .257 WM through the .416 WM but, so far, I have not been able to use it to match IMR 7828 and RL 25 performance.

The last two items I picked up today were the RCBS Powdermaster Electronic Powder Dispenser, and the Powder Pro Digital Scale. Right now I’m setting them up to check them out against a mechanical scale and press mounted dispenser. These two items are linked together so the scale controls powder metering through the dispenser…we’ll see.