I’ve always been a cheap arse bastard. Years ago I started making my own black powder because buying it was just to expensive. This required a little bit of investment but I more than broke even.

One of the tools I purchased was a ball mill. It is a small table top mill, about 3 liters in size. It is hex shaped so it moves the media better than a round mill and it has a 1/8in replaceable rubber liner.

I’ve used it to mill all sorts of things. When I got into reloading I just used it with water and a little dish soap to clean my brass. The brass came out looking pretty good.

Later I purchased stainless steel pin media specifically designed for cleaning things like cases. Switching to Dawn dish detergent along with a Lemi Shine as a final rinse gave me wonderful results. Brass looked as good as new.

The problem is that it is messy. It takes multiple water changes and rinses to get all of the soapy water out. You have to be careful not to let the media wash away.

Since I was interested in powder coating bullets I finally picked up a vibrating tumbler. But I never used it to clean cases. I still tumble cleaned and then put the cases in the food dehydrator to dry them.

Recently I switched to using that vibrating tumbler to clean cases. It does an ok job but not new brass clean. The images I shared the other day of the .38 special with the bottom of the primer broken out was run through the tumbler for an hour. It is clean but not great.

So I struck a deal with a friend to send him some primers loaded into .45ACP cases. I’ve a few hundred .45ACP cases that are ready for reloading. Except they are straight from the range and are not clean enough to reload. So I decided to tumble clean them before I primed them and sent them off.

I got everything ready… Put the tumbler in its base and powered it up. It started doing its magic.

About 5 minutes into the first 30 minute run it stops. I hear a whine but no tumbling action.

The twenty plus year old power belt had snapped.

So I’m stuck until the belt material gets here. I pride myself on being prepared. I didn’t have a spare belt. I didn’t have the material to make a proper belt. On Monday I could likely get some big rubber bands from the PO to use for a bit. But I don’t have it here and now.

So tumbling will have to wait until the new belts are made. That will happen on Monday. If all goes well I should be able to ship out fifty cases to my friend on Tuesday.

Bah Humbug

And five sides of Thousand Islands dressing.

The missus saw it first. I believe I stared at that scene for a full minute trying to comprehend what I was seeing. And yes, the guy had his own gravitational pull.

If you are gonna fat, do it with pride. Just go straight for the frigging fully loaded baked potatoes and the 12-ounce rib eye.

PS: I am not sure, but I am willing to be that was a Diet Coke.

And now for something completely different:

Like if Warren Zevon and Tom Waits has a baby.

If you approach myself, mine or come into my property wearing a hoody and a mask, you will be considered a danger till proven otherwise.

I’ll be there with the missus. It is scheduled to begin at 11 am and till we are done.

This makes me a bit sad.

Nothing much can be done this year. Let’s see if we can do something about at least getting 500 more wreaths next year.

Till next December.

Not only it has not stopped, it has brought slavery back.

Pot was legalized for recreational use in Oregon in 2015. The goal was to generate tax revenue for the state while curbing the black market. But years later, foreign drug cartels have taken advantage of the limited oversight by running illegal farms on the backs of exploited migrant workers, officials told ABC News.

On these unlicensed farms in southern Oregon, estimated to be in the thousands, workers like Alejandra are often forced to live and work in deplorable conditions as they tend to the crops.

“We were prisoners, because we couldn’t go out. We worked very long hours, sometimes until 2 or 3 in the morning. They were constantly pushing us to work faster, to trim the pot,” Alejandra said.

The work was supposed to take 15 days, but ended up lasting an entire month, Alejandra said. “I feared for my life, because [the guards] would act really crazy. I kept thinking about my kids, my mother. Wishing I could see them again. That’s all I could think about.”

‘Narco slaves’: Migrant workers face abuse on Oregon’s cartel-run, illegal pot farms – ABC News

And Cartels’ reparations are in lead or steel.

This was my gift for myself which arrived yesterday. It isn’t like I don’t have a half dozen different dies that will deprime cases. My goto till yesterday was a Lee Precision universal decapping die. This is just a standard Resize + Decapping die with a huge chamber so that just about anything will fit inside. The only thing that contacts the shell id the pin that pushes through the flash hole.

I like this but it does require that I spend time in the reloading area when I really want to be with family. Thus I decided to get a hand depriming tool. I choose the Frankford Arsenal one.

First, it is a solidly constructed. The only thing that seems even remotely questionable is the rather long spring with no guide. It works so they must have gotten that right. It takes a little bit of hand strength to operate but still very nicely made.

It comes with three plastic collets. They don’t have to be anything stronger than plastic as they are only used to center the case. You can see where two of them are hooked under to the bottom of the tool. I did manage to knock one off over the course of depriming a couple of hundred cases but that was more me being a bit klutzy rather than an issue with the tool.

Once you choose the right collet you put it in place and screw down the adjustment cap until the collet just fits the cases. This works fine. It took a couple of tries to get it where I wanted it but once I did it worked great.

The next part is in the instructions and of course I didn’t remember. You have to manually tilt the holder down before you attempt to squeeze the grip. If you don’t it doesn’t work. Follow the directions.

You have to make sure that the case is seated deep enough that the pin is in the flash hole. If you don’t then the first squeeze will align the case more correctly and the second will actually punch the primer out.

So the biggest downside to this thing? If you tilt it upwards it will spill spent primers out. They go everywhere. And they are freaking hard to find on carpet. Other than that, zero issus.

Now for the request…

A few years ago some friends gave me buckets of shell cases. Like 3 five gallon buckets worth. They had picked them up at a private (home) firing range. Some of the cases were a couple of days old, some where a couple of years old. I got them all.

They were processed and then ended up in trays waiting for a time when I needed them.

This lead to the following:

Instead of the primer coming out it pushed out the bottom of the primer. Thankfully I do full inspections of my brass and noticed not only these with the bottom of the primer still hanging on but also a number of cases with the walls still inside the primer pocket.

Any ideas on how to get the remaining parts of the primer out?

Right now I plan on using the primer pocket tool for removing military crimps/staking. Since I made myself an adaptor I can do it with a power drill so no big deal. But if anybody has any other ideas, please share.