1. How rude! We reloaders need 1000s of primers. We should have priority, not those Johnny-come-lately.

   Pretty much what I expected. Primers are going to be the bottle neck and I’m not sure there is any more capacity to make more.

   In collage I worked for a company that made “vinyl” holiday decorations and material to cover parade floats.

   The owner had “invented” and then made the machine that made that covering material.

   The raw material arrived in rolls, each roll around 8 foot long. Some of these were fed through a cutting machine that turned them into strips about 6 inches wide.

   The strips were then fed through a die cutting machine that could cut six layer at a time to make these little flat vinyl flowers.

   Then the magic machine. This machine was an amazing rube goldburg thing. At one end was an area where the “flowers” were positioned, each position had rods to hold them correctly. There was two rows extending across the width of the machine. A pneumatic arm would come over and using suction pick up one flower from each pile and move it over the conveyor belt. The belt then moved forward and the operator had time to reposition any flowers that needed it, add one if it was missing and so forth.
   When the belt got to the middle an arm again picked up two rows at once, moved over to the dies and would push the flat flower into a cupping die that was heated. This would fold the petals up and also apply an adhesive to the bottom. Another arm would pick up the formed flowers, rotate and move closer together and only one row. It would then press that down on to a roll of vinyl on the other side of the forming press.

   This machine made about one foot per minute. By picking the base color and the flower colors you could get patterns, stripes and all sorts of things. You could even get patterns if you loaded it correctly.

   This was the only machine in the entire factory that ran 24×7. It never stopped. The demand for that product was high enough that it justified the shift differential.

   It actually justified having two or three machines running.

   The problem was that the magic machine that folded, glued and placed the flowers was one of a kind. The amount of effort to make a second and to get everything timed and working correctly wasn’t worth it to the company.

   Primer machines are sort of like that. Unlike manufacturing ammunition, there are not thousands of companies out there big and small putting components together.

   It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there isn’t a company currently in existence that makes the machines that make primers.

   Being a person that loves old machines (Bridgeport mill, south bend lathe et so on) it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that every primer making machine currently in working condition is in use right now making primers.

   Take a look at some of the information out of RMR Bullets. They go to great lengths to keep their bullet making machines up and running and were happy to have just gotten another machine to make bullets. The people making bullet making machines likely no longer exist.

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   1. There are still companies that make them. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they are singular as in “one company”.

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   2. As I recall, those vinyl cutting machines typically were tied to CorelDraw, which is (as I know from way too much experience) a very very low quality piece of software (but cheap).
      Primers, now — it seems to me those are very simple things. So yes, I can imagine the current capacity is fully occupied, but how hard is it to make more primer-making machines?

2. That’s better than I expected to hear. I wonder what their back order list looks like around now

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3. Where is all the hunting ammunition? And there’s lots of new hunters?

   Isn’t hunting kinda really similar to what snipers do? I mean, back when I used to hunt, one 20 rnd box would last several seasons. You don’t need a lot of ammo to hunt once your rifle is sighted in. But yeah, hunting and sniping are kinda going use the same ammo. That should be a wake-up call to the powers that be.

   1. TPTB have been scared of ‘high power, extremely accurate, telescopically sighted’ eeeee-vil sniper rifles on and off for several decades.

      About every 8 to 10 years, some idjit state or federal congresscritter ‘rediscovers’ them and declares they should be banned because they’re too accurate.

      1. https://www.scottbieser.com/goldilocks_gungrabber.html

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