The reloading revolution: 50 years of handloading

Guns Magazine, April, 2005 by Charles E. Petty

"Did you miss the revolution? I nearly did."

I'm not talking about throwing out the Czars, or storming the Bastille but a very slow and gentle process that has changed the face of reloading. And it happened so slowly most of us don't realize how vast the change has been. Now in our 50th year, GUNS has chronicled the changes.

I cannot tell you the precise date I started reloading but it was not accidental that it happened at the same time I got my driver's license. Purely by chance that was 1955. I found some used reloading stuff at a local sporting goods store. The manager of the gun department promised some lessons and a couple of evening visits to his garage workshop got me started loading .38 Specials for my rather humble S&W Victory Model.

The what of reloading is just as basic as it always was. We resize the case and eject the spent primer, reprime, put in a powder charge and seat a bullet. But the how we do it bears little semblance to the way things were done when I loaded my first .38 Special. Many of you would not recognize the stuff I used back then and my current loading setup would astound a reloader of old.

Little Changes

As it is with all revolutions it began with small changes, which begat others which begat others and over a period of time the process evolved into something quite different from what we started with. Both the tools and the components of today would be truly alien to a pre-war loader.

Perhaps more of the changes are obvious in the loading of handgun ammunition. The development of the carbide sizing die seems like a small thing, but it really opened the door for all the high-volume shooting sports of today. The carbide die actually goes back much further than you'd think to the Star and Phelps loaders of the '30s, but most of us old guys remember the Lyman carbide sizing dies of the '50s. In those days, all I loaded were .38 Special and .45 ACP target loads cranked out on a Lyman Tru-line Jr. press. I actually started with a turret press when almost everyone else was using stuff from RCBS or Herters because I stumbled across a complete setup with press, dies, scale and powder measure for sale at a fraction of the cost of new gear. I'm pretty sure the fact the press used the 609x30" die size normally used on hand tools of the black powder era was one reason the stuff was so cheap. Even back then the rest of the world was using the 7/8x 14" threads used today.

Herters

"I mentioned Herters and I suspect that is a name foreign to many of you, but in my youth their catalog was the wish book for all things outdoors. Everything they had was usually considerably less expensive, but it was all "model perfect." Their catalog was some of the most entertaining reading you could find because it chronicled the adventures of the Herter clan and promoted their products with a flair that would have made P.T. Barnum blush with shame. Everything was the best you could buy and if you didn't believe that all you had to do was read a little further. For the shooter they had it all. But maybe the best tribute is by my friend Jim Devereux, who still loads every round he shoots on a Herter press bought when we were teenagers.

I don't know how much of the stuff they actually made, but it was a bit of a surprise, many years later, to walk into Sako's conference room in Rhiimaki, Finland, and see a showcase full of ammo, brass and primers in Herter boxes. They also created a business model for mail order by having good stuff at reasonable prices and delivering promptly. That's pretty much what Midway USA does today, so I guess it is still a good plan. I truly lamented the passing of the Herter's catalog in the early '70s.

Historically we can correctly say--until relatively recently--all shooters were reloaders. It wasn't until fixed ammo became readily available toward the end of the 19th century that it was possible to shoot without having to reload. But we'd have to say that progress was relatively slow until just before and, of course, after World War II.

Acorns to Oaks

Then, seemingly all at once, there were a number of garage businesses to satisfy a growing demand. Names we know well today like Hornady, Speer and Nosler sold bullets to handloaders and a man by the name of Fred Huntington produced the Rock Chuck Bullet Swage to turn empty .22 cases into bullet jackets. You know the company today as RCBS.

During the past 50 years there have been many milestones that. when passed, made possible ever greater advances for handloaders. There are really quite a few but there are two without which things would have evolved very differently. First is the availability of bulk brass at reasonable prices. Two companies: Midway USA and Starline made this possible. Starline was a small brass manufacturer virtually unknown outside the industry. When an ammo company needed a relatively small quantity of brass, they often would contract with Starline to make it for them. Then Starline offered some to Larry Potterfield of Midway and a small ad in Shotgun News launched the bulk brass business. Starline expanded their offerings and Midway sold those too. Then Remington and Winchester came on board and shooters could get just about any case they wanted from one or the other. By far the largest part of this business is in handgun brass simply because shooters use more of it. A spin-off of the spin-off is a wide variety of molded plastic amino boxes that people need since bulk brass doesn't come in boxes. Today a shooter embarking on a new caliber to load may not even buy a box of factory amino at all.