Today I ran up to my local pusher's shop with a few bucks burning a hole in my pocket. I had in mind to get a box of Hornady Interlock 180-grain JSPs for reloading .30-06, but they didn't have any of those.

They did have, on the other hand, a box of 100 jacketed flat-point 170-grainers. "Well, I load for .30-30 too," I told myself, and got those. For $47.00. This is the garden-variety cup-and-core jacketed 170-grainer that .30-30s that have been loaded with for time out of mind, for almost half a Benjamin.

I'm in the wrong business. I should be swaging bullets.

-AaronB

Yep. It's getting to the point where (at least mentally) I reserve the jacketed bullets for "Special Occasions". I will gladly use them for hunting and grudgingly use then for sight-in for said hunting as well as 'things you just don't load cast for'. I mean, why go all high speed/low drag with the cartridge and then limit yourself to a couple thousand fps's with the bullet? All of this is quite silly of course as I must have something approaching 50k bullets squirreled away down in The Dungeon.

I have quite a few good .30-cal cast bullets on hand.

I might even break out my Heavy Thirty mold and some gas checks.

-AaronB

You've got gas checks?

I'm seriously low on same, and only have .30 and .22. Not that I get many chances to use them. Was looking for 45 and 30 a while back, but nothing was available. Need to poke around and see what's available I guess. It's good to see powder and primers back, but STICKER SHOCK on the availability tax... long gone are the penny per primer days.

Still more expensive than I consider reasonable.... Can't believe how expensive powder and bullets have become...

I believe you, but I bet that's not including the shipping.

Which, by the time they get here, they're comparable in price to the local shop.

-AaronB

Not only do I have a few hundred gas checks lying around, years ago I also bought a Freechec tool to make them out of beer can aluminum.

Now if I could only find the thing...

-AaronB

--
Ele era velho.
Ele era corajoso.
Ele era feio.