What clever little things have you "invented or discovered" that you can share?

Here's one for folks who want to moly coat bullets. Put a box of your favorite bullets in a plastic container, the bottle for 500 Tylenol works fine for 6mm bullets and a small peanut butter jar works for larger bullets. Add about an eighth of a teaspoon of moly powder to the bottle, put the cap on and place the bottle in your vibratory tumbler with no media for about 2 hours. Be sure to place the bottle in the tumbler with the cap to your left; otherwise it could unwind, dump the contents, and you'll have a mess to cleanup if its not a locking cap. At the end of a couple of hours open up a newspaper, spread some heavy duty paper towels on top and dump the bullet out into them. Vigorously rub the excess moly from the bullets, then put them on a clean paper towel and repeat to remove any residual loose moly. At this time examine your bullets; they will appear black and shiny, and you don't need steel media to attain a good finish.
 
Boomer said:
Here's one for folks who want to moly coat bullets. Put a box of your favorite bullets in a plastic container, the bottle for 500 Tylenol works fine for 6mm bullets and a small peanut butter jar works for larger bullets...
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Maybe a large Ziploc™ freezer bag or two would work as well?

:) Stuart
 
This reminds me: not my trick but I use it all the time. If you're reloading pistol rounds using carbide dies you often hear that no lube is required. Except it goes so much easier with it. But cleaning the case lube afterwards is extra work. I drop 4-5 drops of Ballistol into a large freezer ziplock bag, smear it evenly, then dump about 300 9mm brass into the bag. I toss it around for 15-20 seconds. That's it, the brass gets just enough lube to make resizing easy, even for Glocked brass. After loading I dump about 50 rounds into a towel & give them a quick wipe.
 
Keeping tiny parts from vanishing while working on guns

This hardly rates as an "invention" and in fact I read of it somewhere else.

Most of us have had a tiny screw or other miniscule part roll off the work bench and disappear, and Murphy's Law states that the more expensive or difficult it is to replace, the more difficult it will be to find.

Go to the local sign shop and get a piece of magnetic sign vinyl, the stuff couriers use for temporary signs when they use their personal vehicle for business. It comes in various widths but the standard size is 24" and should be about $5.00/lin.ft Cut to size for your bench. The colour doesn't matter since the black side is the magnetic one and so has to face upwards.

:) Stuart
 
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There is some great stuff in here....Here is what I tumble my brass with....A fellow named Spike challenged me to build a tumbler for under 20 bucks.

Don't laugh to hard....It really works good.

 
royce said:
Do to the fact I have so many different presses, and not enough room to mount them. I mounted a 1/4" steel plate, then drilled and tapped each hole to match the base of what ever press I plan on using at the time. Then a small container with dividers to keep mounting bolts separated for each style of press.
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I went along these lines but I mounted each press to 1¼" plywood base, and made all bases the same size. Then I drilled holes in each base to match a set of holes in my bench. To change presses, I unscrew the lag bolts and remove the press, different press goes over the holes and I drop in and tighten the bolts.

(E) :cool:
 
fogducker said:
w:h:post some more pics:D
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Not much to it really
Two 10 inch diameter pine ends
One gallon Rubber maid SQUARE jug with large opening
A piece of threaded pipe out of a lamp for the pivot
some 1/4 inch dowels to roll on
and some 3/8 x 1 inch scrap out of the shop.

The square jug is important for aggitation of the media.

I actually use this for drying my cases.....I use Limi Shine dish washer stuff for the real cleaning.
 
I just bought a new powder funnel that held a nasty static electricity charge. It was so bad I had to push the kernels of powder through the hole in the funnel with with a pen to fill each case.
After several attempts to fix this, I finally wiped the funnel down with a Bounce dryer sheet. No more klingons!
 
Great thread. Lots of good ideas.

This is certainly not an invention, but just using what you have. I size my 6BR brass with a Forster Bushing/Bump die. The idea is that you size the neck with the right size bushing, and bump the shoulder back ideally 0.001". Easy to measure what you have done to the neck OD. But, how do you know how much you have bumped the shoulder?

There are gauges you can buy. But, what I do is simply use the die itself. Just drop the case into the die with the bushing and top works removed and you can measure the before length and the after length.
 
Shootshellz said:
OK, this is sort of a lame tip but I put an 'arrowhead' replacement pencil eraser in the bottom of my 'hammer' type inertia bullet puller. Saves the bullet point from deforming.
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I use a disposable foam earplug in the bottom of mine, its been there for years now.
 
To those who use a spray type resizing lube: a clean large plastic peanut butter jar is your best friend. I place my brass into the above jar and spray the lube into the jar. I then quickly replace the jar lid and shake same for 30 seconds. Saves and contains lube and works great.
 
RCBS Bullet PULLER

I have found this to be very handy. I have a few different caliber collets but not all the ones I need. Anyway I have simply used (brass shimms) inside a collet to use it for a smaller caliber, it works OK. When using these pullers it helps to use a jam nut on the puller against the top of the press, locking it in place.
 
b72471 said:
I have found this to be very handy. I have a few different caliber collets but not all the ones I need. Anyway I have simply used (brass shimms) inside a collet to use it for a smaller caliber, it works OK. When using these pullers it helps to use a jam nut on the puller against the top of the press, locking it in place.
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A friend of mine suggested I just use a shell holder instead of the collet and it works wonders - no more collets falling apart and me looking for the pieces.
 
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