Sawfish
Lil-Rokslider
When I loaded my first cartridges almost sixty years ago, I started with a hammer powered Lee Loader. Loading for a war surplus M98 Mauser purchased from Montgomery Wards, I was able to fashion cartridges that were reasonably accurate (3" at 100 yds.. Sometimes better. Sometimes worse.) Had sufficient power to kill a deer, as evidenced by being able to shoot through a 2-3" pine sapling. No chronograph necessary. My entire reloading kit (including components) fit into a shoe box with room to spare. Cartridges were expensive back then costing anywhere from $3.50-$10.00 per box, depending on what you shot and where you shopped. I could manufacture a box of 20 deer loads for less that $1.50. The driving force for reloading was purely economic. Once I learned (or believed) that factory cartridges were not as accurate as expected, I concluded that I could make better and more accurate ammunition than the factories and cost be damned. Traveling down that slippery slope, the little shoe box has burgeoned into a massive loading bench packed with tools and components that takes up 1/3 of our garage, and the monster keeps growing. Sometimes, I miss that little shoe box.
