A little background:
My first introduction to reloading was my father's progressive shotshell press he kept in an outbuilding on our farm. My dad is a pretty damn good trap shooter and the press was setup accordingly for 12 gauge shells, #8 shot, and some modest load of IMR PB, if I remember correctly. At some point in my teenage years, a couple of friends and I decided to see if we could figure out how it all worked. After a few failures, we got the system down and were soon loading shells for target and small game shooting.
Fast forward to my early twenties and I started getting more interested in handguns and rifles. This naturally (at least to me) led to handloading of those cartridges. I started off with the .243 Winchester, .30-06 Springfield, and .303 British primarily with IMR 4064 powder. This was kind of a casual and experimental hobby, especially since the equipment was housed at my parent's farm and I was now several hours away.
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To the present:
Now that I have space to set up my own loading "station" I decided to do just that. As you can see in the photo above, I have created a collection of powders to use for all the various chamberings of all the guns I now own (and ones I hope to own in the future). This collection was based on researching load manuals looking for suitable powders for a smattering of rifle cartridges across the range from .223 to .45-70. My current handgun cartridge loading ambitions are significantly more limited, pretty much .38 Special, .357 Magnum, .45 ACP, and .45 Colt.
As far as my loading press, I'm starting with a Lee Hand Press:
So far it does everything I need it to do, and it's actually kind of fun to use. At some point I do hope to have a sturdy enough bench to get a standard press, but this will do for now.
Stay tuned for my first couple new handloading projects!
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