Blast from the past

RUGER

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Found these earlier lol
0594FDA7-7813-4B31-9B07-B67AF5F65274.jpeg
 

Wobblyshot1

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Maybe they should have been called "brassy balls". I found these in my ancient archive drawer. They were actually brass plated and it says to protect you from handling lead.
20210415_151353.jpg
 

Hunter 257W

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The advertising that the brass plating protected shooters from lead reminded me of my own experience with handling lead bullets. It's funny how so many people think that handling lead bullets is going to kill you almost as fast as getting shot with one of them. :) If that was so I'd be long gone since myself and my roommate in college sold many many thousands of bullets to a local gun shop/shooting range all through our college years. We cast bullets 1 or 2 days every week for 5 years in our dorm room and never ever bothered to clean anything. Ate on our desks right where we cast bullets. Take that OSHA! :)

I paid for all my shooting expenses all those years from cast bullet sales and never keeled over from lead poisoning yet. Makes me cringe to think of how little we got for them back then. 1,000 140 grain .358 bullets we sold for $18. 1,000 255gr .429's went for $22. Obviously not as much profit in the 44's but we produced what the gun shop asked for. They'd give us 30 caliber gas checks for free on the condition that we put them on 1,000 150 grain .309 bullets. We didn't have many molds being broke college kids and what we had were LEE brand due to price. But we had an inexhaustible enthusiasm for all things guns so we could care less how little our hourly rate was so long as we could make enough money to buy more wheel weights and have profit for powder, primers, cases, etc.
 
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Hunter 257W

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Yep Tennessee Tech in Cookeville from1978 to 1983. You'd never get away with melting lead in a dorm now. You can imagine how smoky it would get when we'd put a new batch of dirty wheel weights in the pot and flux with a pea size pellet of Lyman Alox bullet lube. Smoke would roll out of that pot. We'd throw the windows and door open and depending on wind direction either pull the smoke outside or into the hallway. Surprisingly nobody ever complained. Guys would always drop by the room and sit mesmerized watching us cast. Watching that silver steam of metal flowing into the mold then seconds later drop out as solid bullets is almost as mesmerizing as watching a camp fire. :)
 

mr.big

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Copper Head Road
The advertising that the brass plating protected shooters from lead reminded me of my own experience with handling lead bullets. It's funny how so many people think that handling lead bullets is going to kill you almost as fast as getting shot with one of them. :) If that was so I'd be long gone since myself and my roommate in college sold many many thousands of bullets to a local gun shop/shooting range all through our college years. We cast bullets 1 or 2 days every week for 5 years in our dorm room and never ever bothered to clean anything. Ate on our desks right where we cast bullets. Take that OSHA! :)

I paid for all my shooting expenses all those years from cast bullet sales and never keeled over from lead poisoning yet. Makes me cringe to think of how little we got for them back then. 1,000 140 grain .358 bullets we sold for $18. 1,000 255gr .429's went for $22. Obviously not as much profit in the 44's but we produced what the gun shop asked for. They'd give us 30 caliber gas checks for free on the condition that we put them on 1,000 150 grain .309 bullets. We didn't have many molds being broke college kids and what we had were LEE brand due to price. But we had an inexhaustible enthusiasm for all things guns so we could care less how little our hourly rate was so long as we could make enough money to buy more wheel weights and have profit for powder, primers, cases, etc.
who was buying them, Charlie Pardue??
 

Hunter 257W

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Yep, it was Charlie. We'd sell bullets to Charlie and beg Jerry to do other work out at Bend of The River. Anything to get money for reloading components. I remember one time when we'd done a bunch of work for them and they were running low on money. They'd been paying us $3/hr for all the jobs up to that point. I used my shrewd negotiating talent with Jerry and said, OK, what about if we're willing to keep doing the same work for $2/hr. I remember he thought about it for a second and said OK. :) That may have been when he put me to work with the post hole digger building the big dog pen. I still have the boxes from some of my loading tools with Charlie's hand written prices on them. For instance my RCBS lube master/sizer has $68 marked on the side of the box.

I do remember selling a a bunch of bullets one time to some gun shop in Nashville and getting in big trouble over not paying sales tax or something like that. I let my room mate go to that audit so just got second hand news about it. Made us cautious from then on about who we sold to.
 
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mr.big

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Yep, it was Charlie. We'd sell bullets to Charlie and beg Jerry to do other work out at Bend of The River. Anything to get money for reloading components. I remember one time when we'd done a bunch of work for them and they were running low on money. They'd been paying us $3/hr for all the jobs up to that point. I used my shrewd negotiating talent with Jerry and said, OK, what about if we're willing to keep doing the same work for $2/hr. I remember he thought about it for a second and said OK. :) That may have been when he put me to work with the post hole digger building the big dog pen. I still have the boxes from some of my loading tools with Charlie's hand written prices on them. For instance my RCBS lube master/sizer has $68 marked on the side of the box.

I do remember selling a a bunch of bullets one time to some gun shop in Nashville and getting in big trouble over not paying sales tax or something like that. I let my room mate go to that audit so just got second hand news about it. Made us cautious from then on about who we sold to.
Charlie and his wife and his sister are really good people,,,my youngest son spent lots of Sat mornings out at the range in Hilham shooting NRA 5 Meter BB guns,,
 

rodeojoe

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909
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Cookeville,TN.
Charlie and his wife and his sister are really good people,,,my youngest son spent lots of Sat mornings out at the range in Hilham shooting NRA 5 Meter BB guns,,
I saw Charlie and his sister at the range last week. Not a whole lot of people shooting off shells at this time for some reason. I had 5 kids and a grandson down there shooting bb's in the past also.
 

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