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This should be the last week with no updates. I am up and about, limping along, and am able to do stuff. It’s likely I won’t be completely back to my old self for a few more months, but I should be able to tackle some projects. My goal is one per week, and I plan to try and stick to that. I appreciate everyone’s patience, this has been a less then fun experience. However some good has come of it, so I’m not complaining.

Here in South Western Utah, spring has sprung, we have officially started our garden. We will see how that goes this year. Last year we lost the battle with the squash bugs. With spring comes Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) matches. If you haven’t looked into participating in a CMP I would highly encourage you to give it a try.

I have found the club in Cedar City, Utah to be very welcoming to new comers and they bend over backwards to help get you up to speed. The competition is geared towards self improvement, and you compete with military rifles both modern and historic. It is a great opportunity to connect with like minded individuals in an relaxed and fun environment. Due to this virus many matches have been canceled, but it looked like we will be doing a D-Day commemorative match on Saturday June 6th.

Participating in a CMP club also qualifies you to purchase a M1 Garand from the CMP. I have has my heart set on one, and hopefully I can get one ordered soon. In the meantime I typically shoot my M1A, but I’d like to also shoot my Lee Enfield. There may be a project in the future for getting that rifle ready to shoot in CMP Matches. We will see.

I have read the terrible news coming out of Canada, what the government is doing there is shameful. There are a lot of good rifles, and shot guns, that will be forced from responsible citizens. We try and stay away from politics on this website, but I feel it would be a dereliction of duty if we did not pay attention too, and support, our northern brothers. I fear these may be a type of things to come if we do not continue to fight to maintain the rights we so enjoy.

That is it for this week. No new updates, but I do plan on easing back into projects at time and as my ankle allows. I need to polish up the Lee Sizing die, so expect to see a write up on that, and hopefully it solves the problem with sizing our Hi-Tek coated bullets. As always if you would like to leave some feedback, have suggestions or comments, email me at jayandrew338@gmail.com. Also check us out on Facebook, and soon, Instagram.

Thanks for Subscribing!

The Ballistic Assistant

It’s hard to believe that it is May already but here we are.

As many of you know, a little over a month ago, I broke my leg. Things are healing nicely, I am now about to put weight on it, and walk around some. This is quite exciting for me, as it means I’ll be back out creating mayhem and havoc in no time. This benefits all those who enjoy reading about my latest adventures.

You might think with being laid up, I’d have all the time in the world to work on the website, but alas, life has kept me busy with other tasks. So there have not be any website updates this week. I am anxious to get back out there and get working on projects again, it will happen in due time.

I hope everyone is staying safe and sane out there.

As always if you have a suggestion or a comment shoot me an email over at jayandrew338@gmail.com. Alternatively you can post something on the Facebook page and share your quarantine project!

Stay Safe Out There!

The Ballistic Assistant

Unfortunately there was no updated over the past week. I did work on some content for the website but did not finish any of it to the point where it is publishable. The one hurdle I am running into is images to use for the site. As much as possible I try to use images that are examples I have on hand.

Occasionally I do use stock images of products that are from websites such as Midway, Brownell, or the Manufacturers own website. However when it comes to cracks on brass, or showing the burr’s after trimming brass, I’d like to use my own photos. With this broken leg, I have been severely limited in my ability to take photos since most of my examples are not at the house with me.

Perhaps this is a long way to share that the next few weeks will be a bit slow in updates. I’ll do what I can but until things heal up to where I get clearance from the doc to drive myself places, I’m stuck with what I have on hand.

With all of that said I hope everyone is keeping sane with the “Stay at home” orders. In my case this is probably the best time could have broken my leg. With that said, I very much wish I could be outside enjoying this spring weather.

As always, if you want to reach out to me my email is jayandrew338@gmail.com, or you can check out the Facebook page. Feel free to share what you are doing to the kill the time during this unprecedented period of self isolation.

Thanks,

The Ballistic Assistant

Good Monday Evening, this update is coming a bit later then usual, due to me having my cast removed this morning. It is such a good feeling to get rid of that cast and get into a walking boot. Ankle is still pretty tender, and I’m still very much laid up, but I’m a little more comfortable.

This past week was a bit crazy for me, and this week is shaping up to be a busy week too. I did publish a write up on Friday of last week. We talked about some of the cleaning methods and went over sizing dies. I combined the two topics as a lot of people clean once before they size and then after they size to get ride of the size lube.

Handloading Your Way: Cleaning and Sizing Brass

I will likely revisit this write up in the future and add some photo’s to it. Unfortunately with me being laid up, I’ve been unable to get to my box of examples. Some photos, such as press set up, and examples of defects in brass, didn’t make it into this write up prior to publishing. Look for a revision in the future to see photo examples.

This week I’ll continue to try and get at least one write up finished. It likely won’t be until closer to the end of the week, we will see what time permits. I appreciate everyone who has subscribed, it’ll be a few weeks but we’ll start back into some of the project we’ve been working on. As always if you have any suggestions, comments or criticisms, feel free to email us at jayandrew338@gmail.com. You can also check us out on Facebook.

Thanks,

The Ballistic Assistant

It’s Monday again. Hope everyone survived the past week.

Everyone has a different approach to reloading, using different tools, methods and techniques to produce their own quality loads. We continued our series of “Handloading Your Way” taking a look at some of the tools used to get rid of spent primers, prep the primer pocket for a new primer, and inserting a new primer. You can read the write up at the link below.

Handloading You Way: Ready to Prime

I am still waiting on this broken ankle to mend, so many of the projects that I’ve been working on are on hold. Instead I’ve been working on planning and research for current and future projects. Hopefully I can get back and at them in the next few weeks. In the mean time I’ll continue to work on the “Handloading Your Way” Series and other projects that I am able to do largely from the comfort of my couch.

Like many of you I am keeping a close eye on the current virus situation and the market trends and responses. Some might say it’s a good time to be in the firearms industry with all the demand, however many factories and retail outlets have been forced to close. As a result there are many in the firearms industry who have not benefited from the recent “Run on Guns”. Hopeful we are past the apex of this crisis and we will return to normal soon.

As always if there are questions, suggests, comments or concerns please feel free to email us at jayandrew338@gmail.com. Alternatively we can be found on Facebook, and we love to engage with our readers there as well. Thanks for subscribing and stay safe out there!

The Ballistic Assistant

We made it to Monday, which seems like a bit of an accomplishment.

We try and talk about safety in our write ups as it is central to everyone’s lives. I have a bit of a safety share, which happened to me over this past week that hopefully you can learn from. My current job has me doing Environmental Managing and Process Improvements to a mill and mine site in rural Utah, having moved on from the firearms industry a few years ago.

Tuesday I found myself in a heavy equipment maintenance building where there were some industrial batteries on the floor. These batteries are about the height and width of a typical car battery but are 2 feet long in some cases. I was talking to a co worker when I took a step back, and my foot unexpectedly hit one of these batteries, I stumbled, tried to regain my footing, rolled my ankle over, and ended up breaking it in three places.

This accident was obviously a preventable one, the batteries had been stored there for many years without incident, but should have been stored on a shelf or elevated platform where they were not a tripping hazard. I should have been paying closer attention to my surroundings and recognized that as a potential risk. I was wearing steel toes boots that ended well above the ankle, as I knew I had weak ankles, this likely prevented a more serious injury. (Though I wonder how it could have been worse)

Now that I have plenty of time to reflect on what could have been, I think about all the times I did potentially dangerous things, and paid close attention to safety and to my surroundings. It was something simple, that ended up really messing me up. Fortunately it is a lesson to be learned, if you work in the industry, and use the 2.5 gallon buckets, or even the 5 gallon buckets, what are you doing to ensure they don’t become a tripping hazard? How about empty pallets? Do you keep the work area clean from stray bullets? they are like bearings and they can be a slipping hazard.

I fully recognize that you could have tripped like I did, 1,000 times over, and had a far more favorable outcome. I’m not old, just 32, but I’m not a spring chicken either. Just take a moment today and look around your work space and see if there is something you can do to prevent a trip or a fall.

With all of this week’s excitement, that ended with surgery and a permanent plate in my ankle, I was hard pressed to get a write up finished. However I did finish one on the Hi-Tek coating. Luckily I was able to finish coating the bullets on Monday, and had the time to write the article over the past few days.

Overall my impression is favorable of this new coating. However it did not come without it’s challenges and lessons to be learned. Here is the write up for that.

Hi-Tek Coating Cast Bullets

I’ll still try and maintain at least one write up per week as I go through this healing period, but a lot of the projects I have been working on, are somewhat delayed. As it will take me somewhere between 6 to 8 weeks to get back on my feet. We’ll keep on keeping on 🙂

As always if you have any questions, concerns or suggestions please email me at jayandrew338@gmail.com. Alternatively you can check out our Facebook page. Thanks for being a subscriber and have an awesome week!

Best Wishes!

The Ballistic Assistant

Good Monday Morning!

First off I made a mistake and released the Casting Bullet Quality Control write up as a post an not a page. Thus it was emailed out to all of you instead of just going live to the page. We truly do not want to spam our subscribers, so we limit emails to once a week updates for those who want to see what happens on the site. I’ll pay special attention to this in the future.

We had a successful casting session last week. Instead of doing a full “How To” I instead decided to share my thoughts on casting. Hopefully there’s some interesting stuff for newbies and veterans alike.

Some Thoughts on Casting Bullets

When you manufacturer your own bullets or ammunition you need to have some way to measure critical dimensions, and a means to establish your own quality control. While perfection is everyone’s goal, there are often factors that beyond your control that make achieving this goal impossible. Here is what we do when we look at quality control of our cast bullets.

Casting Bullets Quality Control

We’ve been working with Hi-Tek Expoy coating for our cast bullets. Expect to see a write up on that in the near future for those who are interested. This is the first time we’ve used this coating, and it has been a bit of an adventure. I do believe in the future we will see a migration away from copper and brass jackets bullets to Nylon, or Epoxy type coatings, for budget ammunition from mainstream manufacturers.

This is not without precedent, as Herters, Federal and some other have released some version of a Nylon or Coated lead bullet in loaded ammunition. While these early attempts may not have been a commercial success, we will likely see these products come back to the market as ammunition prices rise, and companies find way to cut costs and bring product to the market at lower costs.

As always if you have any questions, comments or concerns, please feel free to drop me an email at jayandrew338@gmail.com or hop on Facebook and checkout our Facebook page.

Stay sane, and stay safe!

The Ballistic Assistant

March is almost over, and what a March is has been.

We continued our series of write ups on Spud Guns. This one focused on building out the combustion chamber. Once the PVC fittings are put together and the glue has dried there is still some work in ensuring electrical connections can be made to the igniter and the fan. We detail all of that work in the write up below.

The Humble Spud Gun: Combustion Chamber

Sighting in the VZ-58 has been a small project in its own right. Discovering tools that are needed and weaknesses in the build. We took a hard look at the trigger, being that it really was not working for us. We took a look at our options, tried a few things and came up with a solution that got us a better trigger. See the detail here’s :

VZ-58: Trigger Rework

Last week we had indicated there would be an update to the Powder Burn Rate chart to include SMP 764 and 6.5 Staball powder. We have not release the update yet, as we want to check the approximate burn rate of SMP 764 against SMP 765. Be patient with us and we’ll get this update out as soon as possible.

I was able to track down some 7.62×39 ammo at a local pawn shop. So we will continue working on sighting in the VZ-58 this week. Hopefully we will have that finished off. I also plan on doing some bullet casting, and try my hand at epoxy coating. Expect some follow up write ups on both of those topics. We will also be working on the Spud gun, but we are waiting on some components to arrive, there may not be an update on that this week.

With everyone stuck indoors what have you been up to? Have you worn out your presses yet? Run out of components? Sold the kids to buy more? It been tough for a lot of us, hopefully we are through the worse of it. Let us know what you’ve been up to over at Facebook.

As always if you have questions, comments or concerns shoot me an email at jayandrew338@gmail.com. I’ve heard from a few of you and I have really appreciated the feed back and conversation. Stay safe out there.

Thanks,

The Ballistic Assistant

Good Monday Morning!

I gotta say, man the world is going crazy right now over this COVID-19 outbreak. Certinately never seen anything like it. Fortunately it doesn’t impact much of what I do, it is just insane to watch. Stay safe out there.

We’ve been working behind the scenes on projects and do not have much in the way of website updates this week. When sighting in the VZ-58, I discovered that I needed a tool to adjust the front sight. Instead of purchasing one, we made one. Here is the write up on that.

VZ-58: Front Sight Adjustment Tool

Expect to see an update on the Burn Rate Chart this week. This update come courtesy of one of our readers. Winchester StaBall 6.5 is the consumer version of St. Marks SMP 764. We will edit the Relative Burn Rate Chart to reflect this new information. A big thanks to the gentleman who pointed this out.

If anyone has anything they would like to add or change on the Relative Burn Rate Chart, please do not hesitate to shoot me an email. When doing load development, the Burn Rate Chart was an invaluable tool for identifying all the different powders worth testing. Having a comprehensive and complete Burn Rate Chart was and is always my goal.

That is all for this week’s update. As always, thanks for subscribing, if you have comments, suggestions, or corrections please email them to jayandrew338@gmail.com. If you would like to interact with us directly, check out our Facebook Page.

Thanks,

The Ballistic Assistant

Good Monday morning!

Last week was a busy week working on a few projects. We still managed to hash out a write up continuing our series on basic handloading equipment. Hopefully it is somewhat insightful for people who are looking at getting started in handloading, as well as those who have been at it for awhile.

Handloading Your Way – Powder Metering Accessories

We’ll continue to work on this series as time allows. We’re dutifully working on some of the other projects for the sight, so keep an eye out for updates.

We try hard to stay away from politics and world events on this website, but we would be somewhat negligent if we didn’t comment on the current trends of the firearms industry. Currently we are seeing an uptick in ammunition and firearm purchases. This can be traced to two primary events, the CORVID-19 outbreak and the upcoming 2020 elections.

These “Run on guns” can have detrimental effects to both the hobby shooter and the professional load developer. Shortages in ammunition can result in the inability to conduct Competitor Sample comparisons, and shortages in powder often results in alternate powders being use, incomplete powder screenings, or loads unable to be loaded at all. If you have time sensitive projects coming up, be sure to order early, and anticipate standard lead times may be longer than typical.

I’m not saying to run out a purchase all the 22LR you can find, but I am saying that you may want to plan accordingly. Depending on the outcome of the 2020 election, we may see this “Run on Guns” evaporate overnight, or it could get a lot worse. We will have to see.

We’ll continue to monitor the market and see what the trends look like. Be safe out there.

In the meantime if you have any comments, suggestions, or question feel free to give a shout out to us at Jayandrew338@gmail.com or check us out on Facebook. Thanks for subscribing and we hope you have a good week!

Thanks,

The Ballistic Assistant