doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Primitive Loading Tools

First I do not consider myself a collector of these but over the years have acquired a few. Most came from yard sales, auction sales, flea markets & such at such low prices I just couldn't resist. My absolute earliest "Reloader" is a hickory ramrod fitted with a brass head, for a muzzleloader obviously.

Beyond that, I have an early boxed set, partially of wood with a thin steel wad seater, cast primer seater "pliers" & roll crimper all in 16 gauge. I have a couple of Lee loaders, one 12 & one 28. Have a French made 16 gauge loader imported by Thalson & ran across three at once of old Lyman Vandalia loaders, all 12 gauge. Have several of the old combination shot & bulk or black powder dippers as well as several old roll crimpers. 1 in 16, 1 in 10 & the rest in 12.

Some of these I have played with & loaded maybe a box of shells with. All are actually capable of loading good shells but production is of course extremely Slow by modern standards.

Does anyone else have any of these old tools? Somehow I did not ever manage to run across a Lyman "Straightline" set, probably one of the more popular shotshell loaders in early days.

I have a couple of wad seating brass plated tubes and their short ram rods, a powder dipper and roll crimpers. I have loaded a good numbeer of brass shells with a few hand made tools and a wood vise.

bill

Miller, I would love to find a Lyman Straightline set in 16 ga. They don't seem to show up at the usual suspect places.
I handload 16 ga. low pressure 7/8 oz. loads of #8 for woodcock. Here's a Manufrance (MF) adjustable shot and powder dipper, MF loading block for 16 ga., and MF RTO crimper in 16. The hulls are Cheddite paper. The gun is my MF Ideal 302 16 ga. I handload either with RTO's or with a brass hull set for turkeys depending on gauge. The RCBS scale is about 40 years old, hardly primitive and about as good as it gets for weighing powder and shot reliably. I have an assortment of digital scales, but had one malfunction (without consequences) and I don't trust them like I do the RCBS 10-10. I have a small collection (unintended) of RTO crimpers, in all gauges except 14 and 32.
Here's a complete 20 ga. set by Union Hardware in original box. It looks NIB.

I have a box of vintage hand loading tools I think all 12 bore somewhere in my workshop, as it is Sunday tomorrow and no plans I will spend some time looking for it. If it turns up I will post a photograph of the box contents.

GLS;
The boxed set is essentially like mine. Offhand I do not recall if mine is Eureka or Bridgeport Gun & Implement. I believe they both made near identical sets.
One other I forgot is a Herter shotshell die set for rifle presses with the 1�-18 thread, Herter thread their heavy C-frame presses with this thread as did Lachmillar on some of their presses.

Considering inflation these early loading tolls were actually quite an investment when bought new. I looked back at an old 1960 Gun digest & the Lyman Vandalia was listed at about $35.00 & the Thalson @ $25.50 for the model 1 which is what I have. They also made a model which would either roll or fold crimp, the model 1 only fold crimps. On the model 3, the crank spun the shell itself rather than the crimp head.

Miller,
While slower loading than a Mec et al., but for specialty loads where one isn't loading a flat's worth, the ability to handle shells of varying length without having to tweak a pie crimper for column height, etc, makes these vintage crimpers handy. There's a Bridgeport 12 RTO just under the red crimper on the left of the photo. Its pins are adjustable for either square or radiused crimp according to the writing on the German Silver crimper. Baffles me how it'd be done. It's set on square and it makes a nice crimp, but square topped. The ones made in the USA are easily identifiable; the French ones are more finished in appearance. It's easier finding subgauge crimpers from France than the in the USA where most are 12 gauge. 16 gauge seems to be the calibre de jour in France. ebay.fr "sertisseur". I have found several in 20 and .410 on the French site. More scarce over here.
Modern RTO's are available in subgauge from www.siarm.com (Italy) and from a Russian source I've seen on Ebay. Siarm's heads are gauge interchangeable on the same frame. Storage of RTO's obviously takes up less space than an assortment of MEC presses. Gil

Gil, that's quite a collection. I'm eating my heart out. I have two roll crimpers for 12ga and one for 10. Also a wooden 4" long punch with a pin one ne end to deprime and it's turned around and a round end attached so the other end can be used to prime and push down wads. It sets in a round stand with a hole in it for the primer to drop through.

I have an unused Eureka Brass Shell Set in 14 gauge.

I have 2 14s, but have yet to fire either, they are old. I'll get around to it one day.

Joe

Gil;
Certainly a very nice assortment of roll crimpers you have there, thanks for the pic. I don't have near this many but do have 10, 12 & 16 gauges. My 10 gauge is the best quality one I have, looks somewhat like the one below & to the right of your Red one. I made a 12 gauge head for it patterned after the original 10 gauge & can insert a sleeve for the smaller hulls & have used it for loading 12s as well.
A bit more modern but still obsolete I have picked up Herter model 72 & 390 presses. These are both of heavy cast iron construction & near indestructible.
The 72 I consider a single stage though all dies are set up & one could load a single shell without any changes, however, each step is done individually. When using it I found it more efficient to go through a single step on all cases before going to the next step. The 390 will produce a loaded shell for each pull of the handle but requires more movements of components etc than more modern progressives.

Miller, When I want to load a box of shells for woodcock, I run batches of 10 shells one stage at a time when I roll crimp. Last reloading bout my procedure was to preset the 10-10 and weigh powder and pour into each shell, one at a time, and immediately put a wad in the shell as a precaution to prevent double charges. When all 10 have powder and a wad, I reset the scale for the shot, weigh shot, pour in shell, and cover with OSC. When all ten are done, I roll'em up. I then repeat with 10 more shells. I don't load with other folks around and I do it in radio silence. When I loaded with a MEC progressive for ducks and doves, a mis-dumped shot charge would inevitably make a holy mess. I used to roll crimp with the crimper vertical to avoid dumping shot, but recently have crimped with the device in a horizontal position all the while handling the hull with care to avoid knocking the shot loose from the friction held OSC. I've been roll crimping about 10 years and I'm overdue for making a complete mess of things. So far, so good. Gil