Reloading Out of Frank’s Ditty Bag
©
2014 – Ed Harris
Frank
Marshall spent many pleasant afternoons plinking with his .30-30 Savage 340 or
Winchester 94 rifles as he reloaded rounds at the range with his Ideal Tong
Tool. Lyman’s 310 tool was the portable reloading outfit of
choice at the range or deer camp into the 1960s.
Click on photos for a
larger pic
The original
Ideal tong tool, patented March 11, 1884 had dies machined integral with its steel
handles. The early tools featured a single-cavity bullet mold on the end and a bullet-sizer
hole through the tool handle. Ideal’s No.
1 was adapted to pistol cartridges from .32 S&W through .41 Long Colt. The No. 4 was for longer cartridges from
.25-20 through .44-40 and .45 Colt. The
No. 6 tool was a rifle tool for .32-40 through .50-110 Winchester. Before WWI these
sold for $2.25 to $3.00, depending upon caliber.
Steel
Handled Ideal Loading Tool for the 30-30:
(Click on photos for a larger picture)
Sizing…
Depriming…
Prming…
Loading…
After World
War II today’s familiar threaded-handle design with removable die sets was
adopted and designated as the Model 310 tool.
The Tru-Line Junior turret press used the same dies, which were available for most then-popular calibers. According to “The
310 Shop” boxed sets with steel handles were sold from 1947 to 1957 under
the name “Lyman Ideal”. Aluminum handles
were introduced in 1958 and sold into the early 1970s. The 310 was reintroduced
when Cowboy Shooting became popular.
Lyman’s Kake Cutter was a simple, threaded push-through, cast
bullet sizer for the 310 tool.
When
pan-lubing bullets, the Kake-Cutter was used to pop
bullets out of a block of solid lube poured around the bullets and allowed to
solidify in a cake pan. These gadgets and the 310 tool are what Frank Marshall taught
me and my school mates to use as kids in the 1960s, but I never owned one until
recently. Now that I am retired and having
time to tinker, I asked around and found myself a steel tool set in .30-30 and
am enjoying childhood memories and sharing the nostalgic experience.
Lyman
"tong tools" and die sets frequently emerge from estate sales, yard
sales and can be found at gun shows or on the internet. If you want to experience
the nostalgia in loading for Dad’s WWII bring-back in .30-'06, 8mm Mauser, 7.7
Jap, .303 British, those dies are most common IF you know what to look
for. Tong tool dies are not marked by
caliber, but are identified by their part number. So, unless you locate a boxed
set, you must research the compatible die parts in an old catalog and search
gun shows to assemble your kit. This may require lapping out a “muzzle resizer”
to best fit your particular brass and bullet.
An assortment of diameter muzzle resizers for .30-30, .30-40, .30-’06
and .303 British is handy.
Neck size
dies can sometimes be used to improvise in loading similar rounds of the same
nominal caliber and head dimensions. The
.250 Savage and .257 Roberts dies can be adapted to each
other, and the Roberts dies work on .25-06. A .32 S&W die set can load .32 ACP, .32
H&R Magnum, .32-20 etc. The .30-40 Krag and .303 British dies each will
load the other. There may be other possibilities.
Today’s Lyman
310 tool has aluminum handles, machined from a die casting, with dies being
offered today only in the popular “Cowboy” calibers. The Lyman 310
Tool
The 310 Shop offers new dies and handles as well
as complete sets in most traditional and modern calibers, including many which
were never available in from Lyman. A
link with more practical information on using the 310 tool is: “How To
Reload With A Lyman 310 Tool by Ric Bowman (LASC Website).”
Lyman never
produced carbide sizer dies for its tong tool. Because
they only neck-size, you must use cases originally fired in your gun, unless
you full-length size range pickup brass on another press first. When using
plain steel dies, fired cases must be clean and well lubricated to avoid grit scratching
the dies or your brass.
Mechanical
advantage and extraction power of the tong tool is also very limited. While you
can brute-force an over-expanded empty into a 310 tool, you probably won’t get
it out, because the extractor hook will jump off the rim and the handles don’t
have enough mechanical advantage to either force the case in or to pull it out! A shooting buddy from high school days recalled
reloading for a .44 magnum M29, that to use the 310 without excessive cursing,
it was important to load revolver cartridges conservatively. Five chambers in that
M29 kicked out empties which worked fine with the 310 tool, but chamber number
6 was one which had survived an overload a mutual friend, the previous owner, used
to demonstrate what Elmer’s real .44
load should be! The inability to drag stuck cases out of the muzzle resizer is
why it is critical to clean brass well (both inside and out!) to avoid
introducing grit which WILL make cases stick in the muzzle resizer or on the
expander plug! And, don’t eat fried
chicken while priming with the 310, because you are handling the primers with
your fingers! Don’t ask me how I know…
It is
important to clean primer pockets because the priming chamber engages only half
of the case rim at a time, so you must push, then rotate the case and squeeze
again to seat the primer so it is fully bottomed, flush and square.
Back in the day
it was common to "dip measure" powder when using the tong tool. As long as you know that your charge cup and
powder combination produces a safe and useable load, this is OK. The Lee dipper
set and charge tables are recommended these days. For my nostalgia trip I soldered up some
home-brew charge cups from empty cartridge cases and copper wire and weighed
some samples. The results are fascinating!
Dip measure made from a .38 Special Case
A dip
measure made from an empty .22 LR case throws about 3 grains of Bullseye. This is
a safe load for a .32-20 revolver, .32 H&R Magnum or .38 Special with
standard-weight lead bullet for the caliber.
It also works well to improvise "cat's sneeze" loads with
single-0 buckshot in almost any .30 cal. rifle case.
A measure
made from a .32 ACP case throws 6 grains of Bullseye, a full charge load for
modern cowboy revolvers and lever-actions chambered in .44-40 and .45 Colt, and
a nice plinker in the .44 Magnum. It also makes a great small game load with
110-120 grain cast bullets in .30 cal. rifles of .30-30 size and up.
A .32
S&W Long case throws 11.5 grains of #2400, a useful “medium-velocity” load
with standard-weight lead bullets in the .357 Magnum. It is also fine for soft,
plain-based bullets in the .30-30, .32 Winchester Special, .32-40, .30-40,
7.62x54R, 7.7 Jap, 7.65 Argentine or .303 British.
A 7.62x25 Tokarev case throws 14.5 grs. of
#2400, a full charge .357 Magnum load and mild gas checked bullet plinker in any .30 cal. from 7.62x39 to .30-’06.
A .38
Special case throws about 21 grains of #2400, a full charge load for the .44
Magnum revolver, or a useful jacketed bullet or gas-checked cast-bullet plinker in the
7.62x54R, 8mm Mauser or .30-’06.
A 7.62x39
case throws 29 grains of RL-7, which is a full charge load with 150-grain
jacketed bullets in the .30-30. This
also makes a good heavy hunting load with gas-checked bullets in any .30 cal. Rifle from
the .30-40 Krag through the .30-06. It also throws 28 grs. of IMR4064, which is a
full-charge, gas-checked load using the
#31141 bullet in the .30-30, and a good target load with gaschecks
in any .30 caliber from the Krag up through the .30-’06.
Better than
the tong tool, more versatile and highly recommended for modern users, not into
the fire-side cowboy nostalgia, is the Lee hand Press, described here:
Lee
Hand Press @ Cabelas How to Use a Lee
Hand Press (eHow) You-Tube
Demo Here
The Lee hand
press uses standard 7/8-14 threaded dies and common shell holders,
so that you can use dies which you already have. I recommend carbide dies in pistol and
revolver calibers, whenever possible. The Lee tool has ample leverage to
full-length resize pistol cases and smaller rifle cases. The 9mm, .45 ACP, .357
magnum, 5.56mm or 7.62x39 brass size relatively
easily. While .30-'06 brass fired from an M1 can also be resized on the Lee
hand press, doing so takes significantly more effort. However, the Lee hand press is an affordable starter-outfit,
well designed for its task.
A complete
portable kit with dies, primers, powder, bullets, small loading block, etc.,
store easily in a .30 cal. ammo can, or in Frank’s old WWII GI gas mask bag, thrown
over the shoulder or attached with a snap-link onto your wilderness ruck. Frank
will forgive your buying the Lee hand press and passing up that 310 tong tool
at the gun show. He felt it a shame
Lyman never made .223 Remington or 7.62x39 dies for it... In his later days
“Bill Ruger’s Plinker” and
the “Chinese Hurdy Gurdy” did strike his fancy.
Another
approach for reloading “out of the box,” is to use a small arbor press with hand
dies, such as those made by L.E. Wilson.
This method is most popular with bench-rest competitors, using bolt-action
rifles, neck-sizing, match-prepped brass for one rifle
only. Setting up for a precision rifle this
way is practical, but more expensive than using the Lee outfit. Descriptions and how-to articles of arbor
press equipment are at:
Sinclair
Arbor Press (Brownells) Sinclair International Webiste
Reloading with
Wilson Dies and an Arbor Press