The Shortage

I was on the way home from work yesterday when my son called on the cellphone.  He told me that he was at the Alexandria Indoor Range, and they had primers.  Really?  "Yeah, Pop, I'm here now and they've got primers in stock."

"I'll be there in half an hour."  I turned the truck around and headed for the range.  When I got there the guy told me that, indeed, he had received a delivery of primers (40,000) earlier in the week and had sold about half of them in the intervening days.  I picked up 2,000 large pistol primers for about what I could have gotten them for online, less the HAZMAT charges.

I haven't used many pistol primers since summer ended.  I've been hunting and working with the rifles.  However, in another month it will be springtime, when a man's eye turns toward pistol work.  My stocks are woefully low on .45 ACP, .38 Special, and .44 magnum.  So, with primers in hand, my search turns toward bullets.  There are non available anywhere I can see, but I do have my molds, my lead pots and a stock of raw lead.  So, PawPaw had best get busy casting bullets if he wants to tune-up his pistolcraft for the springtime shooting season.

I'm still reloading on a single stage press (for almost two decades) and I'm thinking about upgrading to a turret press for pistol work, simply to speed up the process.  The one I'm looking at is here, but like everything else they're out of stock.  Just Damn.

UPDATE:  Now, tell me there's a bullet shortage.  At 11:00 this morning after a session with my lead pot, I managed to produce this.

That's a mixed pile of 230 grain .45 ACP bullets and 158 grain .38 caliber bullets.  If I do this for a couple of afternoons a week during February, I'll have enough bullets for the springtime shooting season.  I'm using two-cavity molds that I've had for years and looking online I notice that molds are hard to find as well as reloading supplies.  Now, to start scrounging more lead.