Is there such a thing? If so, where's the cutoff timeline? If you started reloading before a certain date on the calendar or a certain decade, does that make you 'old school?'

Or, since we all follow the same procedure; inspect cases, resize, reprime, charge powder and seat a bullet, is there no such thing?

If you cast your own bullets, does that make you 'old school?'

If you started reloading before Al Gore's internet came into being, is that 'old school' reloading?

If you use a chronograph, or use an electronic powder scale, or have a strain gauge glued to your rifle barrel, can you possibly be of the 'old school' persuasion?

If you started reloading by using Lyman's 45th edition manual (1970), would you be considered 'old school?'

Tell us your thoughts.

well 50 years ago or so when i started reloading all i had was an old 7.7 jap. couldn't find or afford ammo so i'd load up the fired brass. didn't have a press or dies or the like so i'd spin the case with my fingers while squeezing the neck slowly in a vise until it would size down enough to hold a bullet. then knock our the primer with a hammer and punch, seat the new primer in the vise, fill the case up with old bonanza 4831 and seat the bullet using the vise again. then go out and shoot somebodys crat. i guess that might be called old school

My first class (self taught) in reloading was 45 or so years ago. I used a Lee Loader for my 32 Special. I still have and still use the loader and the rifle.

I think the old school goes all the way back to Quigley. roger

Geez ; Roger I'm not quite that old !

I'm somewhere between Old School old fashion and technically advanced .

My problem is I'm not a BR shooter but believe everything I own, should preform like it is !.

My poor military rifles must just despise me for all the agony I put them through .

I don't care if the M1 Garand does shoot 3/4" groups , I want a single hole grouping of 5 shots

and I'm not going to stop shooting it until I get it either !.

I know one thing for sure at least wise for me , Building loads takes far more time that discharging

them !.

I started loading for an Old '03 Springfield when I was 13- I'll soon be 52. However I use all the modern items- chronos, pressure trace, etc. I think 'old school' would only read primers and check expansion. Casting my own lead bullets might move me into the old school category though.

If you bought HiVel#2, for reloading Mail order, or bought powder and primers mail order from Herters etc. I'd say your Old school.

I don't think there is a "new" school of reloading.

Back in the1920s & '30s and probably well before that, reloaders were getting velocities of 4000 fps+, and groups at 300 & 400 yards (and farther on occasion) of significantly less than 1/2 MOA.

They were debating the contributions of various case shapes & sizes (short-fat vs. long-slim), reforming all manner of cases, casting or swaging their own lead and jacketed bullets, arguing about free-bore vs. extra-deep seated bullets (and making both work well). They used chronographs (often built at home), had far better access to big company pressure-testing services than we now have, and were generally just as smart, and perhaps better educated IF they had the chance to go to school.

The only major difference I can see is that they did a lot more personal research than modern shooters seem to spare the time for...they actually read books and thought through what they read, then tested it for themselves. They understood why people actually believed and followed the old adage "Don't believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see."

Seriously, I think the major difference was that reloading was either a totally normal endeavor (with blackpowder) or rather rare (with smokeless). so, people were either pretty much very basic reloaders, or very sophisticated ones, not "old school" or "new school".

As such, the sophisticated ones left a heck of a vast amount of info behind them for those of today who bother to dig it up. They likely deserve a great deal more respect than they seem to generally get.

When I come across someone using a Lyman 55 powder measure who believes it is the best design ever, I think old school.

By comparison, are Belding & Mull users modernists?

Winnchester 69 I resemble that remark.

Sure beats what I was using before.

I started helping my dad when I was 4 or 5 doing my own shot shells at 8. Rifles about 12 pistols at 16. about 47 years ago so I guess I haven't hit the 50 years of reloading yet.

quote:

Originally posted by p dog shooter:
Sure beats what I was using before.

Better than my Lee dippers?

[be aware that I'm trolling here - I also have a trickler and scale]

quote:

Originally posted by bartsche:
I think the old school goes all the way back to Quigley. roger

I agree. Dip a case in blackowder, level it off, and seat a ball. No scale, press, chrono, manual, ect...

quote:

Originally posted by butchloc:
well 50 years ago or so when i started reloading all i had was an old 7.7 jap. couldn't find or afford ammo so i'd load up the fired brass. didn't have a press or dies or the like so i'd spin the case with my fingers while squeezing the neck slowly in a vise until it would size down enough to hold a bullet. then knock our the primer with a hammer and punch, seat the new primer in the vise, fill the case up with old bonanza 4831 and seat the bullet using the vise again. then go out and shoot somebodys crat. i guess that might be called old school

I started in 1962.....did much of what you read from butchloc.....except I went to trap ranges after the "rich guys" shot and picked up wads to reuse....there was usually some cases laying around too.....just tape them shut if a few bbs rolled out!

I had an old lyman roll crimper (wish I knew where that thing went) and roll crimped most of my shotshells.....Herters was just down the road and went there once in a while......a neighbor had a Cessna and he gave me a ride a few times as the airport in Waseca was across the road from Herters.

I bought 4831 powder for fifty cents a pound.....filled my .270 cases and stuffed in bullets.....you couldn't get enough powder in the case to make a bad load.....another neighbor had al old Pacific "super C" press he let me use.....I still have it after he died!

THEM WERE THE DAYS!

i started in 1964 with one of those's lee loader some one gave me.it was for a 30-30 and you made one at a time.

There was an old school of reloading and I think its terminous began some time in the (90)s.

the old school was loading with limited or no cohort communication. Mostly on our own, working from a cook book and information from gun rags. Our Experts were thought to be the guys behind the sporting goods store's counter. Sometimes that was a marvelous source of misinformation. Reloading was pretty much a solo thing.

Now here come the computer and people like Saeed making information exchange bountiful. Totaly different day. We now have our own society and a wealth of available information and knowledge. The computer has opened doors for us that were not much more than day dreams in the past. The old school guys were not uniformally guided, kind of worked in a haze and meandered down different paths and gained somewhat different experience. Today it is different. The paths are marked well enough that most Know where they are headed when they choose to go down that path. We share all that OLD experiece with those that are receptive.Blather Blather ON roger

enough said, I'm sure this picture is well painted. " OLD SCHOOL to NEW SCHOOL JMHO roger

Indians reloading their Bows with arrows is old school

quote:

Originally posted by bartsche:
There was an old school of reloading and I think its terminous began some time in the (90)s.

the old school was loading with limited or no cohort communication. Mostly on our own, working from a cook book and information from gun rags. Our Experts were thought to be the guys behind the sporting goods store's counter. Sometimes that was a marvelous source of misinformation. Reloading was pretty much a solo thing.

Now here come the computer and people like Saeed making information exchange bountiful. Totaly different day. We now have our own society and a wealth of available information and knowledge. The computer has opened doors for us that were not much more than day dreams in the past. The old school guys were not uniformally guided, kind of worked in a haze and meandered down different paths and gained somewhat different experience. Today it is different. The paths are marked well enough that most Know where they are headed when they choose to go down that path. We share all that OLD experiece with those that are receptive.Blather Blather ON roger

enough said, I'm sure this picture is well painted. " OLD SCHOOL to NEW SCHOOL JMHO roger

Roger, I don't often basically disagree with anything you say, but I sure do to some extent on this one. True there was no internet a few decades ago, but that did NOT mean people didn't have reloading guides, had to learn in the dark about reloading or shooting, and did not communicate with each other about it.

Many (the "sophisticated" reloaders) knew as much about what they were doing as ANYONE reloading today does...often perhaps more.

To think that modern humans are superior in any way to their forbears I think is simply an overt expression of hubris. If anything, we as a society are less inspired, less responsible, and are more dependent on being taken by the hand and led to some common, societally-established politically correct beliefs...about shooting, what works, and why, as much as in anything else.

As to learning from the "gun rags", the internet reloading/gun/shooting sites are not (to me) anything more than electronic gun rags, but generally without the useful hand of a responsible, knowledgeable, man or woman as an editor. (There are a few exceptions.) The result is often a much more bountious supply of MISINFORMATION nowadays.

There have always been and likely always will be those who choose not to avail themselves of the available information. But that doesn't mean the human capacity has changed, though the effort the average person is willing to put into learning MAY have changed...possibly for the worse.

Is it going to get better? I doubt it. Too easy to go to the internet and get a lot of gun-related drivel to answer any question.

Sorry to sound so harsh, as I really respect your opinions (and several other people's here), but I have had the plethora of urban myths, rural myths, and general BS from the internet just about up to my ears!!

Think I'll go have a beer. Too bad you aren't here, I'd buy.

P.S.:Yes.I understand the above is just my opinion and your post was your opinion. Mine does not make yours wrong, nor does yours make mine wrong. Neither are facts, they are what they are: opinions. So, I hope, we can both hold to our own opinions and still be friends.

I started in 1954 with a Lyman TRU--LINE JR. PRESS A lYMAN IDEAL NO.55 POWDER MEASURE ,AND LYMAN SCALE. I was loading fore my 218 BEE. I still have my old tattered Lyman Ideal Handbook no39
Y'all can decide where I fit in.
Lyle

"old school" slang means raw and unsophisticated. When it comes to reloading, I consider myself neither.

if it means starting low and working up .. yeah, old school... aka, using the STARTING load

if it means stating as fact the velocities in the book as to what my reloads are getting, without a chrony -0- nope, not me.

if it means reading primers -- yeah, me...

if it means "load till you leak a primer and back off a grain" .. not me

quote:

Originally posted by Doc224/375

My problem is I'm not a BR shooter but believe everything I own, should preform like it is !.

My poor military rifles must just despise me for all the agony I put them through .

I don't care if the M1 Garand does shoot 3/4" groups , I want a single hole grouping of 5 shots

and I'm not going to stop shooting it until I get it either !.

Boy that's an engineer for ya. Elbow firmly to ribs there buddy.
I used to be like that Couldn't understand why I couldn't get a single hole with five shots with a 102 year old rifle Go figure

Old School:

Remember Herter's?

And yes Lyman 45 was my first manual. Still have it.

I have been able to handle some pre WWII reloading equipment, own a Lyman Spar-T press.

Our equipment is better. If you look at Gun Digests from the 50's, a lot of presses, like my Spar-T don't have compound leverage. It was impossible to small base size a 308 case in that Spar-T. Maybe that press will size pistol cases, but I have not tried.

The later the press the better it is. My 80's Rockchucker had too short of a handle, and it needed a ball at the end of the handle. Lots of presses today are put together with an understanding of leverage, and some are left and right handed.

My Dillion 550B really cut down my reloading time with pistol ammo, and I use it to load my short range Highpower rifle ammo. It is a real time saver.

As I type this, I think maybe an appropriate place to draw the line for "Old School" is pre progressive presses.

Ignoring Star Reloaders.

Boy was I way off base , like out in left field maybe !.

I thought old school was gathering charcoal Sulfur and Potassium Nitrate and making sure the

recipe was correct !. My line of work !.

I think any of us that actually has seen a Lyman # 55 qualify as OLD School .



Still got one of these which was handed down to me as I'm not quite that OLD yet !!.

Pop bought or traded labor for one of these while still in the Navy after WW2 , I don't recall where

he bought it . Somewhere between Frisco and San Diego though . Dam fool rode his Harley back and forth

between jobs and duty stations . Never fell off though and lived to be 84 .

quote:

Originally posted by Alberta Canuck:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by bartsche:
Think I'll go have a beer. Too bad you aren't here, I'd buy.

P.S.:Yes.I understand the above is just my opinion and your post was your opinion. Mine does not make yours wrong, nor does yours make mine wrong. Neither are facts, they are what they are: opinions. So, I hope, we can both hold to our own opinions and still be friends.

Well written my friend. This is probably like the four blind men descibing what an elephant looks like. Maybe some day will be able to sit down and drink that beer and discuss it. I think I'll revert back to Quigley as my answer. roger

quote:

Originally posted by Doc224/375:
Boy was I way off base , like out in left field maybe !.

I thought old school was gathering charcoal Sulfur and Potassium Nitrate and making sure the

recipe was correct !. My line of work !.

I think any of us that actually has seen a Lyman # 55 qualify as OLD School .



Still got one of these which was handed down to me as I'm not quite that OLD yet !!.

Pop bought or traded labor for one of these while still in the Navy after WW2 , I don't recall where

he bought it . Somewhere between Frisco and San Diego though . Dam fool rode his Harley back and forth

between jobs and duty stations . Never fell off though and lived to be 84 .

Been using a Hollywood Senior Press for 52 years. Had 2 and gave the older one ( early 40s vintage ) away Just last week. Your foto is one of the 40s models. roger

"To think that modern humans are superior in any way to their forbears I think is simply an overt expressioin of hubris. If anything, we as a society are less inspired, less responsible, and are more dependent on being taken by the hand ..."

Proof of that is the number of whines wanting us to tell someone the "best load" for his new Sevager 101 in .245 Whizbang with a Taco 4-12x scope, etc. As if the world is keeping secrets instead of just telling them how to get 1/8 minute groups without any work on their part. ARRRGGH!

I don't think of myself as old school, they are the guys pictured in Phil Shapes "Complete Guide to Handloading". I got started in the modern era, my first manual was a Lyman #43, still on my shelves and still called for from time to time.

I do prefer some of the "new" tools. Affordable dial calipers are much better than the older "snap gagues" we used to keep track of case length. We had to figger out the OAL for ourselves simply by fitting the ammo to our magazines and chambers, no one hand fed us any OAL as they do now (and create a lot of confusion in the effort it seems).

Chronographs were available, if anyone could afford them; in today's dollars they were in the range of 2-3 thousand. The most common stop-start screens were thin wires the bullet cut in passage. I like sky screens and the current very low prices.

No one had a concentricity gage. Puzzling out the reasons for inaccuracy was difficult. Many of us did it but my Sinclair gage is better.

Cleaning our brass meant wiping it off before and after loading. No one thought a thing about polishing cases in those more "results oriented" days!

The new "compound linkage" presses were just getting started, most of us still used the older single toggle designs. They worked just as well but required a much stronger arm!

Carbide pistol sizers were unheard of.

Herter's was the only reasonable source of supply for many of us. A few other mail order operations were starting but the Gun Control Act of '68 killed many of them off, to help reduce CRIME you know!

We are going to be hearning more of that again soon; Democrats have finally been given total control of our gov. again. In a few more years, our grand kids will be asking us to tell them again how free men used to reload their own ammo, right at home, without serious levels of "benevolent gov. intervention", just for the safety of our kids you know.

One needs to remember that what we're doing today will be, fifty years from now, old school!

What will they be saying about us in 50 years?

quote:

Originally posted by vapodog:
What will they be saying about us in 50 years?

" Remember that old fisherman that hung around here for a few years? The one who liked guns."

"Ya. Seem to remember he caught several big Walleyes."

"That's the guy. What was his name?"

"Man I don't know .That was a while back."

roger

quote:

Originally posted by Winchester 69:
When I come across someone using a Lyman 55 powder measure who believes it is the best design ever, I think old school.

By comparison, are Belding & Mull users modernists?

My 55 works just fine thank you. I don't need no belching & pull crap.

Just for the record, Chronographs were available very early on. They were "pendulum" type chronographs and instructions for making them at home were easy to come by even in the second decade of the 1900's. It IS true, a person needed good basic math skills to make one work, and their accuracy depended on the accuracy of the measurement and cutting out of their parts (assembly too) by the individual home-makers/users.

Also, they were calibrated by shooting into them with factory ammo, then shooting home-made ammo into them and comparing the readings of the two. Not as easy as the modern chronos, but still effective and useful even if the "calibration" ammo wasn't always going the exact speed the factory said it would.

The 1926 issues of American Rifleman had a thorough series of articles of how to measure and use the Ballistic Co-efficients of bullets, as one idiciation of the "stupidity" of that age of us rubes.

Concentricity rigs WERE available,but again were usually home-made. The debate over its importance was certainly there. Then again, sliced bread was home-made too, and which do you think was best, it or the stuff we buy now?

Many, many loading presses were home-made, too. But you see, in those days that was no bad thing. Many guys made their own buggies, later cars, certainly plows, and so on. One major difference between now and then is those guys didn't HAVE to have every gee-gaw we have now, ready-made for them.

Wives even made dresses, trousers, shirts, coats, quilts, and so on. My father, who was a machinist, also made our shoes, laid our sewer lines and hooked us up to the city sewage system, painted our car, built our house (with the help of my mom and I), cured our home-raised bacon & hams and so on. My mom re-upholstered our furniture to a quality that would shame most "staple-gun professionals" of today. (Much of our furniture was home-made. Much of the "fancy" stuff had come "around the horn" many years before and was made totally without nails or screws. It was good stuff and I still have much of it.) So, yeh, you didn't have all the catalogues, and other people didn't just fold back the top of your head and pour free, effortless, knowledge in.

Instead, you learned real principles of logic and science in school, thought through your problem at hand, and made your own tools to deal with it. That way you learned how it worked (or didn't) and why. You also knew how to fix it if it ever did fail you.

Not everybody did that. Those too stupid or too lazy, or without "stick-to-it-ivness", were "failures", "poor", "ne'er-do-wells", and all that, not "disadvantaged".

Personally, I preferred it that way.

Maybe that is "old school"

quote:

Just for the record, Chronographs were available very early on. They were "pendulum" type chronographs and instructions for making them at home were easy to come by even in the second decade of the 1900's. It IS true, a person needed good basic math skills to make one work, and their accuracy depended on the accuracy of the measurement and cutting out of their parts (assembly too) by the individual home-makers/users.

Also, they were calibrated by shooting into them with factory ammo, then shooting home-made ammo into them and comparing the readings of the two. Not as easy as the modern chronos, but still effective and useful even if the "calibration" ammo wasn't always going the exact speed the factory said it would

I have read period articles where guys were making velocity estimates by bullet drop measurements between 100/200/300 yards.

Needless to say, they were claiming some high velocities for the wild cat cartridges they developed.

Yes I know Roger as I'm here and the Press is in my shop back home .

I had to plagiarizer a photo off the net . Mine doesn't look any different though .

It's in my workshop and not in the loading shop . I'm using it as a press of a different color

so to speak . I think it weighs close to what my Monarch vise does not quite and mine has a

anvil horn , beating horse shoes or something on .

Heck I quit using it when I purchased a Rock Chucker and I haven't used that

for better than 15 - 18 years now either . As I stated I'm Old School technically advanced now .

I started reloading in 1948, on my Step Dad's Belding and Mull BM-2 press, along with the B&M Visible Powder Measure. The first cartridge I loaded for was a 22 Hornet. He also had a Hollywood press exactly like the one pictured above, only that was off-limits to me... I was 14 at the time and ONLY allowed to use the B&M equipment.
When he died in 1982, all of his loading stuff didn't come my way.. Unfortunately.
But, a few months ago, a guy had a whole stash of B&M equipment for sale; three presses, a Visible Powder Measure, and dies for any cartridge you could dream of, two dozen of them, plus three beam balance scales from yesteryear; bullet pullers, extra carriages, anything and everything Belding and Mull ever made. So, I bought the entire collection. It's sitting in the living room on the floor. One day soon I'll set it up in the shop and start using it again...

A pix of the B&M stuff I bought.

quote:

Originally posted by DMB:

three beam balance scales from yesteryear;
A pix of the B&M stuff I bought.

The Redding you have pictured is exactly the one I've used since "57". Have an older Redding that I've hardly ever used. roger

It is my heartfelt belief that ALL RELOADING, by definition, is "Old School". It's one of the few things that we make for ourselves anymore.

quote:

Originally posted by bartsche:

quote:

Originally posted by DMB:

three beam balance scales from yesteryear;
A pix of the B&M stuff I bought.

The Redding you have pictured is exactly the one I've used since "57". Have an older Redding that I've hardly ever used. roger

Cool!!!!

Don

I remember the old days (50's 60"s) Some things were good and I still use them (lyman Ohous scale) some things were not so good, but they were the best we had or could afford. Do I want to go back He** NO! But the Dollar was worth something then.

quote:

But the Dollar was worth something then.

it darn well should have been.....I had to work an hour of hard labor for one back then!

I guess true old school was when you poured powder down the barrel for every shot................ or used a string to launch some wood and feathers.......

i started reloading about 3 years before the internet was "invented." was a couple years after that before there was much in the way that i could find on the web.