Who's tight?

[William Worth]

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the tightest of us all.

In order to promote economy in the shooting sports, what things do you do to achieve that end?  How cheap can you get?

I'll start this off with; I sometimes re-use my target staples, shooting patches and always of course, lead. 

[BrownBear]

I recover and recast my lead, buy powder and caps in larger quantities at discount, cut my own patches, make my own lubes aalong with most of my other gear. 

Then I walk across the street from the house to hunt or drive half a mile to shoot.  I'm shooting greatly reduced loads for practice, too. 

And perhaps cheapest of all, I do about 90% of my offhand practice right at home with a pellet rifle.  Sure helps build the muscles and reflexes, plus that slow passage of a pellet down the bore will condition you to the need for followthrough faster than any ML I've ever shot.  Twenty rounds a night- outdoors when the weather is fine or indoors when it's not.  I'm hacking off around 300 shots a week, even if only half so actually go bang.

[roundball]

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the tightest of us all.

In order to promote economy in the shooting sports, what things do you do to achieve that end?  How cheap can you get?

I'll start this off with; I sometimes re-use my target staples, shooting patches and always of course, lead. 

It'll be interesting to see if anyone can beat "reusing staples" 

For me, the biggest single expense besides the R/T gasoline costs, is the cost of shooting 50 lead balls about every Saturday...a box of Hornady .58cal balls cost $15.00.

By experimenting I've found that a .58cal shoots common everyday 9/16" solid glass marbles as accurately as Hornady balls to 25-30 yards...and they only cost a penny apiece...so instead of throwing away $15.00 worth of lead balls every Saturday, 50 marbles costs me .50 cents.

Where a Saturday range trip used to cost $25-$30 for gas and lead balls depending on caliber, I now do most of my fun shooting with the .58cal using marbles so the only big cost is $16 worth of gas...huge savings.

Cleaning / wiping patches are made out of old cotton clothing around the house...T-shirts, flannel shirts, PJs, nightgowns, etc;

Cleaning and oiling rags are from old washcloths / towels;

For targets I buy a big stack of the cheapest paper plates I can find at K-Mart...then I order commercial size rolls of 1000 1", 2", and 3" round high visibility stickers to use as bullseyes for different distances.

[Roger Fisher]

So we have a good competition going on shootin on the 'cheap'.. Lessee if I can beat that reusing staples item.   I never bought any map pins; but thats what I use to stickup paper targets,.  I have a good collection of them collected while at shoots at various clubs.  I like the 'trappers' model metal ones that I 'collected' while shooting near ol Jack Horan. 

         NOW THAT'S CHEAP!

Check your wife's collection of flannel baby blankets - good cleaning patches there.,

You know that local insurance broker you deal with that you hand a nice check to quite frequently and that nice little blonde girl that you kid around with?  Well now belly up to her and hit her up to run a few or more targets thru the copier when the boss is out golfing -  you may make out in more ways than one including getting free targets

[Daryl]

I've been 'tight' a few times , maybe more, but I don't scrimp on shooting -------much .   

[Edd]

I use transparent tape (scotch tape ?) instead of staples somtimes. OK NOW GUYS - IF I WIN THE PRIZE...PLEASE, I WANT SOME MORE TRANSPARENT TAPE!!!

A friend knows how tight that I am, so he gives me lead at times. I melt it down and make .36, .40, and .45 caliber more often than larger bores.

I beg, borrow and uh oh shooting patch material and make my own shooting patches quite often.   

Dang!! I'm jealous of Mr. Roundball's paper plate idea. Man-n-n-n... those plates would make an excellent 100 yard target. Think about how well yo front sight would stand out on a white paper plate!!!

Edd

[roundball]

"...paper plate..."

They are dirt cheap...the typical dinner plate is 10", dessert plate is 7"...you can use different sizes at different distances or for different purposes.

The 7" plates are particularly good for discovering the 100% reliable max range for an offhand hunting shot...just keep setting up a 7" plate 10 yards farther and farther away until you can no longer put 5 consecutive shots into one...and your 100% max off hand hunting range will be 10 yards behind you 

[Leatherbelly]

 I go  to our local prison and get old bed sheets for spit patches. Wonder why i'm  getting these awefull sores in my mouth?

[Evil Monkey]

I go  to our local prison and get old bed sheets for spit patches. Wonder why i'm  getting these awefull sores in my mouth?

I don't doubt that you use prison bedsheets for patching however, I have my doubts when you say "I go to our local prison...". You don't have to 'GO' anywhere, you just take one when you are on laundry detail  .

[robert gene]

I just daydream about going to the range. 

[Candle Snuffer]

I don't skimp to much.  I cast my own balls about half the time after collecting usable lead from our local range after everyone leaves.  Many a times I find lots of round balls hardly deformed laying up on the first teir of the 300 yard x 25 foot high back stop.  They just bounce along the ground and roll up there after they pass through the paper targets.  They are for the melting pot.

I buy bulk pillow ticking and make my own patches.  I also buy 100% cotton material bulk for cutting into swabbing and cleaning patches.  I sometimes reuse these patches after washing them out.

Thats really about it for me.

[longcruise]

I didn't do any casting for years but now with the price of balls so high I'm doing a lot of casting.  Down to just a few pounds of lead and I'm afraid of the sticker shock next trip to the scrap metal yard.

I make my own targets with publisher software and run copies at a nickel apiece.  If I need more than a hundred can get em for three cents each.

Biggest cost for me is the fuel to go 74 miles round trip to my club.  Maybe I'll move to where all that oil shale is on the west slope.  Should make a good back stop!

[northmn]

Depends I guess on how you look at being tight concerning shooting costs.  I just bought 5 pounds of powder, which will take a while to use, from Grafs quite a bit cheaper than can be had locally.  I am getting finished building a 12 gauge flintlock that has a $5.00 barrel, a stock I cut out of a tree, parts I had laying around and part that I made.  The lock I had gotten somewhere from someone who had royally screwed it up trying to modify it.  I got it very cheap, but had to replace the frizzen and plate.  Bought a mold for it as ball cost about $40.00 per hundred.  Won't be able to use pure lead but have some softer stuff around.

DP

[Daryl]

DP- nice thing about the big smoothies, they shoot WW just as accurately as pure lead.  Locally and over the winter, Hatchet Jack cast up a a 25 pound box of powder's worth of WW balls for his 20 bores.  That's got to be way over or at least close to 1,000 pounds of balls.

[PINYONE]

Ihave got you all beat- I used to reuse old toilet paper but now gone to leaves"oak". Try and beat that. Staples ain't got nothing on me!

[northmn]

Make darn sure you know the leaves you are using and don't substitute.  Some give new meaning to the word itch.

DP

[Jim Thomas]

So we have a good competition going on shootin on the 'cheap'.. Lessee if I can beat that reusing staples item.   I never bought any map pins; but thats what I use to stickup paper targets,.  I have a good collection of them collected while at shoots at various clubs. 

Well now, look at Fisher!     He's complaining about the value of prizes while he's lifting our map pins .  . 

Roger, will I see you at Whispering Pines next month?       

[Roger Fisher]

So we have a good competition going on shootin on the 'cheap'.. Lessee if I can beat that reusing staples item.   I never bought any map pins; but thats what I use to stickup paper targets,.  I have a good collection of them collected while at shoots at various clubs. 


Well now, look at Fisher!     He's complaining about the value of prizes while he's lifting our map pins .  . 

Roger, will I see you at Whispering Pines next month?       

Yes, I do plan so!  Still hope to drag myself up to the Mt Walk!

[Jim Thomas]

That's great Roger.    I'll be sure to introduce myself.    Take all the map pins you need .    If you need more,  I carry a supply in my shootin box.   

They've been working on the running deer...trying to get more speed    I don't think I've hit it yet.   

[BobT]

So we have a good competition going on shootin on the 'cheap'.. Lessee if I can beat that reusing staples item.   I never bought any map pins; but thats what I use to stickup paper targets,.  I have a good collection of them collected while at shoots at various clubs. 

     
I wondered why there were never any pins when I try to hang targets!

[tg]

I cast my own balls for the most part and buy bulk pathcing and precut sqs. for use in the field and make my own lube, I don't really shoot enough anymore to have it make much of a difference dollar wise, I used to salvage refrigerator boxes to paint life size deer targets on and re use them by taping the holes and re-painting.

[heelerau]

My Mate Dean Tugwell , from Mundoo island in South Australia shoots an Omark single shot rifle in 308, he uses a lee hand loader, cast bullets and gets about 180 shots out of a single cartridge case. Bangs away all day a steel gongs at ranges out to 400yds. He is 83 yrs old.

[Standing Bear]

Nothing special.
Been doing the pellet rifle practice for years.

I can buy soft lead for $.75 a pound at the recycler.  The .54 mould throws about 30 per pound so that's $.025 per ball and even figuting double that for the electric pot, a nickle a shot.

To save a little extra I shoot a .40 more often.  74 balls per pound is about $0.01 per shot.  

Bought a partial roll of .025 denim at a garage sale for $2.00 but it sure is tight to start using .395, .495 and .535 balls.  After in the barrel they push doen ok.  Before springing on new mould will try coning.

Saving all my large flints to make smaller ones even if I get a lot of shots per rock.

[Canute Rex]

I'll refer you back to my post about the box bullet trap: http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=3760.0

I took some of the spent balls I scooped out of it, put ten in a paper packet, put ten new balls in another paper packet, and took them down to the grocery store to weigh them on the fine scale. I figure I am losing about 1% in weight shooting into rubber playground mulch. I could get 9900 shots by recycling one box of 100 balls. Even if I started with a box of Hornady swaged balls that's $0.0012 per ball for the lead.

Sometimes when I'm practicing I'll turn a worn-too-short flint sideways, bevel down.

[jamesthomas]

 I cast my own balls with 50 cents a pound lead roof jacks.Right now I have about 400 cast rbs with an extra 56lbs lead in 1lb ingots, then I reuse cardboard targets (for backing) that I fish out of the dumpster at the range that people have used for shotgun patterning, then I download free 8x11 targets off the internet. The range is less than 10miles away and only cost $100 a year!.