A Mooselette in the Reloading Cave

Two weeks ago Mooselette was begging her Dad to bring her over to Grandpa’s so she could go down to the secret room and pull Grandpa’s handle.

Stop it. That ain’t nice.

No, what she meant was she wanted to go down to the reloading cave and pull the handle on the reloading press. I’d promised her I would teach her to reload. Yes, at 6, she’s a bit young, but I had Angus pulling the handle at age 4.

On her first lesson, we took a couple dozen rounds of 30-30 Winchester and ran them through the press, I showed her sizing and decapping and then let her watch me install primers with my RCBS hand primer. The mechanism of the handprimer is is way to big for such a small hand, but she seemed to like watching it as much as anything.

Now, after two weeks we were going to finish the job. I had set up to use the beam balance and a trickler. Although it accomplished its goal of teaching her the principles of weighing charges, it was a bit tedious. She was complaining by the end. However, she stayed on task and did an excellent job.

The next couple of steps where right in her wheelhouse. Mooselette, like every other young protege I’ve had, loves to work the press. In this case it was my RCBS Rock Chucker. Both Angus and Moose were a little over-excited. Mooselette was far more focused on the task, and remarkably advanced for her age. I let her do the last step herself, running the rounds through the crimp die.

As you can see, she brightened up when allowed to have at it.

After allowing my sons and now a grand daughter come down and learn reloading, I can give y’all the following advice:

Have the steps laid out ahead of time. Don’t bog the kid down while you fidget with things
Keep the whole session to a half hour or so– even less if the child is younger. They bore quickly.
Use proper safety gear.
It takes a considerable amount of time for kids to fully grasp the whole process. At this stage of the game, it’s all about having fun and being with you.

At that age, I yearned for things like this. I can remember at age 4 stealing a carpenter’s square to measure things. The old carpenter (Mister Meinken– jeez! I haven’t thought of that name in 50 years) taught me how to measure roof pitch. I also used to hammer nails into scraps of wood just for the joy of pulling them out with a claw hammer. Dad saw what I was up to and introduced me to a crowbar– heaven!

All three of my sons spent time with me in the reloading room, but given the choice, they prefer buying factory rounds, or having me load for them. It’s cool the gene has jumped a generation and landed with #1 grand daughter.

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