None of my loading blocks held my 30/30 cases straight so I made one out of a chunk of walnut. I need to dress the holes and put a couple of coats of varnish on it. I used a 9/16" spade bit.
Full disclosure; I wasn't thinking when I drilled the first hole and forgot to set my depth gauge!
Brother,
That is a nice clean job! I made mine also but out of white pine ( i would not want to show a picture of it here)
Mine is a bit of a hack job in the fact that I couldn't square off the bottoms of the holes so the shell sort of cants one way or another!
Then I had the idea to clean up the drill pointed bottoms by chucking in an end mill bit in my drill press and just flatten the bottoms ( )
That doesn't work well on soft pine! The holes now look like they have reverse lube grooves!
It's really nice to see someones work that knows what they are doing!
Jim
I've made several over the years. The latest ones are 3/4" Hickory, bored all the way through and a piece of 1/4 plywood glued to the bottom. The other ones were made with 2 pieces of 3/8" Mahogany, too shallow except for 45 ACP.
Have some wood, some plastic. The 3 wood in 2x4"s hold over 100 cases.
They were made for lab test tubes.The small plastic hold 60, the large
plastic holds 50 rifle, and 50 pistol 38S and smaller. Can't have to many
of the things. The nicest one I have holds 50 222 base ctgs. Is walnut
(I think), and has a light colored thin base maybe 1/8" thick. Think I got
it (someplace) well over 50 or so years ago. Guess maybe I have 10 or
more of them.
I made one out of pecan using a spade bit, even sharpened it before use, made a mess royale of the top, tore out lots of chunks and was ugly even after sanding 1/8" off the top in the drum sander. Forstner bits might work better for that tough, stringy wood. Your job on the Walnut looks mighty nice, little de-burr with a cone stone in the drill press or hand grinder and seal 'er up.
And I do...but it also makes splendid house doors, cabinets, rifle stocks, barrow handles, tool handles (particularly pistol-grip saw handles), stair treads, counter tops, and so forth.
Then, and on the other hand, I appreciate the shooters at the range
who leave the hard plastic factory trays, with emphasis on those for
45 ACP. Good for a number of rifle loadings.
The Styrofoam factory trays that they leave with the boxes I also
appreciate for 9mm and 357/38S, as they are usually good for 4-5
loadings before they become dingy'd up, and are tossed. I appreciate
them even more if they leave the once fired brass with them.
Technically it's AAAAAAmaand. We say "Owelmund" around here because we like to pronounce all the letters in a non-English word, plus add at least one extra inflection for good measure. In central Texas it's standard dialect to add an entire extra syllable to nouns, such as "Owelmund-uhh". East Texans pronounce it "Arwellmun'" prior to spitting out the tobacco juice. All three ways opposed to the French who spell a word with thirty-seven letters and pronounce it only to the first consonant, then finish with a sound one makes when biting into a green persimmon. That's "purr-SEMMon" BTW.