I started at 17 years old, which is certainly later than most who had Dads, Grandfathers, Uncles, or Neighbors who taught them the ropes.
I picked my items from a catalog, ordered them through a friend of the family (kitchen table FFL) and one of the items was the Speer #11 manual.
The Speer#11 manual was my ONLY mentor. Was 1988, I didn't have the internet and I never once had anyone show up at my bench to show me anything. As such, I was
EXTREMELY cautious about every little thing. I would say that I started out almost irrationally slowly at this game.
.38 Special in Federal brass, Speer swaged LRN and SWC bullets of 158 grains, Lee dippers, CCI-500 primers and Hercules Green Dot powder. Lee Challenger "2001" O-frame press, Lee dies. I didn't even own a scale of any sort.
I load around 20,000 rounds a year these days, 97% of which is handgun calibers, across about a dozen different chamberings, but mostly in 9mm, .38, .357, .40, 10mm, .327 Federal and .45 Auto.
An odd twist to my story is that metallic cartridge reloading was something I dabbled in AFTER I got set up and rolling with my Mec-650, making 20 gauge skeet loads. I had that process down to an exact science and had made countless boxes of shotshells before I even bolted down my Lee press to attempt .38 Special. I used to shoot 8 rounds of skeet each week when I was in High School, but I packed up the Mec-650 in the late summer of 1990 and it hasn't been out of the box since the late summer of 1990.
