From the Bench

Handloaders, for the most part, are inveterate gearheads. No surprise there, as specialty tools are part and parcel of our pursuit. Sure, while the practical goal is always the production of ammunition, the fascination with handloading for many of us is as much about the process as it is about the satisfaction at the end. Specialty tools fill our benchtops, pegboards, shelves and drawers.

Handloading tools are constantly improving, providing us the means for creating ever better ammunition. We have replaced our first plastic caliper with steel models and balance beam scales with electronic tricklers. But what becomes of old tools, once replaced? We don’t throw them away – that seems somehow sinfully wasteful. Instead, sometimes they become hand-me-downs for friends or offspring, and sometimes they go the same route as old dishes and clothing, that uniquely American phenomenon we call the yard sale.

The device presented here I found lying in a dusty cardboard box, brittle with age atop a yard sale folding table. The seller didn’t know what it was. I could see it was a cast iron bench-mounted tool of some kind, but I didn’t positively identify it until I handled it. Obviously, it’s a vertical case trimmer. An ancient vertical case trimmer lacking any markings and with an odd-looking pilot. I’ve had several kinds of case trimmers over the decades, including fancy electric trimmers, but I had never seen a bench-mounted trimmer that works vertically (though I had a Lyman that mounted to a drill press table). There was a second surprise in the tool, followed by a bit of weirdness.

I unthreaded the case holder on the bottom of the tool and – surprise! – I discovered a collet identical to those used in today’s Forster case trimmers. Do I need another case trimmer? No. But when it comes to firearms and related accouterments, “need” stopped long ago, and I tell folks, “I don’t use that N-word anymore.” I handed over a couple of bucks and took the old case trimmer home as a matter of curiosity. Sure enough, I found my Forster trimmer collets fit perfectly.

That previously-mentioned bit of weirdness is that the odd-looking pilot in the trimmer turned out to be a primer seating cup and stem from an RCBS press. As demonstrated in politics and by such jerry-rigging, there’s no accounting for what another person thinks makes sense. Unsurprisingly, I discovered Forster pilots fit the trimmer, too.

Researching the anonymous trimmer to determine who made it and when, I came no closer than it almost certainly being pre-1950. By that time, both Forster and Herter’s were offering case trimmers that appear to be exactly like the horizontal models Forster still offers today. A photo and query emailed to Forster bounced around among employees and garnered a final response that no one at the company recognizes this cast iron dinosaur, and I found no images online or in my library helpful in identifying its origin. I would hazard a guess, that by its design and construction, that it dates from the 1940s and was possibly offered by Herter’s.

Handloading precision ammunition by today’s standards is a bit more precise than how “precision” was defined back when somebody manufactured this case trimmer. Handloading tools have so improved that “precision” has become a matter of one or two thousandths of an inch, whereas tolerances for many such tools in the 1940s were a bit more than that. That’s the impression I get from years of reading old books, magazines and catalogs on the subject. Anyway, and this old case trimmer confirms it, for what its mute testimony may be worth.

There’s a very slight but noticeably loose fit between the tool’s shaft and tunnel, allowing the shaft to wobble across an arc my transit eye judges to be 5- to 8-thousandths of an inch, for which a pilot fitting tightly enough in the mouth of a cartridge case will compensate to some degree. Ergonomically, the knurled knob for turning the shaft is way inferior to the hand cranks found on today’s manual trimmers that in turn, are eclipsed in speed and comfort by electric trimmers. (That said, I note the knob can be removed and the shaft chucked into a drill press.) Despite those complaints, it is still a viable tool, though of course there are better choices today, some 75-plus years later.

You know the axiom that those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Skirting the doom aspect, I further suggest that we cannot fully comprehend where we are today or predict where we may be headed tomorrow unless we understand the past. For that, records in words and images are valuable, but to study in our hands the actual objects used by our grandfathers and ancestors provides an understanding that is literally palpable. Physical objects are of greater and more immediate impact to us than are abstract records – that’s why high school was boring except for lab science and the reason we have museums.

That’s not the reason we have reloading benches, and I expect none of us look at our plethora of tools and wonders which of them might end up in a museum, or antique shop, or yard sale, for that matter. Though as a neophyte, I started with a plastic caliper and C-clamping a reloading press to the dining room table. Today, my back-then-futuristic tools now include scientific scales that measure to a hundredth of a grain, an electronic load cell transducer bullet seater that connects to my computer to measure bullet-neck tension, a magnetic induction brass case annealer and a Doppler radar chronograph. Will I live long enough to see laser tools on my bench to trim cases or check bullet concentricity? A clip-on transducer to measure rifle chamber pressures?

Perhaps, and if so, they may find a place on my bench next to an unused but still viable curiosity, a cast iron vertical case trimmer. That is, if it doesn’t end up in the next yard sale.