wear your shooting glasses.

I went to the range this afternoon to generate some more brass, and to pick up my first batch of consumables for the new Dillon SDB.

I got a pound of Bullseye, half a thousand Winchester Small Pistol primers, and 500 158-grain flat point bullets from Rainier. I thought they were LSWC, but it turns out they're copper-plated. Their website says to use loading data for lead bullets, since the plating is just that, and not a true copper jacket. I guess they'll be more than OK for range ammo.

While I was shooting, I got a reminder on the importance of wearing eye protection at the range. I was in Lane 1, and the next shooter was ten yards away in Lane 6. While I was putting my Whitman's Sampler mixed bag of older lead roundnose and wadcutter ammo downrange, I noticed a bit of a sharp pain on my right pectoral. I glanced down, and there was a piece of copper jacket embedded in it, sticking out like a speartip. It was about a quarter inch in length, and sharp-edged, of course. It had made the trip from the backstop all the way back to the firing line, 25 yards away. Ten inches higher, and it would have dinked off my shooting glasses…or buried itself in my cornea, if I hadn't worn any. Always wear eye protection, folks…eyesight is an expensive and difficult thing to restore.