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| Home | Presses | Intro | Site Map | P.R. | Chemicals | Answers |
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| Prices | Specials | How To | Bullets | B.Makers | Books | Classified | |
| Topics | Jackets | Terms | Training | Software | Products | Contact us |
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For backlogs and delivery estimates on various products, please see DELIVERY TIME. |
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CURRENT TRENDS IN SWAGING:
Starting about March 2020, with the Marxist rioters looting and burning businesses and threatening citizens, and so many left-leaning politicians virtually cheering them on or cutting back on police budgets instead of arresting these thugs, concerned citizens began arming themselves and stocking up on ammunition. The huge increase in sales left many stores with no inventory of ammunition. Factories were unable to ramp up production fast enough to meet the demand. Shooters who had never thought about handloading their own ammo began to buy reloading supplies and equipment. People who already did reload remembered past shortages and began buying all the primers and powder and cases they could find. This increase in demand was added to the demand being created by the ammunition makers. The ripple effect continued up the supply line. Now primers and powder and bullets were starting to disappear faster than they could be replaced on dealer shelves. As always, bullets represented the component most specific to a given style of shooting, kind of firearm, caliber and cartridge designation. Powder and primers can usually be utilized in a wide range of applications even if not ideal for them, but bullets have to be the right diameter, shape, and weight and should be the design needed for each purpose, be it hunting or defense or target shooting. With bullets being snapped up by both handloaders and ammunition makers, people who handloaded or thought about starting now decided to get into swaging their own bullets. Also, the development of higher powered PCP air rifles with larger calibers, lower pricing for rifles both accurate and powerful enough for self defense, and the relative lack of government restrictions on air guns drove both the existing owners and many more new converts to air power toward making their own custom slugs. Corbin's special one and two step precision high BC slug swage kits, based on the same technology Corbin provides to major air gun slug producers, sold out immediately. Order volume skyrocketed to over 10 times the normal level. Sheer volume of orders overwhelmed the small precision die-works where three die makers were used to a less-then-45-day turn around time. Now it pushed 4 months, then 6 months, and the avalanche of new orders meant the die makers could not make dies fast enough to avoid 9 to 12 month waiting lists. For those who are not familiar with air rifles, modern high powered Pre-Charged Pneumatic (PCP) guns are available in not only the usual 22 and 25 caliber sizes but also 30, 9mm, 45, and even 50 caliber. "Pellets" are either straight sided cylindrical lead bullets with a hollow base and a semi-wadcutter style nose, or a "diablo" or "dumbbell" shape made of two cones joined by the small end, one having the nose and the other the hollow base. Pellets have always been associated with the lower power spring/air style or the CO2 powered air guns. The straight sided ones are easy to make, but all of them have higher drag and lower delivered energy and velocity than the more streamlined "slug". A "slug" is more like a regular cartridge-arm type of bullet, with a smooth ogive shape. It may or may not have a hollow, cup, or dish base shape. Some are flat base and some have rebated boattails. Some are formed in one pull of the press handle and are the solid ogive style with or without a hollow point. Others are formed in two steps and have a hollow ogive, somewhat like an egg-shell made of lead around the open tip area. They can be lighter, faster, and expand even better than the solid ogive HP in the same over-all length. In any case, Corbin's slug swage kits became a hot commodity world wide just at the time when politics made it tough to export them. That drove demand even higher. New orders were taken on a 9 month to 12 month waiting list. The die makers are building regular jacketed bullet swage dies as well as the slug dies, struggling under oppressive COVID-19 business restrictions that limit the number of people and the conditions under which they can be in the building. Working as fast as they can, without cutting any corners or raising prices from the prior years, they simply cannot build dies fast enough to provide the delivery time we would all like to have. The COVID-19 rules plus the continued riots and looting in the large population areas plus the extreme demand have combined to work against delivery of needed supplies, such as alloy steels, coolant solutions, diamond and borazon lapping and honing materials, and other necessities for die making. Even when the die makers are all at work and doing their best, they may be waiting for a truck shipment from Portland or Chicago or Pittsburgh or Seattle, which instead of 3 days is now out 3 weeks. This is caused by a shortage of willing truck drivers, warehouse workers, or sometimes because the business or warehouse is in one of the riot-blocked areas, or is under threat of violence. Violence is tolerated because the police are having their budgets cut and their hands tied by political officials afraid of saying anything against the Marxist groups causing the problem. And further, the ripple effect of extreme demand and shortages at the retail and wholesale level is causing the same at the industrial level, with the materials used to make ammunition, bullets, primers, etc. Copper mills are quoting longer delivery, so that bullet jackets are taking longer to get, which means bullets must wait, which means factory ammo must wait for the bullets. At some point this may back up to the smelters and the mines themselves hitting capacity or beyond. Bottom line: these are dangerous times. Our freedom has never been quite so directly threatened by such a large percentage of collectivist-minded politicians supported by such a poorly informed population. Almost no one educated in modern times understands what happened to Germany in the 1920-1930's and has reasonable knowlege of the Russian revolution. None among the liberal college educated adults or youth understands the inevitable death camps which socialism required in both countries. They all say "...but our gang can do it better!" than the Nazis (National Socialists) or the Soviets (Soviet Socialists). Yes, one was Facist and one Communist, but both flavors are firmly based on the philosophy of Socialism. They are not opposite ends of a scale. That is a false comparison, intended to distract from what is being destroyed. They are competing with each other for control, on one end of the scale, over freedom and capitalism on the other end. They are just two rival gangs of philosophical thugs, bashing reason in favor of unworkable promises and hoping no one takes the time to see what they really are offering. Taking from those who have and giving to those who lack is their lure. But taking control over all is their motive. Those who have learned about socialism from real life examples recoil at embracing the same philosophy in their own country. Yet enough college-educated liberals are eager for the philosophy of sacrifice to bring us to the brink of a totalitarian culture. They condemn individual freedom and its economic result, capitalism, without ever understanding that it is what brought about the explosive growth of individual wealth and freedom, the marvels of modern medicine, the high standards of living enjoyed by nearly everyone in the USA compared any socialist country. These threats are driving people toward a culture of fear, and creating shortages across the economy. When a government takes earned wealth away from those who work to make goods and services, and hands it out to encourage formerly productive people to stay home and do nothing, the incentive to work is crushed. The crushing force comes Both from the weight of theft by taxation and the inflationary tax of printing trillions of fiat dollars backed by... nothing. Or rather, by the dwindling and crippled ability of productive people to back those dollars with actual goods and services. Arbitrary distribution of wealth to those who have not earned it only brings about shortages. A handout does not enable production as much as it encourages consumption. We are seeing the shortages now. True, the shelves of the grocery stores still have products on them. For how long? In the end days of the Weimar Republic, inflation was so bad that a suitcase full of German marks would buy a sausage in the evening, but by morning it would take two suitcases full to buy the same meal. The government printed more money as their solution to economic problems and it destroyed the economy. Desperate people turned to anyone who promised any plausible answer, even at the cost of their reason, and their freedom. The parallel is too clear to ignore. |
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