My Friend Sandor Hauser

One of Mr. Hauser's many creations

 

I first met Sandor Hauser around 1992 or at the latest 1993 at that time ACTA (Associação Campineira de Tiro ao Alvo) on a Saturday afternoon when I was trying to get started into shooting, not an easy undertaking for someone with very little money in Brazil, where everything connected with guns and shooting is brutally regulated and expensive.

Through a number of deals I became the owner of a Caramuru 32 S&W Long revolver, a virtual copy of a Smith & Wesson Hand Ejector of outstanding quality. I had but a handful of shells and store bought ammunition was out of my reach, so after I fired no more than a cylinder full I had to put it away and just hang around at the ACTA “back shooting aisle” where all the informal shooters congregated to look at guns and people using them.

Then this older gentleman approached me and asked me why I was not shooting, and I explained my situation. He told me to go ahead and shoot and give him my empty shells and that he would reload them for me. He gave me his address and said that I could come Monday evening to his home if I wanted to learn how to reload ammunition.

Let’s say that that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship!

What I found was a paradise for an engineer-to-be and gun lover. On the back of his home Mr. Hauser had a “bunker” by his own definition, and besides all the machinery, reloading equipment, ammunition and guns I found a heart of pure gold, endless patience and a willingness to share his knowledge, time and personal history that is extremely rare.

Rather than reload my ammo, Mr. Hauser made me take sit by the press, and guided me through each careful step. When we finished he told me to come to the club again next Saturday and shoot with him, and I told him that although his price for ammo was much less than at the local gun shops, it was still expensive and I could not shoot every weekend. Again his kindness came to play and he told me that rather than charge me for the ammo, he would sell me the components in quantities that I could afford (100 cast lead bullets, 100 primers and an amount of smokeless powder to suit, plus some extra shells so I could have at least one full box of 32’s).

I remember coming home with a small bundle that contained all my ammunition and supplies like it was a treasure, and thinking back twenty years, it was.

Sometime later, Mr. Hauser decided to build some reloading presses, one of which is shown above. The process was heavily labor intense, and I eagerly awaited the final product. The price was one hundred and twenty US dollars, and I paid him in six monthly installments. This is arguably the best single stage press I ever used.

My son was born on January 31^st 1995 and I graduated a couple weeks after that. Mr. Hauser and his wife, Mrs. Therezinha, were the first couple to come visit, and we drank the “baby’s pee”, in this particular case part of the content of a bottle of Ballantine’s Gold Seal.

Another piece of equipment that Mr. Hauser designed and built was a shell tumbler and washer. Mine was made using a plastic milk jug and powered by a discarded IBM typewriter and a baby cart wheel.

When we “graduated” from handgun to high power rifle we both had 7x57 mm rifles, and ammunition was even harder to come by. I don’t know exactly how, but Mr. Hauser was able to acquire a large quantity of World War II vintage Brazilian Army ammo, made at Fábrica do Realengo and market 1942. The small problem was that most, if not all primers, were dead due to poor storage.

But that was no problem at all to Mr. Hauser. He patiently disassembled each of the 4,000 plus cartridges, put the beautiful 173 grain spitzer bullets aside, collected every grain of powder for future reuse, and then started the even more labor intense process of reconditioning each shell.

The problem was that the old military ammo used corrosive Berdan large rifle primers, so each shell had to be inspected and grade good or not, then as Berdan primers are slightly larger than the boxer primers we would use to reload, he developed a die and tool to reform and close the primer pocket to the proper dimension. After the operation each shell would be good to three or four reloads if we used lower pressure lead bullets, or two or three if would use the military specification.

There were many other projects. The least successful one was our attempt to use three 7 mm bullets as a “flechette” for 12 gun shotguns. We never could hit anything with it. The more successful ones were to convert available cartridges to unavailable one. Cutting down 38 Special and 32 S&W Long to 38 S&W and 32 S&W was easy and straightforward. Much more complex was reforming 38 Super cases to fit Dr. Nivaldo’s 30 Luger pistol.

At one time when there was no or very limited choice of jacketed pistol bullets, Mr. Hauser made a lot of .357 jacketed hollow points using old TV antenna aluminum tubes.

Another of his pet projects was to recondition once fired bullets that were recovered from the club dirt trap. He would wash and sort them and then swage and calibrate each one. The reconditioned 9 mm 115 grains made great reloads for my 2 inch 38 snubby revolver due to the very low recoil.

I couldn’t ever repay what Mr. Hauser has done for me. My feeble attempt is to try to bring new people to shooting and hunting. If a new shooter shows up at the club (and I mostly shoot shotguns nowadays), I will always volunteer a gun and box of shells so this person can cut his or her teeth at a couple clay birds.

 

Even leaving outside of Brazil for over 13 years I visited Mr. Hauser at least annually, but about two years ago, due to age and health issues, Mr. Hauser and Mrs. Therezinha moved in with their only daughter, and since that time I was unable to contact him. I am still trying.

B.S. Rifle Ammo

Complete buckshot handloading kit

Centerfire rifles are great guns, but their inherit power, loud report, heavy recoil and ammunition cost minimizes their potential use to big game hunting or the serious target shooter, leaving most us with a nice firearms that sits idle during most of the year.

I remember an article in the January 1987 issue of Guns & Ammo magazine where Ross Seyfried said that “if there is anything we could do to our favorite centerfire rifles and handguns that would make them more useful and enjoyable that they already are, it would be to reduce their power to almost zero.”

I have several air guns that shoot at 6 ft.lb, but they have different balance, trigger pulls and sights than my centerfire rifles, and may not be what I want to drag out in the woods. Additionally, good quality air guns may be expensive, so they may not be a solution for every body.

Currently, there are several reloading manuals that present information for “managed recoil” rifle loads, but most of them are quite powerful and noise, and use expensive bullets and reasonably large amounts of gun powder.

Sometime ago in conversations with my friends Stan Bell and Eric Weeldreyer we were discussing squirrel or basement loads for .30” caliber rifles. The long standing recipe requires a new primer, two or three grains of fast burning pistol or shotgun powder and a single buckshot (No. 1½ buckshot has a .310” diameter and performs well) or musket ball.

This load can be used in basically any .30” caliber centerfire rifle, and the brass does not need to be resized. Just de-prime, insert a new primer, pour the desired amount of powder and sit the “bullet” by hand.

Although I have a very nice CZ 550 rifle in .30-06, I wanted a inexpensive and robust nock around play rifle, and there is not a better deal today than a Mosin-Nagant, and in order to celebrate 2012 I bought one of these rugged battle rifles for around one hundred dollars.

At the same time I purchased a chamber insert that allows .32 pistol cartridges (.32 ACP, .32 S&W, .32 S&W Long and .32 H&R Magnum) to be shot in the 7,62 x 54R mm rifle (these inserts are also available for .30-06 and .308 Winchester) and for an additional ten dollars I bought fifty new .32 H&R Magnum empty cases and went home to play with my new toy. In order to keep the cost even lower you could just scavenge some empty .32 pistol shells at your local range.

I currently don’t have dies to reload .32 pistol ammo, but I did not think that they were required for what I was planning. I primed all cases and poured just over two grains of Universal shotgun powder. I had a bunch of .32 musket balls at hand and just set each bullet by hand and was ready for some action.

At the Southern Michigan Gun Club outdoors pistol range I place a target at 25 yards, loaded one round into the insert, chambered it in the rifle and fired. The results were surprising! One soft pop, a hole in the target and the range officer on duty asking me to check the bore as he thought that I had a squib load. I explained that I was shooting a very low power round and there was nothing to worry about and we had some great discussion about other “almost zero power” alternatives and their multiple uses.

I fired a ten shot string off-hand at 25 yards and had a group of around two inches. Not bad at all for an open sights rifle made in 1943 and with unrefined Russian-grip trigger pull.

I cronographed the load and the 46 grains “bullet” had an average speed of 620 f.p.s. resulting in a calculated muzzle energy of 39 ft.lb. Just for comparison, a typical .22 LR fires a 40 grains bullet at 1,200 f.p.s. for muzzle energy of 127 ft.lb, and the surplus military ammo fires a 150 grains bullet at 2,950 f.p.s. resulting in almost 2,900 ft.lb of energy. Even at this low energy, treat this load with the same care and safety precautions as any other, as it has enough speed and energy to cause serious injury or death.

An important note: never use jacketed bullets for reduced loads as they will probably get stuck in the barrel and are very hard to remove. If a lead bullet gets stuck in the barrel it is relatively easy to push it out, but a jacketed bullet will require an expensive trip to your local gunsmith.

An additional benefit of the reduced load is its reduced cost. One pound of pistol or shotgun powder sells for around twenty dollars, and by keeping the charge at around two grains a person can get over 3,300 shots per pound. I ordered an eight pound jar of No. 1½ buckshot for forty four dollars (delivered) and it contatins 1,840 “bullets”. Small pistol primers are around thirty dollars per thousand. While the surplus 7,62 x 54R ammo costs twenty three cents per round, my buckshot (or B.S.) reloads cost around six cents each, which is cheaper than many of the .22 rimfires available today, and just one or two cents more than the cheapest twenty-twos.

With everything going so well I wanted a “survivalist” reloading kit to carry with the Mosin-Nagant. My goal was that is should fit in one of the WWII vintage ammo pouches that came with the rifle.

I am blessed that I read a lot, keep all my books and most of my magazines, and generally can remember where to find information that I read in the past. The Gun Digest 2002 (56^th Annual Edition) has an article by Steven Hurst (The Family Colt) where he describes how a neighbor crafted him a reloading kit to reload .32 ACP using buckshot bullet, which his friends called “B.S. ammo.”

Following the same guidelines I built a reloading kit out of basically scrap items that I had at home. The picture that illustrates this article show the complete set up in the lower right corner. The broken drill is used to remove the used primer. You just sit the fired cartridge on top of the nut, center the drill over the flame hole and tap on it. You can use a hammer, a piece of wood or the bayonet supplied with the rifle (apart from grilling marshmallows or hot dogs, this is the only other practical use for the Mosin-Nagant bayonet).

Next step is to sit a new primer. Just put a primer in the pocket, sit the case over a flat surface, and using the Allen wrench (or any other suitable object) and tap gently (again, you could use the bayonet). I use the pencil on the photo to “eject” the pistol case from the insert, but it probably be used in place of the Allen wrench or vice-versa.

Since I could not find any wire at home, I glued a .22 Short case to a nail and use it as a powder measure. In my case it drops just over two grains of Universal gun powder. Last, place a No. 1½ buckshot or a .32 musket ball (both are .310” diameter) and sit it by hand.

The pressures developed by this load are so low that the cases don’t need to be resized, and they should last a very long time.

Some people may ask what the practical purpose of the B.S. Rifle Ammo is. First and foremost, they are fun, and second they are cheap. With virtually no recoil and as little noise as an air gun the B.S. loads are perfect to train new shooter, improve your riflemanship (sight alignment, trigger control, overall gun handling), and even hunt small game. In the last case, if more power is required you can work up the load by adding a bit more powder, but don’t overdo it or you will defeat their purpose.

Notes:

1.    This article was featured in the May/June 2012 issue of Backwoodsman Magazine.

2.    You can find different diameter (caliber) buckshot at Ballistic Products (www.ballisticproducts.com).