Post by jeffh on Apr 1, 2023 8:38:24 GMT -5
The only one I've used is Charles Darnell's Freechex (II, I think), but the only ones available then were his and Pat Marlin's.
For whatever reasons then, I chose Charles' tooling and have been very pleased with them - in 22,30 and 35 calibers. VERY nice guy, VERY easy to work with.
When I set up the tooling, I use an arbor press and just leave the stuff set up for a few weeks and stop and punch out 50 or a hundred checks in between other chores or while ruminating on how to circumvent some problem, waiting for glue to dry, etc. It can get a bit boring just standing there and running the handle of the press, so I break it up.
I use very few gas checks in the 357, on about half of my 30/30 bullets and (so far) on everything I shoot through my 222. All the 'checks work great, all the tooling works great.
The BIG QUESTION is: what's it worth to you? Some prefer to suck it up and pay for a bunch of gas checks, some prefer to maintain the delusion that the tooling removes the finite aspect of supply (like me) and just feel better having the capability and cutting one more tie to "supply lines" and scalpers. it's truly an individual choice, but objectively - Charles' gas check makers are good stuff and if I wanted another, I'd give him first crack at it. Certainly there are others which are worthy, but I'm happy and I DO like the "one-stroke = one gas-check" aspect of Charles' tools.
For whatever reasons then, I chose Charles' tooling and have been very pleased with them - in 22,30 and 35 calibers. VERY nice guy, VERY easy to work with.
When I set up the tooling, I use an arbor press and just leave the stuff set up for a few weeks and stop and punch out 50 or a hundred checks in between other chores or while ruminating on how to circumvent some problem, waiting for glue to dry, etc. It can get a bit boring just standing there and running the handle of the press, so I break it up.
I use very few gas checks in the 357, on about half of my 30/30 bullets and (so far) on everything I shoot through my 222. All the 'checks work great, all the tooling works great.
The BIG QUESTION is: what's it worth to you? Some prefer to suck it up and pay for a bunch of gas checks, some prefer to maintain the delusion that the tooling removes the finite aspect of supply (like me) and just feel better having the capability and cutting one more tie to "supply lines" and scalpers. it's truly an individual choice, but objectively - Charles' gas check makers are good stuff and if I wanted another, I'd give him first crack at it. Certainly there are others which are worthy, but I'm happy and I DO like the "one-stroke = one gas-check" aspect of Charles' tools.
