Long Term Reloading Equipment Storage

[Bassman]

Hi Roksliders – Iong story short is I will be moving in the next month and will be hopping around a bit for the next 12 months. It will be impractical for me to haul my reloading gear and set it up properly at each location so I’ve decided that the best thing is to break down my equipment and move it into storage. I did a bit of googling and did not seeing anything on the best way to store presses and other loading equipment (eg. RCBS Chargemaster) for up to 12 months.

My thought is to hit the exposed metal surfaces with a light coat of oil and put everything in plastic totes with newspaper and toss in a few Zerust absorbent pads. Primers and powder will be minimal and stored with a friend so don’t have to worry about those. Seems pretty straightforward but figured I would check to see if someone here has done something similar? Any lessons learned?

 

[cs1]

If you’re planning on storing things in climate controlled storage, I wouldn’t worry about anything more than maybe your light coat of oil. I stored all my equipment for 12 years in a friend’s closet, and everything came out fine (minus what he charged for ”rent”). There wasn’t any rust on anything.
If you won’t be going climate controlled I would say oil and maybe some cosmolene or grease along with dessicant. Hopefully supply will eventually come back but I would hate to replace good dies or a press right now.

 

[Bassman]

Thank you, that is good to hear you had no issues. Good call on the cosmolene / grease, I certainly don't want to replace my dies.