DK - don’t be too critical of the kid seating bullets with a hammer. He is using some sort fixture (bullet guide). The truth is, most bench rest shooters use what we call “palm-type bullet seaters” to make precision ammunition. I use them, made by Wilson, in many calibers. They insure a minimum of run-out when made by quality makers, unlike normal presses, most of which have some flex in them. I cannot use my palm to seat my bullets, and most do not. Raises a welt in short order. I basically seat the bullets in all my rifle target loades in 7.62 x 51 (no longer - don’t have any rifles in that caliber any more), .223 for my iron-sight SAKO target rifle, and 6.5 x 55 in my Model 96 Swedish Mauser, which while straight military, is a tack drive worthy of shooting only the best ammunition
The truth is, in the absence of any automated equipment, the way that kid was seating bullets is a perfectly sound and good practice. I doubt that his seating apparatus is as precision as those avaiilable to us, but I don’t want to stand in front of the muzzle of a gun loaded with the finished product. The spring looked like it came out of a very long ball point pen! I don’t think I would have cared to shoot that pistol, although there was evidence that it had been fired a lot.
I think I recall, regarding locally-made Chinese Pistols (not major factories) Lew telling me the same thing about precision hand fitting on pistols that otherwise might be considered somewhat crude.
John Moss
I have owned a couple of Darra-made guns. While crude in finish, the two I had evidenced incredibly good handfitting of such things as the slide to the frame. They had almost zero “rattle” (up and down or side to side movement) feeling almost like the slide and frame were actually one-piece, but yet operated as smooth as a fine Colt or Browning when cocking the piece with the slide. The only reason I am usually suspect enough of these guns NOT to shoot any of them is the quality of the steel in the guns. I simply have no way to judge it. Also, some certainly had no firearms engineer figuring out such things as strength of the recoil spring and therefore the timing of the slide in a blowback 7.63 Mauser caliber, very small pistol, I had.