Now under new management, RCBS hopes to expand the availability of its excellent reloading products and recommit to the innovation of new tools.
In May, 2024, Hodgdon Powder acquired RCBS. It seems like a perfect fit. After all, if you load your own ammunition, you need gunpowder (Hodgdon) and reloading tools (RCBS). Hodgdon has been in the gunpowder business since 1952, and RCBS has been making tools for handloaders since 1943. Combined, they’ve been servicing reloaders for more than a century and a half. However, since the acquisition, we haven’t heard much about the new partnership or how it might benefit those of us who craft our own ammo.
RCBS has operated out of Oroville, CA, since its inception, and it has retained the same name through several acquisitions. In 1976, Omark Industries purchased RCBS, and in 1985 Omark became part of Blount, Inc. Then in 2001, ATK purchased RCBS, and 14 years later Vista Outdoor spun off from ATK and took RCBS with it. Now, Hodgdon runs the show.
Ironically, even after 80 years most shooters and handloaders have no idea what RCBS stands for. Fred Huntington, the founder of RCBS, enjoyed shooting rock chucks (a member of the squirrel family similar to woodchucks). One of the first products he offered were dies designed to swage/form rimfire .22-caliber cartridge cases into bullet jackets. This was during World War II, when bullets for sportsmen were hard to come by. Huntington called the product the Rock Chuck Bullet Swage, and ultimately its acronym—RCBS—became the company name.
In March, I was in Africa with Joel Hodgdon, who is part of the Hodgdon powder family. At that time, however, he was working as Remington Ammunition’s marketing director. A few months later, when I called my RCBS contact to get the lowdown on the future of the company after the Hodgdon takeover, I discovered Joel had just taken the job as the marketing director for RCBS. So, you could say, I knew just the guy I needed to talk to and batter with questions.
Joel Hodgdon is excited to go to work for a family—his family—owned company, but he seemed even more excited about the future of RCBS. He said Hodgdon purchased RCBS because, “RCBS’ focus on the handloader made it a great fit for Hodgdon. As ‘The Gunpowder People,’ Hodgdon shares that laser focus on serving the handloader and the reloading community.”
Bruce Hodgdon and Fred Huntington founded Hodgdon and RCBS, respectively, in the mid-1900s and knew each other. In the 1950s and ’60s, they even collaborated to host handloading roadshows to teach handloading skills to folks across the country.
That’s a cool backdrop to a new—really a reborn—partnership, but I put Joel on the spot and told him it seemed like RCBS had been lagging when it came to innovation and product availability. I asked him what Hodgdon was going to do to fix that and make RCBS better. He remarked that on day one, “The Hodgdon team committed to supporting RCBS by first and foremost getting our popular products back in market.” He also emphasized that, “Long term, RCBS is rebuilding the innovation pipeline and taking exciting plans off the backburner to bring new and better reloading tooling to handloaders.”
I’ve been using RCBS products my entire handloading career that spans 45 years, and they litter my bench. An RCBS Chargemaster dispenses the powder charge for every cartridge I load on a single-stage press, I’ve been using an RCBS Electronic Digital Caliper for so long I forget when I purchased it, and I have a pile of RCBS dies (the company makes dies for more than 200 different cartridges). I trust RCBS tools, and the company makes and sells a lot of them. For the new and even experienced handloader, RCBS offers a wide range of kits to get them started or to help them refine the process. But, what I really wanted to highlight is something that RCBS offers that’s totally free. And in this economy, “free” is like gold.
If you click on the “Learn” tab on the RCBS website (rcbs.com) you’ll get a menu with an array of selections. These will provide you with an encyclopedic collection of information on handloading. It includes material on handloading basics, components and tools, a glossary of terms, and even step-by-step handloading instructions. If you click the link for the “Downloadable Guide,” you’ll have access to a PDF file with all this info that you can keep on your computer, tablet or smartphone (or even print).
However, I think one of the best free assets available from RCBS is the nearly 100 videos the company has online covering a tremendous amount of handloading information. It is a tremendous asset for handloaders to have at their fingertips. You can use it to learn the basics of handloading, but also to learn how to use various basic and advanced tools like a case trimmer, bullet puller and a stuck-case-remover kit.
For example, one video explains the three different-colored boxes RCBS dies come in. Did you know green-box dies contain full-length or neck-sizing dies, gold-box dies are Gold Medal bushing dies and black-box RCBS dies are for loading ammunition for ARs, and they contain a small-base sizer die and a taper-crimp seater die? I knew the differences in these dies, but I did not know that box color distinguished between them.
Somewhat embarrassingly, I had no idea all of this was available from RCBS. My first suggestion to the new RCBS management would be to better highlight these instructional assets on the website. It’s one of the best ways to get consumers to purchase the good tools the company makes. It’s also a virtual continuance of the valuable and educational handloading roadshows RCBS offered along with Hodgdon during the ’50s and ’60s.
The future looks good for RCBS, and hopefully we’ll soon see its most popular products back on shelves. I’m also looking forward to new products to help us build ammunition better. If there’s one thing half a lifetime of working in this industry has taught me, it’s that privately owned companies like Hodgdon and—now once again—RCBS, are much nimbler and more customer-responsive than the publicly traded companies like RCBS’ previous owners. I expect things at RCBS to evolve swiftly. In the meantime, give the RCBS website a visit and see what you can learn.
