Thread: Handloading Ghosts

Greetings All,
It was a damp day yeserday (and today) so I gave all the .222 cases a clean to see what I had. Turns out there are 10 different headstamps and 235 cases after some had been binned for neck cracks and corrosion. Lately I have been weighing samples of case sand grouping headstamps by weights so a sample of 5 cases of each headstamp were weighed, with fired primer, and each sample averaged. Average weight ran from 87 grains for Imperial cases to 99 grains for Sako. That is a big difference. This is sure to have an effect on velocity. I have been meaning to test this in my .223 for some time but have not got around to it and wondered if Ken Waters had looked into it. It turns out that he had. For those unfamiliar with Ken's name he wrote an extensive list of Pet Load articles for Handloader Amunition Reloading Journal over a period of decades. In his 1977 article he compared the velocity generated by 20.5 grains of IMR4198 and the 50 grain projectile in 3 cases. The heaviest WW Super with a net capacity of 25.5 grains of water gave 3,290 fps, Remington at net 26 grains of water gave 3,209 fps and the lightest Federal with a net capacity of 26.5 grains of water gave 3,106 fps. This is way too much to be ignored. Using the weight of my friends cases and converting from brass to weight of water my results are in line with Ken's findings. The difference of 180 fps is equivalent to a change in load of powder of around 1.5 grains. Clearly some calculation and chronographing of appropriate powder charges will be required.
Now some and perhaps most of those that have read this far are thinking "That is a lot of busy work to use a few old cases" and you would be right but the object is to learn things about handloading varaible cases. For the moment there are 235 cases to neck anneal and, once some .222 dies are borrowed, full length sized before the fun starts.
Regards Grandpamac.