Thread: Notes for New and Newish Hand Loaders from an Old Fudd

Greetings Yet Again.

Post 5 Some Notes on Safety and Picking a Load.

Inattention and Safety.
Dama dama was gracious in sharing his handloading whoopsie with us yesterday and it is only fair that I share mine. I was loading powder and seating projectiles in a batch of 50 .223 cases last week and unusually had the radio on. I had just seated a projectile and looked across to see a charge of powder sitting in the scale pan. Oh oh! A quick check of the weight of the suspect round showed that there was no powder in it. The radio was turned off, put back in the cupboard, the projectile pulled and loaded with powder this time. The following day all the cartridges in the batch were weighed and were OK. Dama dama's primer less load would have been safe enough but the primer in my load can have enough push to send the projectile far enough into a long throated barrel to allow a second to chamber behind it. Only bad things happen after this. We will talk about this more in future posts.

Picking a Load.
This is the part that will give the most trouble to new or newish hand loaders. Compared to 40 years ago there is a vast range of projectile types with outrageous claims made for each by their manufacturers. Much of this is best ignored for the moment. The same is true for powders with frequent new powders appearing almost weekly with claims as above. For the last 20 years or so I have used a lot of Hornady projectiles both Interlock and SST with a few ELDX lately. Powders have mostly been the appropriate ADI offering. Both projectiles and powder are usually available, unlike some of the flasher stuff And good online data is available from Hodgdon, ADI and others.
So what do we use? Projectiles in the middle of the weight range often give the best overall performance. In the cartridges I have loaded for 129 to 140 grain in 6.5 mm, 140 to 160 grain in 7 mm. 150 to 165 grain in .308 and 174 to 180 grain in .303. For powder charges I mostly use AR2206H, AR2209, AR2213SC and a little AR2217. Look at the online data to see which powder gives decent velocity with your chosen projectile without needing to compress charges. Found one? If so you have found your load but we still have to work up to it which we will talk about over the next two posts.

Tomorrow Putting a load together and Keeping out of Trouble Most of The Time.