Thread: The Four Stages of Handloading Competence

Greetings All,
I am sitting at home here in Hawkes Bay and its raining. Again. There is a Heavy Rain Warning out for HB south of SH5 through until Saturday night. Clearly no testing will take place until next week so to keep me what passes for sane I thought I would do a few posts on the development of competence in handloading.

Stage 1 Unconscious Incompetent. We don't know what we don't know.
We all start out like this as I did around 50 years ago. Armed with a Lee Loader in .303 (my only centre fire rifle at the time), a box of 180 grain projectiles, scales, a tin of AR2201 powder and a copy of Cyril Waterworth's Reloading Simplified I was all go, or so I thought. The sized cases chambered hard and were significantly longer than new cases. A press, dies and a trimmer were purchased and eventually some start loads of 34 grains of AR2201 were loaded with the 180 grain Norma projectiles. These would have barely cracked 2,000 fps but they went bang and made holes in the target in reasonable proximity to each other so I was happy. Ignorant but happy. The late production CAC cases cracked in the neck on the second or third load which saved me the indignity of a head separation. All starting out handloaders need mentors and I had none. I bumbled along like this until I decided I needed a better rifle. This turned out to be a Remington 700 in .308 Win. Along the way copies of the Lyman 45th and the Speer No9 manuals had appeared on the shelves and a mid load of 37 grains of AR2201 behind the Norma 180 grain Flat Nose. Late in 1979 and early in 1980 a number of things happened. I did my first load work up, started keeping handloading records and took out a subscription for the Handloader Ammunition Reloading Journal. I had reached Stage 2.

Stage 2 Conscious Incompetent. We know what we don't know.
To be continued