Thread: Some Thoughts on Handloading.

Greetings All,
It is a cold wet day here in HB so I thought I would tap out a few thoughts over handloading that have been running around in my head.

In The Beginning, well fifty years ago.
In the early 1970's the world was a different place and handloading was as well. Most projectiles were quite similar with reasonably soft jackets and lead cores and flat bases. Load data came from books or pamphlets put out by projectile or powder makers and not much of it was pressure tested. These also were the intrepid years of load data when some of it was extremely hot bordering on dangerous. Many handloaders just used the middle load and some only the start load. Mulwex, now ADI put out one powder, the long discontinued AR2201.
By 1980 things had started to change. Much of the data was pressure tested and some loads had shrunk closer to what is listed now. Some data still did not identify the projectile used but many manuals had sections on working up loads.

The Rise of The Trick Projectiles.
Some time along the way projectiles started to change. Some developed boat tails and others had fancy jackets. We had the Nosler Partitions back in the 1940's which used much the same data as other projectiles but development went well beyond that. By the end of the millennium some projectiles were all jackets and no core. Some manuals offered specific data for the new projectiles but some persisted with the one size fits all, just stating the weight.

The Information Super Highway. (or The Turgid Sewer of Disinformation depending on your point of view.
The internet made load data much easier to access and to find specific data for the projectile you want to use. Some data still groups quite different projectiles under the same data resulting in lighter loads for the softer projectiles. The internet unfortunately contains a lot of ill informed opinion, sometimes just parroting something heard elsewhere. So although we have some of the best data we have had in the last 50 years it takes some careful sifting to separate the good stuff from the dross. This can be a major hurdle for the novice handloader.
Regards Grandpamac.