Reloading misconceptions.

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I started pretty early, around 9 or 10, reloading 45 ACP and 20 Gauge with Lee Loaders, a twenty-penny nail, a wooden dowel and a wooden mallet. We got our powder from the Western Auto weighed out in paper sacks. Herco had a plant right down the road and everybody used Herco for everything.

Primers were $1 a tray, $10 for a brick. Didn't matter pistol or 209s ... same price for whatever.

I think my one misconception early-on might have been that my Grandpappy, a WWII Vet and the best wing shooter I ever knew, was a man god. He reloaded his own then took game with those 20 gauge reloads. And he carried that 1911 with him in a Calvary Man's GI issued holster ... I once saw him down a chicken hawk in flight off the hip with that 1911. We ate so much wild game and farm raised meat growing-up that store bought meat tasted funny and I didn't have my first fast food, a McDonald's burger, until I was in the 6th grade.

There were three or four sacred things my Grandfather did that I thought were magical. Reloading his own ammo, sharpening knives, noodling catfish and ..... I actually felt sorry for doves when he was in a dove field.

Anyone else remember paper grocery sacks full of new paper high brass hulls? Hey, paper hulls most certainly can be reloaded.

I never once saw him use a scale. He always used one of two or three homemade dippers that he made out of leftover copper pipe. He was an HVAC man by trade and he almost drove himself nuts trying to make 22 ammo, long and short, out of copper tubing he would salvage from old units ... he repaired refrigerators too.
 
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Everyone has different ideas. Large firms like powder/chemical companies have entire teams of attorneys. You can be sure that has alot to do with the discrepancies you find from one data source to the next. Maximum loads in the Hornaday Manuel are lower then start loads in other sources. Hornaday start loads will barely function most auto pistols I've fired them in (45 auto & 9x19)
 
twarr1 said:
The Myth That Won’t Die - Velocity = Pressure.
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To be fair, Velocity is a function of Pressure. . . AND several other variables that are nearly impossible to measure outside a lab (like friction coefficient), or are non-linear functions of other variables (like combustion rate is a non-linear function of pressure, is a function of friction).

For sure, the Pressure causes the Velocity, but trying to correlate just those two is like trying to correlate engine horsepower to highway speed while ignoring the transmission.
 
Soonerpesek said:
Looked at the bottom of a sizing die for a pistol round (don't remember the caliber), saw the round collet of the depriming pin and thought it was an expander button.........!!

Someone here set me straight......In a kind way.....:oops:
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Many older dies DID flare the case with the sizing/deprime die. I have a few around here somewhere.
 
edwardware said:
To be fair, Velocity is a function of Pressure. . . AND several other variables that are nearly impossible to measure outside a lab (like friction coefficient), or are non-linear functions of other variables (like combustion rate is a non-linear function of pressure, is a function of friction).

For sure, the Pressure causes the Velocity, but trying to correlate just those two is like trying to correlate engine horsepower to highway speed while ignoring the transmission.
Click to expand...

I totally agree that velocity is not an exact measure of pressure, but there is no free lunch. If the chronograph shows faster speeds than the manual, then that it is a very good indication pressures are above the data in the manual, even with charges below manual max. If you have ever developed a load with a Kreiger barrel, you learn this. Loads that were perfectly safe in my broached Wilson or Douglas barrels were too hot, and, went a lot faster in the Krieger. Kriegers are cut barrels and they are tight. Ammunition that was perfectly safe in broached barrels blew primers in Kriegers.

It is always true, the more powder for the same chamber/case space, the more velocity, and the greater the pressures. However, it is not a linear relationship with pressures, the slope of the curve is exponential, and while velocity may be increasing by X, pressures are increasing by X * X * X or X*X*X*X just depending where you are on the pressure curve.

And, with my Marlin 336, a rifle that had to have been reamed with a bratwurtz, the chamber is so huge, that to get factory/manual velocities, I am several grains above manual maximums.
 
entropy said:
I started reloading at 9. Too young to develop misconceptions about it before I started.
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Me too. That was when I was introduced to the process. I didn't get my own Lyman Spartan press until I was 13. Started with .38Spl and .357Mag, Bullseye and Unique, respectively, in a 4-5/8" Ruger Blackhawk. Came to understand real quick a long barrel isn't always more accurate or more "powerful."
 
Here's one for you........field "handloading" GI style. We used to take the blank adapters off our M16's, and drop a cleaning rod down the barrel and shoot it with a blank. I killed a wiener boar in Kitzengen GE with a cleaning rod like that...and we grilled him up during downtime. Now I cringe at what must have been a massive pressure spike....what does a cleaning rod weight? 4 or 5 hundred grains? I wouldn't even think of doing it now.......but it seemed like a grand idea when I was a young kid.
 
Master Blaster said:
Here is one I see all the time on reloading forums:
That the random poster on the reloading forum knows more that the guys at Hodgden, and Alliant who actually make and test the powder and the bullets on multi million dollar lab equipment.
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LOL, truth. Then again....random guy on the internet doesn't have a lawyer proofreading his publications either..."do we really need to go up those last 2 grains on the max load? Can we just back that off a little bit?" ~ Hodgdon Attorney looking at the max load data for 44 Magnum
 
EricBu said:
LOL, truth. Then again....random guy on the internet doesn't have a lawyer proofreading his publications either..."do we really need to go up those last 2 grains on the max load? Can we just back that off a little bit?" ~ Hodgdon Attorney looking at the max load data for 44 Magnum
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Yes - there is a difference between what professional ballisticians know and what they are allowed to say. There is no one at Alliant who will publicly green light 7.5 grains of Unique in a .44 Special...
 
EricBu said:
Here's one for you........field "handloading" GI style. We used to take the blank adapters off our M16's, and drop a cleaning rod down the barrel and shoot it with a blank. I killed a wiener boar in Kitzengen GE with a cleaning rod like that...and we grilled him up during downtime. Now I cringe at what must have been a massive pressure spike....what does a cleaning rod weight? 4 or 5 hundred grains? I wouldn't even think of doing it now.......but it seemed like a grand idea when I was a young kid.
Click to expand...

I killed a squirrel that way on an FTX; kept watching him run between two scrub oaks in front of my foxhole all day. Pinned him to the ground with the cleaning rod section, ran out, twisted his neck, ran back, gutted and skun him. Found a couple of forked sticks to make a rotisserie with the cleaning rod section, and cooked him with cow dung and trioxane bars on the 'ammo shelf' of the foxhole. I offered some to my foxhole partner, who was the Medical Supply Specialist I worked with. She called me a 'backwoods savage'. Hey, after a week of MRE's, that squirrel tasted like prime rib!
 
EricBu said:
Here's one for you........field "handloading" GI style. We used to take the blank adapters off our M16's, and drop a cleaning rod down the barrel and shoot it with a blank. I killed a wiener boar in Kitzengen GE with a cleaning rod.
Click to expand...
What the heck is a "wiener boar"?
 
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