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Rocky’s Reloading Room |
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Reloading 101
New to reloading? Have a lot of questions you’re afraid to ask because you think they’re too basic? Have no clue about equipment, tools or even the words that reloaders use? Never fret. Here’s a short “Introductory Course” in the art and science of reloading ammunition.
Reloading 101
Why should I reload my own ammunition? There are as many reasons to reload as there are reloaders, probably. Many get started as a means to save money, or to be able to shoot more, or to tailor a load that their particular gun likes best, or to assemble loads that they simply cannot buy. Others simply enjoy reloading as much –or more- as they do shooting! Those are all good reasons.
What’s the best way to start reloading? While most reloaders and shooters are “equipment freaks,” it actually is not the best plan to buy a lot of hardware first. Like many other activities, it helps to know what aspect of reloading you might like best before you get heavily invested in equipment, some of which might be expensive. I always suggest that people read extensively about reloading before they buy equipment. The first book to buy is any of the many full-service loading manuals. In fact, you should buy several. Every major component manufacturer and equipment maker produces these large volumes on a regular basis. You should own and read several so you won’t develop a brand bias. Only after digesting several, and limiting your planned reloading efforts a bit, should you buy equipment.
What about those reloading kits? Complete reloading kits are sold by RCBS, Hornady, Lyman, Lee and perhaps others. They contain all, or most, of what you need to actually start reloading. Some kits are more extensive than others and contain things like powder dispensers, case trimmers and the like. All contain the basics, such as a load manual, powder scale, press and small tools. In addition, you’ll need the proper loading dies for your caliber and expendable components such as primers, powder, bullets and brass shell cases. One tool you’ll need, but is never provided (don’t ask me why!) is a set of calipers to measure loaded ammo and spent cases. Eventually, you’ll be adding a powder dispenser, a micrometer, a case trimmer, a brass tumbler and lots of other goodies. But for now, the basic kit, some components, dies and a caliper will load real ammo!
How much can I save by loading my own ammo? Actually, you won’t save anything! That may come as a surprise to you, so let me explain. You can load a box of rifle or pistol ammo with jacketed bullets for about one third to one half of the cost of factory ammo at retail. You can load the same kind of ammo with cast lead bullets for even less – much less. So why won’t you save any money? Because you’ll load and shoot at least three to four times as much as you do now, that’s why! You’ll end up spending as much as you do now, but you’ll have a whale of a lot more fun doing it!
What do you mean by tailoring loads to a gun? Guns are funny things. Two guns off the same assembly line, even guns with consecutive serial numbers, will like different kinds of ammunition. Why? Don’t ask me! It’s just true. You can find factory ammo that a gun likes by buying and shooting several different kinds, but what do you do when the store runs out of that kind? By reloading, you get to pick the bullet you prefer to get the job done, then test various combinations of powder, primers, seating depth and other things to “tune in” a load that your gun shoots into little bitty bughole-size groups. Then you can duplicate that load at will.
OK, but what about those specialty loads? Let’s say that you want to shoot a specific bullet, either a premium style, or one that’s in an unusual weight or shape for your gun. If the factory doesn’t load it, you’re out of luck unless you’re a reloader. Or say that you need a super-mild load for small game hunting or to train a youngster. That’s a piece of cake for a reloader. Or you want a practice load that matches your hunting load’s trajectory but is milder and cheaper to shoot? Again, no sweat. Finally, you may have a gun for which there simply are no factory loads! Good shootable guns in many obsolete or foreign calibers are plentiful. But no one makes ammo for them any longer, or ammo is extremely hard to find. A reloader can make those old or odd guns bark again.
How do I pick the right components? Start off by deciding what you want the load to do. Pick the right bullet first. Target loads demand the highest quality “match grade” bullets for the smallest groups, but those bullets aren’t designed for game. Hunting requires bullets that deliver a humane kill under the most adverse conditions of range, angle and weather. Plinking bullets must be cheap and plentiful. Some of these factors are contradictory, so picking the right bullet is a first step. Next is powder. The right powder will give optimum performance for the intended use. Target loads demand the ultimate consistency shot-to-shot. Hunting loads demand the highest performance under all weather conditions. Plinking loads need to be easy to assemble in quantity and at low cost. ALL loads must be safe. Primers and brand of brass can sometimes make a surprising difference in loads, but are usually the least critical factor in designing a load. You can usually pick one and use it without a problem unless you change.
Can I save money by using one powder for everything? That would be a neat trick, but it isn’t really possible. Powders are designed to burn at a particular rate and produce a precise amount of gas at a precise pressure in a particular size case. No one powder can do everything in every case with every weight and diameter of bullet. For example, a powder that’s fast enough and dense enough to work in tiny pistol cartridges would develop extreme pressures if used in a rifle case. A powder designed to work in a large rifle case at high pressure wouldn’t burn properly –or at all- in a pistol case. If you shoot only handgun calibers, you might be able to work with one or two powders for everything. The same goes for most rifle cartridges and shotgun shells. But if you reload everything from target pistol loads to magnum shotgun and rifle, then you’ll just have to invest in half a dozen powders or so.
What’s the difference between ball and stick powders? How about single-base and double-base?
Stick (more properly called extruded) powders were the first to be developed. They consist mainly of nitrocellulose plus other chemicals that control flash and smoke, inhibit corrosion, and establish the rate at which the powder kernels burn. Many also have a thin glaze of graphite that helps them flow better and also to dissipate static electricity. They are formed into tiny little sticks that look very much like broken pencil lead.
Ball powder (which is actually a name trademarked by Winchester) looks like tiny spheres or globs. Some are almost perfectly round, and others look flattened into flakes. Ball powders are made by dissolving regular powder in solvents until it turns to a gel. The gel is then agitated under water until it forms tiny balls. They also have chemical additives and a graphite glaze, for the same reasons as extruded powders.
Almost all ball powders are double-base, meaning they contain both solid nitrocellulose and liquid nitroglycerin. Powders that contain only nitrocellulose are called single-base. Extruded powders can be either single- or double-base.
The differences are that double-base powders contain more energy than single-base. Ball powders are also denser and take up less room than extruded powders. So if you want a powder that has a lot of power but your cartridge case is small, you may choose a ball powder. But if you want to fill a large case with powder to get more consistent results, you might pick an extruded powder.
Which is better, neck sizing or full-length sizing? Yes. Ok, don’t hit me. But that’s the correct answer. Sometimes one is better than the other. Neck sizing is great when all your ammo is fired in one rifle, you have plenty of time to chamber each round, and dirt isn’t a problem. Target shooting is a good example of such conditions. Neck sizing also causes less stress on brass, so cases might last longer. However, cases will eventually expand enough so that neck sized cartridges get very difficult or impossible to chamber, and they can usually only be fired in one gun.
Full-length sizing is best when your rifle doesn’t have much camming ability to seat a snug round (lever actions, pumps and some semi-autos for example) or when reliability is vital. Hunting and action shooting games are examples of these situations. Full-length sizing allows you to shoot the same ammo in more than one gun and in any gun type, but does tend to wear out cases a bit faster. I recommend that people start with full-length sizing, then get a separate neck sizer die later if it seems necessary or desirable.
Should I crimp bullets into cases? How much? Crimping should always be done in certain circumstances. Most revolvers, lever-action rifles and semi-auto rifles or pistols must have crimped ammo to keep the bullets from moving in the case. Most bolt-action rifles and single-shot pistols don’t need any crimps at all. The amount of crimp can range from almost none to a very heavy amount. What we are trying to control with crimp is bullet movement, either from inertia or impact, or from the ignition of the primer and powder. If the walls of the brass case are robust, and not sized too big, the tension of the neck on the bullet is considerable. In such cases, only a mild amount of crimp is needed in most cases. But if the brass is thin and weak, or isn’t sized down smaller than the bullet, then we may need a very heavy crimp. We may also need a healthy crimp in a heavy-recoiling gun, no matter what the neck tension from the brass case.
It’s best to use the least amount of crimp required, increasing either the neck tension or the amount of crimp only as much as needed. Too much crimp will cause cracks in the neck over time, and can distort the bullet enough to ruin accuracy. One can also distort the brass case enough with a heavy crimp to prevent it from chambering.
How do I know a load is safe? That question could take a whole book to answer. The basic rules are to never exceed any published load, to pay attention to all warning signs, and to use common sense.
Published loads are developed in ballistic laboratories with very sophisticated equipment by technicians with both advanced degrees and years of experience. Such loads are usually safe if the exact components are used. Usually. Some individual guns may not be able to digest loads at the published maximum, and all bets are off if the components you use are different from theirs.
Warning signs of excessive pressure include excessive recoil or muzzle blast, difficult extraction of fired cases, hard opening of gun actions, disfigured primers, shiny marks on fired cases, excessive expansion of fired cases and other signs. Some of these signs mean that safe load pressures have been exceeded by gross amounts. The appearance of ANY of these is a signal to reduce your load by a substantial amount. For more discussion on measuring case expansion, see my article on that topic.
Common sense is always called for. If your loads are producing velocities above those of published loads, you are almost certainly also producing higher pressures. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Higher performance signals higher pressure…and higher danger.
How do I know a load is good? First, you have to decide what the load is for. There will be different criteria for different uses. A target load, a varmint load, a big game load and a practice load are vastly different. Among the criteria you need to evaluate are ease of functioning (including magazine fit, cycling, chambering and extraction difficulty, etc), velocity, consistency, accuracy, trajectory, terminal effects and even cost. You’ll need to have a definite idea for all of those.
For example, let’s say I’m developing a deer hunting load. Obviously, I must select a capable caliber, select expanding bullets, resize the cases so that they feed and chamber easily and fit the magazine of the rifle without binding. I might also decide that they must deliver groups no larger than two inches at 100 yards, have a muzzle velocity and trajectory that will let me hold on a deer out to 300 yards with no holdover, and have dependable expansion and penetration qualities. If I decide on a .308 Winchester with 150-grain Nosler Partition bullets loaded to 2700 fps muzzle velocity and sighted in to hit 2.5 inches high at 100 yards, I have most of my criteria covered. Now I work up loads that group into 1.5 inches and have a maximum velocity spread over five shots of less than 50 fps. Overall length is 2.76”, which fits my rifle’s magazine and feeds flawlessly when they’re full-length resized. That’s a good load!
But suppose I were instead looking for a load for the prairie dog fields. That .308 combo would be a terrible load! Instead, I’d need a caliber that had much less recoil, much flatter trajectory, shot much tighter groups, used much cheaper bullets that were also much more explosive. I wouldn’t be worried about magazine fit or ease of action cycling, but I would be concerned with barrel heat and fouling. To be a good load here might require a .223 with 50-grain Vmax bullets neck-sized and loaded with a temperature-insensitive powder. It would have to shoot into a half-inch or less and start with at least 3100 fps. Get the pattern? The bottom line is that a good load is one that meets the criteria that you’ve set for it.
How much accuracy is really necessary? This falls into the same category as defining a good load. How much do you need for what? A benchrest target shooter getting half-inch groups at a hundred yards would slink away in shame, but a deer hunter with a lever-action .30-30 would frame such a target and brag about it for years. In general, though, I think many shooters are too hung up on tiny groups. An elk hunter upset because his .300 Magnum won’t shoot less than one MOA is an idiot. His target (an elk’s lungs) is two FEET wide. If his rifle shoots two-inch groups, no bullet will hit farther than one inch away from his aim point! Neither his rifle, nor his scope, nor his bullets are capable of much better than that, in most cases. And they don’t need to be!
A simple rule is this: if your gun and load consistently group into half of your target size at the range at which you shoot at that target, that’s plenty good enough. For a moose or elk at 100 yards, a load needs to be no better than a 12” grouper! Better than that is fine, but it isn’t needed. At the opposite extreme is a ground squirrel with a one-inch diameter lung. A rifle has to be able to group into a half-inch at whatever range that squirrel is. If you miss with groups that size, it’s not the gun or the load, it’s the jerk on the trigger!
What is MOA? MOA stands for Minute Of Angle, and it’s just a simple way of describing size regardless of distance. Here’s how it comes about: Think of a circle, any circle from a dime to the horizon in size. Every circle, regardless of size, is divided into 360 degrees. Every one of those degrees can be thought of as an angle that meets at the center of the circle and extends to the rim. Think of a wedge of pie here. Now concentrate on just one degree. That one degree slice is further divided in 60 minutes. Near the center, the two arms, or sides, of those minutes are pretty close together, but they spread out as you go farther from the center, just like that slice of pie gets wider toward the crust.
It turns out that one minute of angle (MOA) widens to just about one inch wide at a point about 300 feet from center. That’s not exact, but it’s darn close. (One whole degree –60 minutes- therefore spans about 60 inches, or five feet at 300 feet distance.) That’s why we equate a one-inch group of shots at 100 yards to be a one-MOA group. So how big is a three-inch group at 300 yards? It’s still one MOA. Remember that the sides of the angle are straight and get farther apart with distance? That’s what makes thinking in MOA so handy. At 1,000 yards, one MOA covers about ten inches and so forth. If you could stand at the center of the earth and shoot a group at a target on the surface, a one MOA group would be about a mile across, but it would still be one MOA.
How can I use MOA in the field? Let’s say that you spot a ground hog munching on some farmer’s valuable soybeans, and your laser rangefinder shows that the little pest is 400 yards away. You check your little printed table of drop, and see that your bullet will drop 12 inches at that range. Your scope adjustments move the point of impact ¼ MOA with each click. At 400 yards, each click equates to an inch (four times ¼ is one), so you dial in 12 clicks, hold right on the chest of the fat pest, and squeeeeeeze. If you could judge wind as well as distance, you could apply the same process to bullet deflection. If the bullet were deflected eight inches by the prevailing amount of wind, you’d just dial in eight clicks of correction, and again hold dead center.
One other way to use MOA is to predetermine your maximum humane shooting range. Let’s say your deer rifle delivers three-MOA groups. A deer has about a 16-inch diameter lung area. Your rifle’s group will not exceed that diameter until more than 500 yards (16” divided by three is a tad over five). Even if you know the drop or trajectory, you should not attempt a shot beyond 500 yards. Beyond 500, even with a perfect hold and no wind, your group size could still result in a gut shot or a miss.
What’s the best primer to use? Boxer-style primers are generally offered in four sizes: small pistol, small rifle, large pistol and large rifle. (The other style, Berdan, is very difficult to load, and is found mostly in foreign-made cases that aren’t intended for reloading.)
Within the four main sizes, you can also get regular-strength, magnum-strength or match-style primers. Most loading manuals will specify which primer they used to develop their data, and that is the primer you should use to duplicate those loads. If starting a load of your own, it is smart to begin with a standard-strength primer of the correct size. Once you settle upon a promising combination, you may wish to try one or two different standard primers, or a magnum-strength primer to see if groups or shot-to-shot consistency improves.
If your load is maximum, or near maximum, you should back off the powder charge before switching primers because different primers can raise pressures by as much as 10,000 psi. In general, the mildest primer that gives sufficient ignition will give the best results.
In very large cartridges that have powder charges of 70 grains or more, a magnum primer will give better results. Also, a few powders give best results with magnum primers at all charge weights. Hodgdon H-380 and H-870 powders are classic examples. Loads that will be fired in sub-zero temperatures also need magnum primers with all powders.
How do I pick a good powder? As always, start load development with the loading manual for the brand of bullet you’ll load. Look at the test loads and you will usually see one or two powders that give the highest velocity. Some manuals also say which powders gave the best accuracy. Those powders are the most efficient and best suited for that caliber and bullet combination. Always try those powders first.
In general, a powder that fills most of the case at maximum charges will be the most efficient and consistent. Powders that fill only half of the case will be too fast. They reach high pressures without generating as much volume of gas, so velocity will be reduced. Also, ignition will be inconsistent because the powder can shift around within the case too much. On the other hand, powders that are too slow will not generate much velocity even if the case is full. Filling the case and then seating a bullet can highly compress the powder. This also leads to poor ignition and can even dislodge the bullet or distort the brass case. The best circumstance is when the bullet just touches the powder or very lightly compresses it, using a powder that also produces the highest velocity. Reducing such a charge slightly can also produce the best accuracy, much of the time.
How many shots should I shoot in a group? Statistically, the best analysis come from 7-shot groups, but only if dozens or hundreds of groups are fired. That’s not practical, obviously. For my own use, I fire two five-shot groups with trial loads. If both groups are essentially the same, I take it as an indicator of that load’s eventual potential. I also record all ten shots over the chronograph and analyze that data. Those that string shots, have widely different group shapes or sizes and also have poor velocity consistency are abandoned without further tests. Loads that deliver smaller than average groups AND have low velocity spreads or standard deviation get further work.
When I start work with a promising load, I again fire five-shot groups - changing the powder charge a bit with each load combination. My “tweaked” loads get a final test with one or two ten-shot groups. It’s very hard to concentrate long enough to fire good ten-shot groups, but these really test a load’s true consistency. It’s a waste of components to shoot ten-shot groups with initial trial loads.
Why is the data in loading books so different, even with the same bullet weight? Stop to think for a second. Testing labs shoot different lots of powder, different primers, different brass, different bullets, and use different test guns with different tolerances. They use different test equipment that’s calibrated differently. They may have different test criteria, different definitions of maximum, and have different people interpreting the results. With all those differences, how can results POSSIBLY be the same? Indeed, it’s a tribute to how closely this industry coordinates with itself and how well it regulates itself that results are even remotely alike!
All leading authorities recommend that you use the loading data developed with the bullet you are using (it’s the construction and materials of the bullet that have the most effect on varying pressures) and to duplicate the listed components exactly. Even at that, the results you get with particular components in a particular gun aren’t likely to be exactly the same as the published results.
Why do different bullets have different load data? No two bullet types are the same. Even bullets from the same manufacturer in the same caliber and of the same weight may give different pressures and velocities with the same load. Examine bullets and you’ll see why. Let’s take .30-caliber bullets of 150 grains weight as an example. There are flat-base bullets, boattail bullets, roundnose bullets, flattip bullets, hollowpoint bullets, softpoint spitzers, plastic-tipped bullets, jacket-and-lead-core bullets, partition-core bullets, solid copper bullets, tungsten-core bullets, full-metal-jacket bullets, and even armor-penetrating bullets, incendiary bullets and tracer bullets all in that same caliber and weight!!
Even among the traditional gilding metal jacket and lead-core designs, there are bullets with soft cores, hard cores or multiple-material cores. Jackets can be thick, thin or plated on. Inside, those jackets may be tapered, scored or fluted, and have thin, thick or crimped bases. They may have a cannelure, a crimping groove or plain sides. The nose can be formed with secant, tangent or conic ogives. They may even be of two different diameters, or tapered. Once again, all that in just one “standard” jacket and core description!
What it means is that every different bullet will react differently to being loaded, held by the case and fired. Some bullets will expand due to acceleration and tightly fill the lands and grooves. Others are more rigid, and skim lightly along the lands. Some have much more length exposed to the barrel steel, others much less.
Bullets also change over time! The box you buy today was made with different lots of raw materials than the last box. The machinery used to make it may be more or less worn, and there may have been small design changes with no notice. Cores and jackets may be slightly harder or softer and with slightly different alloy percentages. The heat-treating may be slightly different. Get the idea? No doubt about it, different bullets WILL give different results.
I read about bullets being seated to a certain distance off the lands. What does that mean? I think it's important to explain here that what we're talking about is seating the bullet short of the beginning of the rifling in the bore. The neck area of the chamber and a short distance in front of it is cut as a smooth cylinder. At the front of that cylindrical portion, the rifling starts. Rifling is composed of raised ribs of metal called “lands”, with grooves between them. At the beginning of each land is a tapered ramp that starts at the cylindrical part of the neck and extends to the top of each land. Each land is .004 to .005" tall. Since there are usually an even number of lands, that means that the bottom of the grooves are .008" larger than the measurement from land to land. Thus, a .30-caliber bore has a land-to-land measurement of .300" and from bottom of groove-to-groove is .308".
What we're trying to do is seat a bullet so that the curved portion of the bullet nose sits just short of the start of that ramped area of the lands (off the lands) by a certain but very small distance. Why? Because a bullet that is touching the lands requires a tremendous amount of force to start it into those lands (rifling), where it must be distorted a certain amount (Remember, we're forcing a bullet that's .308" diameter in, but the tops of the lands are only .300" apart!) It would be like trying to force a splitting wedge into a log by placing the wedge on the log and pushing. Possible, but it takes a heckuva lot of effort!
By having the bullet just a tiny fraction of an inch off the lands, it gets just a bit of a running start, and the effort to engrave it in the rifling is much reduced. How far off? Ah, that's the rub. Some guns are much more accurate if the bullets are almost touching, and others work best when the bullets are back as far as .050". The only way to tell is to experiment. Hint: start at .020". To complicate things, every bullet has a slightly different curve (called an ogive - pronounced OH-jive) and has to be seated just a bit differently than another kind of bullet to achieve the same "off the lands" distance.
Ahh, the pleasures of reloading! In addition to an almost infinite combination of bullets, brass, primers and powder choices and charge weights, we have seating depth to judge and set. It's a wonder we manage at all, huh?
Update 2007: This column has proven so popular, and with other guides to basic reloading being out of print or dated, I’ve decided to publish “Reloading 101” as a full size book. I’m working on it now and hope to publish it soon—but soon is a relative term, so don’t hold your breath!
As planned, however, it’ll be an 8 1/2 x 11” softcover, with numerous photos and about 300 pages. No loading data, just tips, tricks, techniques and teaching. Look for it.
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