Post by goomba on Jun 13, 2009 14:07:27 GMT -5
Handloading Is About Fun!
Reasons for handloading continue to evolve from ones of necessity to ones of pleasure and now back to necessity as unprecedented demand for ammunition keeps supplies tight. As part of that evolution, handloaders have more choices than ever.
By Scott E. Mayer Posted: 06-04-09
Reasons for handloading continue to evolve from ones of necessity to ones of pleasure and now back to necessity as unprecedented demand for ammunition keeps supplies tight. As part of that evolution, handloaders have more choices than ever.
By Scott E. Mayer Posted: 06-04-09
I can still remember the first cartridge I handloaded. In the dingy trailer of a young cop I met at the local firehouse where I volunteered, I churned out lots of .41 Magnum ammunition during my teen years. Under his tutelage, I learned the very basic skills of handloading: the mechanics of sizing and priming, how to refer to data and select components, how to measure powder and the importance of safely working up a load, and how to seat a bullet.
Firing those first shots was exhilarating. I can't remember if I hit anything, but I do remember the immense feeling of satisfaction that returns every time I fire a handload. (Pete, if you're reading this, thanks for teaching me.)
As I came to learn, handloading is ultimately not undertaken to save a little money on ammunition. Nor is handloading the only way to shoot high-performance bullets or to have more accurate ammunition. Handloading quickly becomes a labor of love—a pastime taken up by shooters who enjoy everything from the satisfaction of doing it themselves to the breadth of ballistic understanding gained from "rolling your own."
Modern handloading is no longer limited by the bounds of ignorance. Instead, affordable equipment for measuring pressure, velocity, and even computing safe loads without so much as firing a shot has safely opened doors to experimenters who might otherwise have been limited to data published only by component manufacturers. New tools make it possible to measure consistency to the nth degree and then to correct for any inconsistency to make not only a perfect cartridge, but lots of perfect cartridges—one with every pull of the press handle.
