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Handloading Special: Handloading is about FUN!
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Powder manufacturers have kept pace with other component developments by providing cleaner burning propellants that
allow handloaders to build loads with higher levels of
performance at lower pressures.
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Target shooters haven’t been neglected either. Though moly-coating made a brief, albeit significant, impact on target shooting in the late 1990s, it’s the lasting bullet improvements such as J4 jackets and VLD profiles that finds more bullet holes in the X-ring today than in the 10-ring.
And as bullet designs have improved, manufacturing has kept pace by developing production equipment that lets Sierra put straighter boattails on MatchKing bullets and Hornady to put together such complicated beauties as A-Max bullets with a precision and tightness to tolerance not possible with yesterday’s manufacturing equipment.
If you consider shot size, then today’s shotgunners have about as many projectile choices as rifle or pistol handloaders do, and they sure have a heck of a lot more choices than just chilled or magnum lead or nickel or copper-plated shot. Many of the nontoxic shots are available to handload, and it’s the nontox loads that have opened up entirely new handloading opportunities and even drives the shotshell market in its current direction.
High-velocity factory loads are a result of what modern shotshell handloaders developed to make steel shot more lethal. High-velocity steel was a handloading proposition only when I first got into waterfowling. While my buddies and I were hammering green heads with high-velocity 1-ounce 12-gauge loads, ammunition manufacturers were responding to steel’s inherent deficiencies by belching out more slow pellets in “magnum” loads. Today, the two have melded together into some great factory 1 1/8-ounce high-velocity steel shotshells.
Hevi-Shot handloads were turning turkey toms into jelly heads for quite a while before Remington brought out the factory fodder, and classic shotguns still grace the duck marshes today thanks to what’s been done with bismuth. If the thought of elegant side-by-side shotguns and waxed cotton pulls at your heartstrings, then there’s a whole world of bismuth handloading waiting for you.
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Modern electronic powder dispensers make throwing an accurate powder charge easier than ever before.
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In the area of shot wads, there are so many designs today that with handloads you can make shotshells that perform perfectly on everything from “in-your-face” quail flushes to long passers on Canada geese. One of my favorite 20-gauge dove loads is a handloading-only proposition.
It combines 5/8 ounce of No. 7 steel shot in a multislit wad at high velocity to literally sweep the birds out of the sky. There are about 100 more pellets in an ounce of No. 7 steel than in an ounce of No. 7 lead, which greatly increases your chances of bringing down a bird. If you’re a gamesman and really want to bruise a few of your buddies’ egos at the range, load up some high-velocity steel target loads and take them to the range. They will swear you’ve found a new way to cheat.
Such high-performance loads—rifle, pistol, and shotgun—wouldn’t be possible today without the powder manufacturers keeping us stocked with so many different choices and levels of performance. There are so many powders today, in fact, that it’s hard to try them all, though Hodgdon is now putting out its Xperimental Packs, making it easier to attempt to try them all.
No longer are handloaders saddled with a small assortment of canister powders or repackaged who-knows-what surplus stuff that may differ tremendously from lot to lot. Instead, there are bunches of task-specific canister powders, with suggestive names like Hodgdon’s Clays, that also enjoy a broad range of overlap into other types of loads beyond the obvious.
Just like powders such as Bullseye, Red Dot, or Green Dot that have been steadfast offerings, new powders such as Longshot, Lil’Gun, and American Select are just as likely to be found on the loading bench of a handgunner as a shotgunner.
Today, new powders have also broadened the spectrum of relative quickness and filled many of the gaps that existed allowing handloaders to assemble loads offering a higher level of performance at lower pressure that burn cleaner and cooler. As far as I’m concerned, Bullseye remains king of the fast powders, but I also see new ones like Ramshot’s Zip giving it a run for its money. At the other end, super-slow burners like Hodgdon’s Retumbo make possible safe, high-performance loads in such powerhouses as the Remington Ultra Mags and 7mm STW that shooters would have previously pooh-poohed as being overbore.
With so many new and interesting components, it’s easy to sit back and be satisfied with the status quo, but we’re not. We want every bit of precision, consistency, and convenience reloading tool manufacturers can muster. Handloading tools have reached a level of precision that’s available to the average handloader that was unheard of back when the best advice for getting maximum rifle accuracy was to neck-size only.
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Digital powder scales make weighing charges and sorting component bullets simple and efficient.
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If that’s as far as you want to go down the accuracy path, then today you still have to choose between conventional neck-sizing, bushing-type neck-sizing, or collet-type neck-sizing dies. Redding even has interchangeable bushings for its dies in 0.001-inch increments so you can adjust neck tension to influence accuracy.
Another rifle accuracy tip from the past that modern tools have made easier is the advice to “seat the bullet so it just touches the rifling.” Getting to that point used to be a time-consuming process of making up a dummy cartridge and trying it, then adjusting your seating die until you got it right. Today, simply plug Stoney Point’s Chamber-All Overall Length Gauge into your chamber, and you get the actual measurement of your rifle’s freebore. Just set your die to that measurement and start loading.
You can then quickly and accurately check headspace and bulletseating depth using something as simple as an RCBS Precision Mic or as sophisticated as Redding’s Instant Indicator Comparator. We also know more today about how important concentricity is to accuracy and can check it by simply spinning the case or cartridge in an RCBS Casemaster Gauging Tool.
And if you’re not consumed with making every single aspect of a cartridge perfect, modern handloading tools still let you turn out more accurate handloads without the tediousness it once required. Something as simple as throwing an accurate powder charge is greatly simplified with electronic dispensers like Lyman’s 1200 Digital Powder System. Enter a charge weight, push a button, and let the machine run the correct amount of powder out. If you still like the speed and ease of a conventional powder measure, charges are more quickly and easily checked on a digital powder scale than on a balance beam scale. And talk about a quick and easy way to sort bullets based on weight—once you try it with a digital scale, you’ll never use anything else.
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Loading presses are made more versatile by the use of quick-change bushings and other accessories.
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I don’t know that I’d say presses have gotten any easier to use. Some of the progressive ones are darn right complicated to set up the first time, but there’s still the elegant simplicity of ones like Lee’s Classic Cast Press. Even presses that simple are made more versatile using new accessories such as Hornady’s quick-change Lock-N-Load bushing conversion kit. Progressive presses are much more available and more within the financial means of the average handloader. They really can be set up to make a perfect cartridge with each pull of the handle.
You may not actually save money over inexpensive surplus or imported ammunition by cranking out 9mm rounds on a Dillon progressive press, but you can sure crank out and shoot enough of them to convince your spouse that you are.
Whether or not you take up handloading, if you can’t find something about it that seems fun or interesting—be it the ballistic knowledge, the precision of the most consistent loads, or the satisfaction that comes from making great loads on your own—then, please, try golf.
My experience is that every shooter out there has some fascination with handloading. Today, the ease with which someone new can start assembling safe, accurate loads in less time than ever before should bring more people into the hobby, and, yes, those new handloaders are finding, as I did, that their new hobby is about fun.
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