Hodgdon Data

[AveragEd]

Quick recovery Ed. The more you use that repaired knee the faster you will get there. Having three surgeries on one knee, i am familiar & empathize.

Well Fred, I received some bad news today. When leaving physical therapy earlier, the wind blew our car door against my knee. It hurt like the devil for a minute or so and started bleeding heavily. I went to our orthopedic surgeon's offices and was told that my quadricep is torn again. The blood only squirts out when I flex my quad and the doctor I saw today says that is normal under the circumstances. I see my surgeon tomorrow afternoon and the doctor I saw today is sure the same procedure I had six weeks ago needs to be redone.

The weird thing is I had a lot more pain the first time and couldn't move the knee at all. Now I just can't raise my foot. I know something's wrong in there but I'm hoping it isn't the same thing all over again. If so, I'm going to request a medically-induced coma as I can't take another eight weeks of inactivity.

Ed

 

[Wise_A]

Loading for a handgun is different from loading for a rifle.

At rifle pressures, there are all sorts of pressure signs that you can use if you've got the experience to do so. But very few handgun cartridges operate that high, and the powders used start registering complaints when forced to work at those pressures.

By the time you start seeing classic pressure signs in handgun cartridges, you're likely well overpressure. The corollary to that is that some of those pressure signs can be caused by the gun itself (say, excessive headspace), so you shouldn't really flip a lid if you see pressure signs with a load you know is inside of book values.

---

Now, as to why book loads for handguns don't go up to the SAAMI max-pressure specs. One is that thing that noylj said--better testing.

The other thing is that thing I said before: powders get unhappy. Sometimes for reasons known only to themselves. So when you see a 35k PSI load for a 40k PSI cartridge, don't assume you have another 5k PSI to play with.

S'pose 5.0 grains of Powder X gets you 30k PSI (average, of course) and 800 fps, and 5.5 gets you 35k PSI and 850 fps. Great, what does 6.0 grains do? Maybe the powder behaves and you get 40k PSI and 900 fps. Or maybe you get 875 fps and the pressure goes all wonky.

Point is, you just don't know.

 

[hdwhit]

gman51 wrote:

I am totally new to this reloading and I am not off to a good start.

I will add my voice to those who have essentially said, STOP, and then get restarted in a better way.

First, get a published reloading manual. Lyman, Hornady, Lee, and others all make good manuals. Once you get it, sit down and read the first part of the manual that tells you how to reload safely.

Second, reread the part of the manual you just read in step One.

Third, set up your reloading bench. Remove obstructions. Make it clean and tidy. Arrange it so that you can conduct the sequence of operations you read about in the manual easily.

Fourth, write down the reloading procedures you are going to follow. I keep mine on computer and update them as I learn things. I also print a set of procedures out every time I load to use as a check-sheet. If I don't check off a step, I don't go on to the next.

Fifth, select a load that fits the components you have and start from the Starting Load recommended by your manual. Load a dozen or so rounds and then test them at the range to see how they do.

Sixth, if they work right, then start increasing the charge gradually.

Seventh, free advice is worth what you pay for it, so treat it all with caution and always compare it to known published sources.

 

[hdwhit]

I hate to go above published data, but I have a hard time believing the pressures would dramatically spike just going a few tenths over.

They could. The authors of the manual stopped where they did for a reason.

Consider, also, that the authors may have stopped where they did because they had reached a point of diminishing returns. An extra 1/10 grain might, for example, have only gotten an additional 10 fps (on average) at a cost of an additional 500 psi and further increases might have delivered even less improvement. I'm not saying for sure that's what's going on, but it is certainly a possibility that must be considered until someone calls up the author of the data and gets them to spill the beans on how the data was compiled.