Reasons To Chronograph Your Loads

[Peter M. Eick]

I use my chrono as a proxy for pressure. With handguns, the pressures are harder to discern so I would rather use velocity as a proxy to indicate if I am going into territory I had not planned on. Is it correct? No. Is it better than just guessing? Yes.

 

[Big Cholla]

As you can see by the above testimonials, it is only possible to get all sorts of good indicators of results, component changes, barrel changes, and a myriad of other answers that would have gone to the wind with a chronograph. I handloaded for 30 years before buying my first. I thought that I really knew most of what I needed to know in handloading, but found out that there was much more to learn by using the chronograph tool. I was talking to Dr. Oehler once at a benchrest match and said to him, "I think there is a BS college degree in a chronograph." He laughed (he is a great guy) and said, "No, there is a PHD in every chronograph." I thought to myself, "Well Duh, hence the Dr. before his name."

I became quite the handloading experimenter with the use of my Oehler chronograph and survived with no blowups. I quit that several years ago as I am not near near as adventurist as I once was. I won't define any of my experiments as it suffices to say that nothing I came up with was any 'better' than the published reloading books. Although, I did hit on using a powder that has never been published as suitable for my 6.8 SPC that is as accurate as my rifle and I can be. As always when starting with a new sophisticated tool.....read, read and read some more.

And IMHO, if obtaining average velocities and Standard Deviations is the only data you need, buy cheap. IF you want to go further into the physics of Exterior Ballistics, buy the best and hang the expense. ....JMHO....

 

[gen3guy]

I had a pet load in .45 Colt that I used for years, assuming it was coming in close to factory velocities. That would be about 825 fps for a 250 gr. LFP. When I finally got a chronograph and tested it, it averaged 660 fps. Information is valuable.

 

[jtcarm]

Depends a lot on caliber. Over bore magnums often group better closer to max Ime. Part of this is 100% load density with slower powders. They want that for better combustion. Could you get better accuracy backing your 7mag down to 7-08 vel, faster powder, maybe, but then why not just get the 7-08 & run that? So it just depends.

Oh I agree completely. A high-intensity rifle round will nearly always perform best at 100% (or close to it) load density.

On the other hand, you have rounds that were either designed for black powder, or derived from them, as is the case with nearly ever revolver round. The .38 special is one. Designed to be stuffed full of black powder, when loaded to SAAMI specs smokeless will hit max pressure before anything close to 100% density is achieved. Yet a mild wadcutter load is capable of as good or better accuracy (within 50 yards or so) as one stuffed with a slow burning powder and loaded to .357 mag pressures.