I use what the manual says to use.
Yeah but which manual? ....
Always the newest manual most relevant to the desired results and components. I'm waiting on the Sierra 6 as I type this.
When I started handloading/reloading with books like Townsend Whelen's
Why Not Load Your Own I was confused because the era of domed primers had just passed. CCI was about all I could buy. I read about matching primers to cases but didn't know this was with reference to domed primers where the oem was a rounded primer. It wasn't until I bought a Hollywood Universal Turret with primer punches for flat and domed primers that I began to learn the meaning of what I had read.
FREX there are a number of older Speer manuals with data to be avoided. For components including Speer bullets that fall under the same ownership the current Speer manual is a good starting place. Cross referenced just in case with say Hodgdon for powder charge mostly as a sanity check and for a possible typo.
There is a standing joke about the reloader who believes that published data is reduced, the so called
lawyer loads, and so believes that going up little bit from current published maximums is the
real load. There are a number of published loads from reputable sources of long ago that we now know are over pressure, even way over pressure. I should have saved them as curiosities but I loaded Elmer Keith suggested loads for balloon head cases in balloon head cases.
The real problem with balloon-head cases is that the Elmer Keith .44 special loads that eventually led to the .44 magnum were loads for balloon-head cases � and those loads are still in print. Elmer's classic .44 special load � 18.5 grains of 2400 with a 250-grain cast bullet � is much too hot for the later solid-head .44 special cases.
Ken Howell Campfire #8934226
Jeff Cooper's suggested load to give service revolver exterior ballistics in .38 snub nose revolvers is now acknowledged to be way over .38 Special pressure. I didn't know the actual pressure but my own snub nose shot loose promptly.
And just as I seldom see wind flags used for load testing I seldom see the SAAMI twist when folks are chronographing.
Moral of story, unless you actually measure pressure in your gun, with your components, under your conditions, then you don't know pressure. Even it you think you measure it, you're still not sure.
Ken Oehler
Mostly I do follow directions in a cookbook if I want the cookbook results - which often include season to taste - and I also have three oven thermometers for zones in the oven.
