Originally Posted by SmittyoftheNorth
Originally Posted by Ken Howell
I consider QuickLOAD a vastly superior substitute for a collection of handloading manuals. Each manual reports results from one gun for each cartridge � a poor basis for assuming that the listed loads will produce similar results in your one other gun. QuickLOAD, on the other hand, uses equations that ballisticians have laboriously derived, over many years, from the results from millions of loads in thousands of guns and cartridges. So it has a definite edge over a report of the results from a very limited number of loads from only one gun and one cartridge.

As a predicting device, QuickLOAD is vastly superior to manuals, IMHO. It's as useful for factory cartridges as it is for wildcats.


Ken Howell:
Based on my somewhat limited experience using Quickload, and a measure of common sense, I am convinced of the following.

Quickload is a poor substitute for even a SINGLE loading manual.

Quickload predicts pressures. On the basis of �equations�, it can�t always predict correctly, what your pressure will be, as well as a Loading Manual does, BUT you will have a tendency to believe the predictions, especially after a few times when you find that your pressures/velocities are very similar to what Quickload predicted for you.

You will learn to trust them too much, and that�s where you can get into trouble.

Loading Manuals are based on actual testing, and are written to err on the safe side, and that�s a better way to go even for the most learned handloaders, IMO.

I consider it irresponsible to recommend that someone use Only, Quickload for a loading guide. They do so at their own risk.

Thanks
Smitty of the North


Smitty, I've got to disagree with your statements here. One ALWAYS assumes risk in this avocation and WHATEVER reference one uses to reload should be backed off at least 10% because of the difference in many factors, not the least of which could be the difference between rifle chambers. But even using a different brand of case or batch of powder than the reloading manuals are referencing could be enought to cause problems.

My almost 50 years of reloading experience and my programming background (I write my own ballistics software to check QL and LFAD) tell me the software is superior for predicting loads because, as Ken says, the manuals are based on data from one rifle. If you trust any reference for a starting load, you should find another hobby.

All one has to know about reloading is that you're pouring high explosives into a little brass tube and setting it off inches from your own face.


When a column of troops under Lt. Col. Francis Smith moved into the countryside to collect arms and munitions gathered by the patriot militia, hostilities erupted at Lexington and Concord on Apr. 19, 1775.