Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Max load development

I posted a comment about fire forming in the garage. I thought of my now deceased good buddy who had a 1950’s era technique for finding a max load. Increase powder until a primer blows or falls out then decrease by 1/2 grain.

He was one of the guys who added sand to cream of wheat to more fully form cases.

He got a chronograph and developed a new technique. He loved numbers and decided a 22” barreled 270W should move a 130 partition along at a minimum of 3200 so he added powder until he got that velocity. Then he shot 3 or 4 rounds and if the primers didn’t fall out he was good to go.

Really great guy who was loads of fun. But one day he asked my why I always stood behind him slightly to his left, he was right handed. I explained that I wanted his thick skull between me and his rifle’s receiver. He said I was a pussy.

You're braver than I am.

Have a suspicion about who he was, but have personally known a couple of Idaho guys who preferred that technique.

Apparently Bob Hagel also used it, and one of the magazine editors who ran his articles told me Bob's load sometimes expanded chambers in "modern" rifles to the point where the fired cases couldn't be extracted.

All the real men are dead and gone! LOL

Are they the ones that own the Remingtons with the bolt handles that "fall" off?

I work up until there is a change anywhere around the extractor groove diameter as measured with dial calipers. Then I back off 4% powder charge for temp stable powders, 6% for regular powders for my hunting load.
Vernon Speer suggested 6% in 1956, but he did not have temp compensated powders.
I have done this with 223, 243, 250 savage, 257 Roberts, 25-06, 260, 6.5-06, 280AI, 7mmRM, 308, 30-06, 300WM, 8x57mm, 338WM, and others.

This does not work in 6mmBR as the primer pocket is not the weak link. The primer pocket is too strong. The primer is the weak link. The best I can do is CCI 450 small magnum rifle primers. To get them to go higher, some guys have GreTan bush the firing pin, and some more performance can be had.

The good case heads:
A) 6mmBR and 30-30
B) 223
C) Belted magnum
D) Mauser case head large Boxer primer pocket.

The bad case heads:
X) 30 carbine
Y) 10 mm
Z ) 25acp

There was a guy on AR, A**CLOWN, 15 years ago that could calculate Von Mises stresses in a case head.
His threshold of case head yield pressure predictions matched my emperical threshold data fed into Quickload pressure predictions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Mises_yield_criterion

Clark,

Vernon Speer also didn't have any pressure data. He did buy a copper/lead crusher outfit, but apparently nobody at Speer could figure out how to use it and get consistent results (possibly because they used it in widely varying temperatures, not unknown in Lewiston, whether in winter or summer). So he used case-head expansion.

I have tested CHE in a piezo lab, and it did not work very consistently.

I no longer do that.

After seeing “Shrapnel’s” shrapnel, I STOPPED loading till problems exhibited themselves.

I now compare several respected sources for normal
max velocity THEN I try to achieve that neighborhood.

eg. in my T3X 7 RM with 160/162 using RL 26 I’m getting 2950 FPS instead of 3000 FPS.
GOOD ENUFF !!!

Jerry

I do pretty much the same, Mule Deer's articles on using the chronograph to load probably had a bigger impact on how it do it than anything.

Interesting way to do it.

I used to work with/for a guy that loaded 25-06 ammo by pouring an equal amount of IMR4350 and IMR4831 into a bowl and scooping into the cases up to the neck then seating a bullet. His comment was that the 700 actions were 'too strong to fail with his mixture'. I'd do like RinB and stand behind and to his left when he shot. Flame would shoot out of the muzzle a good 6-8' when he shot.
He gave me some shells once, I took them home and used the powder for fertilizer. The bullets had been pushed out a bit so that maybe a 10th of an inch was all that was holding them in. Some could be pulled with your fingers.

The advent of inexpensive chronographs has thankfully precluded the old "load em up til the primers fall out" method. Most of us still have 2 eyes and all of our original digits!

I get a bowl of powder and just scoop the case in it until it’s level with the case mouth. Then I seat a bullet.

Then I give it to my brother and say load development is done.




P

Would a max load like that kill an animal any deader than a safe one?

Of course it will!

Or at least it did before "personal" chronographs....

A former high volume poster here used a similar method. I watched him shoot at a coyote with his 257 Wby, then clamp it between his legs so he could use both hands to pry the bolt open. He beat the ball of his hand black and blue driving the bolt back once he got it turned. Once the seized case was extracted he proudly exclaimed, "I guess I need to back that load off a quarter grain."

Knocks them off their feet and tosses them across the room. Just like in the movies.

I started reloading ~1999, and within a year had worked up hundreds of loads to the point brass destruction or gun destruction in rifles and handguns. I had earlier made my money by designing power supplies and overloading them to destruction in an effort to find the weak spots in my design. My reloading kit came with "Speer 12" 1994, which I soon realized listed as max loads, loads that had wildly different safety margins. Within 2 years I had over 60 load books, mostly old ones from Ebay. The loads I worked up to brass failure in strong rifles and backed off a calculated safety margin had a kinship with the Sierra load books. My loads were not exactly their loads, but they were proportional. Sierra must at least be doing something based on reality to get consistent safety margins.

My belief in "Reloader Pressure Sign" measurements declined about the time I began Piezo pressure testing.

Most telling was after watching some rifles get "proofed" by the firing of two "proof" loads. The "Reloader" in me looked at the brass and thought the load was "approaching max".

The actual Piezo measurement on those "proof" cartridges was 80,000 psi.

I went home and pulled some of my handloads.

If you get more velocity, you get more pressure. TANSTAAFL applies

There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!

Back in the early 50's, when the Win model 88 was new, as was the 308, the NRA did some their routine review, but with an in depth comparison of the 308 to the 300 Savage. They then decided to fire 300 Savage rounds in the Win 88.
Three interesting results.
1. the Savage ammo produced better accuracy than the 308 the rifle was chambered for,
2. the Savages fed flawlessly, and
3. no problems were encountered due to headspace differential.
Elmer Keith got involved and characterized the 88 as "super accurate." He also hoped Winchester would offer a bigger version, at least 33 cal, no surprise there.
They did end the article stating that you should not try this at home.
The article can be found in the June 1955 Am Rifleman.