Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting a few rather interesting misconceptions

I went to a local range to play with my 44 mag revolver and 45 acp CZ pistol and while I was setting up the bench the guy next bench over ask me where I found ammo for my 45 acp pistol, I said they were hand loads.
at that point he acted a bit strange like he might think I was using ammo that might blow up, he obviously had a few rather interesting misconceptions and he ask me if it was safe to use hand loads, and did I know who loaded the ammo.
I assured him ID used the same hand load combo for decades and that it worked better than most factory ammo I,d ever tried.


6.4 grains of unique , or 8.5 grains of blue dot under a 225 cast bullet, and a Winchester, or cci primer has always worked reasonably well for me

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/63...eter-225-grain-truncated-cone-bevel-base

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/78...5-caliber-454-diameter-225-grain-cavalry

now we got into a discussion and he said he had always heard, cast bullets caused leading, I pulled my barrel from the pistol after shooting 2 50 cartridge boxes of ammo and ask him if he saw any lead in the rifling?, then I brought in the target and while it was hardly match accuracy it was obviously shooting tight groups because most of the holes were in the 3" orange dots.
I occasionally run into guys that think all hand loads are sub standard quality ammo , but if carefully assembled its just as accurate and dependable as factory in my experience.
and its a darn bit less expensive!

The wealth of mis-information, old wive's tales, superstitions, and misconceptions amongst the general shooting public (not to mention the public at large) is mind boggling, isn't it?

Not just the shooting "public".

I was at Sportsman's last night asking if they had any H4350 - they put the new powder out on Friday and hadn't fully loaded the shelves. The guy said they have some Accurate 4350 so I asked how it meters compared to H4350 or IMR4350 (I've never used the Accurate brand). He said he didn't know since he weighed all of his rifle charges. He meters pistol charges 'cause "they didn't have to be that accurate" but he wants his rifle loads to be accurate so he weighs each and every charge.

I don't contradict or argue with people behind the counter any more, I just smiled and walked away.


Got a pound of True Blue at least, although I see the price went up $2.

Now ya know reloads are too hard on guns.

jim, where is the sportsmans that has powder? i'm down to stems and seeds in the powder dept. and sure would like to find some.

I too weigh the charge for all of my rifle rounds and I through all the powder charges for my pistol rounds.

What's wrong with that??

The one in Meridian gets a resupply on Thursdays and puts the ammo and any powder, primers and bullets out on Friday. Most of it is gone by the time I look on the weekend. I got there late Friday afternoon this time and there were still about 3 individual pounds of IMR4895, several pound containers of the Accurate and Ramshot varieties and a smattering of primers but mostly for magnum pistol.

They limit each customer to one unit of each "SKU" - you can buy several kinds of powder but only one pound of any one type, one brick of any particular kind of primers etc. I'm still not seeing much of the popular or widely useful powders.

I get the same reactions too with some people who have it stuck in the head that hand loads are sub-standard, or dangerous. But these are the same ones who will buy that cheap corrosive surplus crap, thinking that is better then hand loads. Sure it all started with some goof half assing some ammo for his buddies some where down the road. You know that types, who just dump in the powder, and all the bullets are seated at random depths. So when they hear hand loads, this is what pops up in their mind.

I've a friend who simply will not shoot reloads. Sometimes he gets irritated when a rifle won't shoot and sells it cheap. I gotta quit bailing him out one of these days.



Sux 700, .250 Savage 85 BTs on top, 100 Partitions bottom, 100 yards

Tell me about that .250 Savage Dan.

You can quit when he stops selling them to you at a deep discount.

I seldom do much shooting these days but I just can't make myself buy factory ammo if I can reload. I never sell dies or brass.

I sell old dies and brass and bullets for long gone rifles when I discover the stuff gathering dust. Only once did I rue doing that. As a rule, once I'm done with a caliber I don't go back to revisit it.

The reason I quit selling them was because several times I would acquire a caliber in a trade and discover that I had sold the dies. The amount you can get for a set of used dies is so small that the income from the sale is gone in the blink of an eye.

I sometimes will sell a set such as the 6x47 Lapua dies I had since I no longer set up at gun shows and I am confident that I'll never have a 6x47 in the future.

Weighing charges isn't wrong per se. The notion that weighing is necessary to achieve sufficient accuracy for every rifle worthy purpose is the problem.

Yesterday I was shooting one of my 308's at 300 yards and the cartridges were all made with charges thrown from a Redding BR-30 measure. Three shot groups were 2.45", 1.45", 1.54", and 0.83". A four shot group went into 1.32". That's a 1.52" average, or 0.48 MOA.

If you scale all those by 5/3 and 5/4 as appropriate to extrapolate to five shot samples and recalculate it comes out to 0.77 MOA.

All of these were shot using a little 1.5-4x20 scope whose actual magnification tops out at 3.9x, putting a little knock on another popular notion.

Those are nice groups mathman, tell us more.

I picked up a little 1.5-4x20 Leupold Mark AR scope in the cheap from a Cabela's bargain cave, so I've put it on a couple of my accurate 308's to see how I like it, check out its adjustments and so on. Last session it was on a Remington 700 XCR LRT. It's a stainless barrel and action with a black coating. The barrel is Remington's 26" varmint contour with three wide, flat bottomed flutes carved out of it. With a two piece steel Burris Picatinny slotted base, low Leupold PRW steel rings and the scope aboard it weighs about 9 1/4 pounds.



The load was a close copy of what you'd find up and down the line when the M1A ruled the roost. Very reliable. If a 308 won't shoot it pretty well, then there's probably a sick rifle or scope involved. I used Lapua brass, WLR primers, thrown charges of 41.5 grains of IMR 4895, and 168 grain Nosler match bullets assembled to the standard 2.8" overall length.

I shot for zero at 100 yards, zeroed out the turret dials, cranked in 1.4 mils of vertical and commenced shooting at 300 yards.

The trick to shooting small groups with a small scope is to use a target that fits the reticle/magnification/distance combination. Sure, it is easier to shoot small groups at 300 yards aiming at a 1" dot with a 16x or higher scope with a fine reticle, parallax adjustment and such, but pure group shooting wasn't my purpose.

Douglas XX barrel, 22", 10" twist, just over 7# w/scope. Leupold M8-4X. ~$500.00 incl. scope.

3,000 words:

I like that for sure.

Thanks, I'm fond of it myself. Going to fiddle with some cast loads down the road and see what it will do with that. Project done, it's turned into a profoundly boring rifle to date. It only shoots small groups, pretty much regardless of load. Boooooring...but I'll keep it.

That cartridge is a tack driver for sure.

There, fixed it for you.