I handloaded my first cartridge in 1971. The RCBS JR2 press and dies, Ohaus balance scale, and Lyman 45th edition loadbook came from the only gunshop in the area that sold handloading tools and supplies...IMR4350, Hercules Bullseye and Alcan primers for the 45ACP and 25-06 Rem.

I produced thousands of safe, accurate reloads for those two weapons before I ever met anyone else that did the same...seven years later. He only loaded for his 264 Win Mag and only had one load for it whether it was 87 grain bullets or 120 grain bullets. It seems he wrote the powder charge for the 87 grain load on a piece of tablet paper and referred to it when he needed to load some empties. He didn't double check in his Lyman handbook! As it turned out, he needed to rebarrel his gun a few years later due to the HOT loads he fed it. I never learned one thing from him.

I did learn lots from the subsequent books I bought from Hornady, Speer, Hodgdon and Sierra.

I see so many new comers asking the most basic questions on AR thesedays, such as 'why are my bullets loose' or 'do I need to clean every speck of residue from the primer pockets?' And that's OK. I'm sure there will always be someone here willing to offer their experience.

But my question is: If you began your handloading hobby before Al Gore invented the internet, how did you manage to NOT kill yourself? Who answered your questions? Wasn't the handloading manual you bought to get recipes written well enough to teach you how to accomplish the cartridge reloading task???

My father taught me, starting when I was very small. AR taught me to get one rifle and good load, and learn to shoot it well. I stumbled over a lot of different things between my first lessons and finding AR.


Okie John

A colleague visiting from the US, gave me an initial introduction to the Hornady reloading kit I had bought on a trip to the US the year before. We managed to inadvertently set off a primer (military cases no primer crimp removed) in the process, so we were probably not quite ready to reload at that point... I then read up, and started on my own. I probably made just about every mistake in the book (short of excessive charges), but somehow managed to stay alive during the experience...

This was how I loaded for quite a few years, until I decided to take the whole process a step further a few years back. I was cheesed off, that a colleague of mine could do better loads than I could - until then, my primary goals had always been: cheap, fast, effective on game, and must go bang when I drop the firing pin. So I had decided to figure out how to become better at reloading. In the process, I accidently stumbled over AR, which was just about the first Internet forum I joined. I learned a lot in those early days, and I still do.

It is fine for newbie questions to pop up here, nobody was born with experience, so this is as good a place to ask questions as any. I sure wish I had had access to something like AR in all those years.

- mike

Dave, I've been reloading since June or July of 2005. For the most part I figure my own problems out for myself. I use AR when I've tried everything I can think of AND when I think my own or an innocent bystander's safety is at risk. No where in my reloading manual does it tell me why some of my .243 cases are hard to chamber and why some are silky smooth. I measured every diameter, angle and length I could think of everything came out the same. Worried about a lack of clearance somewhere in my rifle and a possible overpressure issue, my next logical step was to come here. AR is quick, easy and 95% accurate. Why not come here and ask a question or two BEFORE blowing myself up or burning up a barrel?

quote:

Why not come here and ask a question or two

No reason not to.
But if there were no AR or world wide web, what resources at your disposal would solve the problem? Such as: would you resort to writing a letter via snail mail to the editor of your favorite gun magazine, or cartridge brass manufacturer, or to the NRA? Go to the local library?

It got to the point when I wanted to shoot more then I could afford factory ammo, so an alternitive was reloading. Fumbled my way through about 10 years, keeping loads on the light side, reading everything I could find, and just being super carefull. Then I met a fellow on a hunt, now a best buddy, who had been relaoding for 45 years when I met him, and in about 6 months of reloading with him, I learned more then I had in the previous 10 years. I was lucky, now every once in awhile(actually quite rarely), I teach him a new trick.

BigBullet

Read read read

Most of the info here is avalable in one form or another, it's just easier to find now. Most every question I read here can be answered by either reading a good manual (they DO pre-date the internet you know) or talking to a decent local gunsmith.

In the pre-internet days we might not have had as many people to talk to, but the local gunshop guys were usually a lot more helpful and knowledgable too. Now that storeroom of knowledge in the counter guy's brain is not nearly as valuable...cause we can get it from the internet!

Just MHO...

books; especially dean grennel's "ABC" of reloading, 5 editions, and handloaders digest all of them, "handloaders magazine, and keith, and skelton and nonte and naramore and all the rest, books and magazines are still my primary source and internet secondary.

Just fine.

funny how logic worked just as well then as now

You mean there was a time before the internet? How scary.

Hello the cap:
I have loaded for ore years than I want to think of.
I enjoyed it and from time to time I aould become bored and quit for a while, close to twenty years once.
AR has made it fun again. Around herre ther are a number of folks who reload, but they are real cliquish and are hard to get to know.
I would love to have a local re-loading club, but AR is as close as I am likely to come.
Judge Sharpe
( or Judge Dull from the way this cold has me feeling.)

quote:

Originally posted by CDH:
Read read read

Most of the info here is avalable in one form or another, it's just easier to find now. Most every question I read here can be answered by either reading a good manual (they DO pre-date the internet you know) or talking to a decent local gunsmith.

In the pre-internet days we might not have had as many people to talk to, but the local gunshop guys were usually a lot more helpful and knowledgable too. Now that storeroom of knowledge in the counter guy's brain is not nearly as valuable...cause we can get it from the internet!

Just MHO...

Amen to that! It's not rocket science, just a bit of knowledge & common sense.

I had a lot more extra cash before I started visiting the classifieds at AR!

Why, by the seat of my pants, plus a few good manuals, beginning with the Lyman-Ideal Handbook No. 37 and Phil Sharpe's COMPLETE GUIDE TO HANDLOADING, beginning in 1954!

Lots & lots of books, including the first two the same as El D, in the post just above. Also used to call up and talk to guys on the phone....Ackley, Jobson, Knox, Marquart, Sell, Fisher, Kennedy, Sukalle, Burton, Mills, etc., etc. Went to visit a lot of them, too.

Mostly,though, just followed the primary directions in the books in regard to handloading, which ALL said..."start low and work your way up". I did, and that advice never failed me.

Personal experience with hundreds of different rifles, shotguns, & pistols over the years, and copious note-taking seemed to "take" the best...at least I didn't forget it ALL. [grin]

i started reloading right after the invention of smokeless powders, not quite. i do remember when we didn't have near the selection of powders and bullets we do today. seems like every week we get a new powder or bullet. but i still load the old stuff. the 4350's and 4831's have served me well. remember bulk 4831 at the local hardware store and getting a pound in a paper sack? as for bullets partitions and bt's and any sierra works for me.

in 1955 i got a heck of a deal on a win 70 in 220 swift. couldn't afford to shoot the darned thing cause i was a starving student. so i started reading gun rags and learned how to reload.

i listened to guys like askins, grennel, hagel, page, ackley, sharpe, waters etc. they got me through. i still have both eyes and all my digits so they did a good job, cause i didn't know jack squat about what i was doing.

however i did posssess enough mechanical and engineering skills to understand the process. i paid attention and listened.


every once in awhile though during a range session you'd have to take off your shoe to beat open the bolt on your rifle. this was old fashioned pressure testing.

we don't know how lucky we are today to have chronos and load manuals, and plenty of professional advice. and as much as i hate to admit it........the internet.

like it or not as far as i'm concerned this is the golden age of reloading....and i like it.

p.s. forgive me for forgeting any of the writers, i was sitting here and thought of three more, anyway you get the idea.

Before the internet and accurate reloading, there were a whole bunch of us with limited communications to other reloaders, shooters, and balistics enthusiests.

Sights like accurate reloading let us come out of the proverbial closets and freely benefit from the knowledge and experience of others with like interests.

The fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties and yes even most of the ninties were the dark ages of reloading for me. Seldom did I find anyone for serious discussion.

The wealth of information and the freedom to discuss firearms related stuff on accuratereloading with my fellow advocates has been a real blessing to me. It sure has disspelled a lot of the scary black magic that used to be passed around.

I could carry on for quite a while but I'll stop by telling you that I truely appriciate the participation in this forum with my new found brother-sisterhood. I may not agree with all of you all the time but it is a priviedge to associate here with you . OH. Thank you Saeed. roger

I started reloading in 1960 using a very rudimentary Lee loading "system" which was a couple of dies, decapping rod, priming rod and a hammer and a dipper for a limited number of powders.
I reloaded a 30-06 -pre-64,obviously, Win.
Since I was only 15 at the time, I had to have my folks buy the powder and bullets using my nmoney from a part time job.
Used that system through college and finally graduated to a RCBS RockChucker that I still use today, albeit, for about 12 more calibers than in 1960.
The internet and sites like AR have helped immensely in sharing information and others triumphs and mistakes.
Really like the body of knowledge that is out there and the help that fellow shooters are willing to lend.

Basic reloading is quite simple. A lot of problems mentioned on AR relates to fancy loads using fancy equipment. Lee collet neck sizers, FLSizers, too many component choises (for beginers)
In the good old days I had a neck size and seat die only, and some dubious advice from anyone hanging around the gunshop.

I bought a Rockchucker kit and RCBS video on how to reload.

But with the internet and two years of reloading, I was able to teach new tricks to guys with 40 years of experience.

This is the information age, and it takes lots of information to get small groups.

I first started "rolling my own" ammunition somewhere in the early 1960's. Probably around 1962 or 1963. I was shooting a .357 Magnum, a .44 Magnum and a Super .38. Factory ammo was fun and plentiful, but it wasn't cheap.

A friend of mine, named Sanderford, had an old Pacific press and dies for the .357 and the .44. He showed me how to make my own cartridges for about 1/3rd the cost of factory ammo. I became hooked immediately!

At that time we were casting bullets out of old wheel weights, which we got for free from the local tire store, and any other source we could locate. We weren't worried about content or hardness. All we knew was that we were getting bullets for free.

We saved our own brass, and picked-up whatever we found on the ground, or could scrounge from other shooters. At that time there was plenty of brass to be found in the local dump and the local sand pit.

All we had to buy was the powder and the primers. (My memory kind of fades at this time, but I believe that powder was going for around $3 a pound, and primers were around 50 cents per 100.)

We were using either Unique or Bullseye. Whichever it was that only required around 3 grains of powder. Totally cost for 100 cartridges was around $1.00! Hell, .22 rimfires cost about the same!

There was a drawback or two ... accuracy past 25 yards was absolutely miserable! And getting all that damn lead out of the barrel after a day of shooting would take forever!

I decided that there had to be a better way, and that's when Murph introduced me to his swaged bullets. No more messing around with the melting pot, or the other stuff. And no more of those gawd-awful fumes!

And the bullets were for free. Murph was thinking about going into the bullet manufacturing business, and he was going to specialize in lead pistol bullets. He needed someone to do 'field testing' and submit a report.

Murph wasn't very happy about my report! I had used around 2,000 or 3,000 of his bullets, and I hated them! The only advantages they had for me was that they were still free, and he was doing the work. The problem was that Murph was making these bullets out of 100% pure lead wire. And after every 10 or 15 rounds the barrel of both my revolvers were smooth-bore! I've never seen so much lead in my life!

About this time an outfit called Speer came on the market with half-jacketed pistol bullets. Up until then all you could get for reloading was all lead bullets ... and there was no way I was going to buy all lead bullets!

I tried some of Speer's bullets, even though they cost me money, and was amazed that I could do a full day's shooting, and not one molecule of lead was left in the barrel. The price of reloading just went up!

The Speer bullets had one design. They looked like a Keith bullet, but where the crimping groove was supposed to be, a copper cup spread itself back and wrapped totally around the base of the bullet. They came in flat-point and hollow-point designs. The hollow-point was nothing more than the flat-point which had a small portion of the nose drilled-out. Accuracy? Who cared! Besides, a handgun in those days wasn't expected to hit anything more than 20 feet away.

Sanderford moved, and took his press with him ... very inconsiderate of him. So I had to buy my own. The local discount store had an R.C.B.S. 'reloading kit' on sale. You got the press, a set of dies and a shell holder in the caliber of your choice, a scale and a powder measure all in one box, and the price was well within my means. (Again my memory fails me, but I think it was around $40.)

I took dies for the .357, and purchased dies for the .44 and the Super .38. This was quite an investment in those days, but a lot of my friends were really impressed. Yes, I started reloading the Super .38. With FMJ Speer bullets. I was a confirmed Speer user.

The jacketed bullets relieved me of casting my own, they relieved me of cleaning the guns. I'd go out shooting, come home, wipe the outside of the gun off, and put it away until I was ready to use it again. No lead, no muss, no fuss. Until one day I saw green stuff growing out of my barrel! I got out my flashlight and looked down the bore, and it was about the same color as the Statue of Liberty!! What the hell was this? I asked the owner of the local gun shop, and he told me it was copper fouling. It took me quite some time to remove all that copper fouling from my guns, and I started cleaning them after every shooting session.

That was my introduction to reloading. I bought whatever bullets were the cheapest, whatever powder was the cheapest, and whatever primers were the cheapest. After all, wasn't reloading supposed to allow the shooter to make cheaper ammunition?

In the very late 1960's or early 1970's I started reloading my rifle ammunition. I used the same formula for reloading them as I did for my handguns. Cheaper is better. Until I purchased my first 'Varmint Gun'.

The idea was to get that little .22 caliber bullet out of the barrel as fast as possible, causing more devastation on the receiving end. I had to get at least 4,400 fps out of that .220 Swift, or I wasn't happy! (This is the same time period when I decided that it would be great to neck down a .50 cal. BMG case to .22 caliber and get 5,000 fps.) And I figured that whatever was good enough for the Swift, would be good enough for all my guns. So I opened the reloading manuals, picked the fasted load for each caliber that I owned, added around 10% to it, and thought that I had the fastest guns in the west ... and I probably did. But I would totally miss my target around 40% of the time!

I thought it was really neat to fire five rounds, and then have the barrel so hot that you couldn't lay a hand on it. This was the true indication of a really "hot load"! Then I found out about barrel erosion, throat erosion, barrel wear, and how much it cost to replace the barrel on a rifle. It was about the same time that I found out that even a Colt Government model could only take so much of a beating before yelling for help!

It was during my "fast bullet" days that I moved from California to Pennsylvania. Being the hotshot that I was, my first stop when I got relocated was to the local gun shop. I was going to tell these easterners how us westerners shoot! That's when I met Dave Waters. He was the owner of Water's Sporting Goods. He sat patiently and listened to my bragging and exaggerating. Then he asked me one question ...



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Steve, does that deer or groundhog really know how fast that bullet was traveling?
When it .... missed them?"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hummm ... Dave had a point. After all, wasn't the whole idea of shooting to place a bullet on your target, be that target a piece of paper or something with fur.

This was the beginning of my "accuracy years".

I became obsessed with the idea of placing 100 bullets, at 100 yards, in the same hole. I tried every possible combination of bullet, primer, powder and case until I obtained my goal. Needless to say, I never did. But it made Dave happy, since I bought just about his entire stock of reloading supplies, and had him on the phone to his jobber constantly trying to locate whatever the latest gun magazines said was the newest and best. Ahhh ... those were the days!

Facing reality, and listening to Dave's advice, it became apparent that I would never find my Holy Grail. BUT ... I did learn something!

CCI primers worked best in all my handguns. Remington primers worked best in all my rifles. Winchester brass lived longer in my handguns. Remington brass was best for all my rifles. And there was nothing on the market better than the Sierra Hollow Point Boat Tail bullet in any rifle that I owned. And for handgun bullets? Hell, anything would shoot well if I had the proper load! So I gave up on the old Speer bullets, and started using Nosler and Sierra. In everything except my .45 ACP, which just loved the Hornady bullets.

My velocities came down ... my accuracy went up. I was now placing everything I own into a 2-inch group at 100 yards, and at a velocity that would insure that the receiver of my bullet would not get up and walk away.

It was about now that my old R.C.B.S. reloading kit seemed to have outlived its usefulness. So I bought a new RockChucker, new die sets (all my bottle-neck die sets had to include along with a full size die, a neck size die) and all my straight-walled sets had to include both a carbide sizing die and a taper crimp die. It was also now that Dave had gotten me interested in trap shooting, so I bought a MEC 650 and all the junk that goes with it. Instead of a reloading bench I now had a "Reloading Room"!

Now we get into what I call my "Moderation Days", sort of. Not satisfied with 2-inch groups at 100 yards, I decided to throw out all my old reloading data and start from scratch with each and every gun that I owned. My new goal? Everything under .30 caliber had to shoot a 5-shot group of less than 1-inch at 200 yards, and everything over .30 caliber had to shoot a 5-shot group of less than 2-inches at 200 yards. And I had to place at least 5 out of 6 shots from any handgun into a 1-gallon milk jug at 100 yards.

Yes, I accomplished that goal, but I placed some very tough limitations on myself. First of all, rifles MUST use Remington brass and handguns MUST use Winchester brass. For bullets the selection was easy. I HAD to use Sierra's HPBT bullets in every caliber! 52-grain in my .22's, 85-grain in my .24's, 120-grain in my .25's, 140-grain in my .26's, 168-grain in my 28's, and 180-grain in my .30's.

After many years I finally have two .22-250's that shoot less than 1/2-inch groups at 200 yards. My .220 Swift, after another re-barrel, now shoots the same less than 1/2-inch group. My .243 Winchester and 6mm Remington both shoot less than 3/4-inch groups, and all my other rifles do less than 1-inch groups at 200-yards. There is one bug in the ointment.

After 6 years ... that's right ... 6 years, I hadn't found a load for the .25-06 that would meet these expectations. I knew that the rifle was capable of it, I knew that I was capable of it. All I had to do was find the right combination. After trying hundreds of different loads, using scores of different powders and varying bullet seating and case trimming by as little as .001 of an inch, I decided that something has to change. I wasn't going to give up on the Remington brass (I had developed a habit of buying 1000 pieces of brass, all of the same lot number). I wasn't going to give up on the Sierra HPBT bullets ... that would have been sacrilege! So I took the best load I had, which was around 1-1/2 inch at 100 yards, and started switching primers. First I switched to Remington Magnum primers ... no change. Then I tried CCI regular and magnum primers ... no good. Then I tried Federal regular and magnum primers ... no good. Then I tried Winchester regular primers ... and would you believe, that just changing to Winchester primers, instead of the Remington primers, that the group halved its size? The .25-06 now shoots right in there with the rest of them! (Yes, I tried a couple of the other calibers with Winchester primers ... and they fell apart!)

Believe it or not, during this process, and during my active trap shooting years I managed to wear out both my RockChucker and my MEC 650. So now the reloading bench has an R.C.B.S. BigMax and a MEC 9000G mounted to it.

I just couldn't stand it! Looking at that empty space left by the old Rock Chucker press, I just had to buy a new one!! (Old habits die hard...)

Other items that can be found in the reloading room are a couple of Lyman Auto-Flo 2200 tumblers, Forster case trimmer, R.C.B.S. Trim Mate case prep machine, an R.C.B.S. 5-0-5 scale and an R.C.B.S. 10-10 scale, the good old Lyman powder measure, a couple of R.C.B.S. powder tricklers, several stainless calipers and micrometers, assorted wrenches and screwdrivers, and tons of other "stuff" never intended as reloading equipment (like three "meatloaf pans", a "lasagna pan", and a couple of "paintbrush strainers").

I started reloading in '66 or '67. At first it was only shotshells, using the Lee Hand Loader -- not a press, it used a plunger you pushed by hand, a thing you pounded into the empty hull with a hammer to remove the primer, and a little stand that the shell went over to pound it down on the primer. It had scoops for powder measures.

After about '69 I quit loading (and shooting) for a few years. Sometime about '77 I did a bit of shooting and loading again; this was with a .308, and again I used the Lee Loader for the .308. In '78, for a brief time, I had a 30-06 and the RCBS kit that include the press, scale, dies, powder meter, and everything, and I did a bit of loading and shooting with this.

A year or two later I got the Lee Loader for the 30-06, a bunch of military brass, and the components, and loaded a bunch of 30-06 loads.

In 1977 I had bought the first edition of the Hornady manual.

About '85 or '86 I began loading and shooting in earnest. I got a Lee Turret Press, an RCBS 505 scale (I still use it), and RCBS dies. I got a 6mm Rem rifle and began shooting it in earnest. I also got a .270 and a .338 and began loading for and shooting them. In about '89 I got a .300 Weatherby and began loading for it too. Along about this time I replaced the Lee Turret Press with a Redding Boss.

I had gotten the Speer Reloading Manual Number Ten sometime in March of '84, and I studied the Hornady and Speer manuals over and over again. Sometime in the late 80s I got the Hodgdon Manual, and within the last year I got the Nosler Manual.

Those Hornady and Speer manuals are now so used that the back spines have come off the books. Sometime along there I also got a Lyman #46 Manual, and it is coming apart too. Winchester, Hodgdon, Hercules (later Alliant), IMR and other manufacturers' phamphlet-type manuals joined my collection too.

In 1990 I got involved in skeet shooting, and I got a MEC Versamec press and started loading 12 ga. skeet loads. The press -- I bought it used -- came with the dies for both 12 and 20 gauges. Later I got the dies for 28 and 410, and I have used it to load hundreds of boxes of skeet loads in each of those gauges.

Sometime about the mid-90s I got a membership in a gun club that gives me access to the Associated Gun Clubs range outside Baltimore, and I got back into loading and shooting rifles. I have spent a lot of time at this range, at the 100 and 200 yard ranges. I also got a chronograph sometime near the end of '98, and I got to see how much velocities in actual practice deviate from what the loading manuals predict. I now load for and shoot .22-250, .223, 6mm Rem., .257 Roberts, 7x57, 30-06, 300 Weatherby, and .375 H&H, as well as continuing to load for 12, 20, 28 gauges and .410 shotshells -- almost always skeet loads. I have also loaded for 25-06, 260 Remington, and others.

Before Accuratereloading there was a guns and shooting discussion list -- I think it was called talk.guns -- that I participated in. In fact, through that discussion group I relocatd and became reacquainted with a friend who had introduced me to loading the first time in the 60s.

In 2001 I joined Accuratereloading, and it's the best internet forum that I know.

Managed fine before Accurate Reloading. After Accurate Reloading, still doing fine. I only had ONE question that I did not find in my manuals, and never did get an answer on the forums -- so I'm STILL doing fine.

Dan

What was that question?

I started out with one of those Lee hand loaders for a 12 ga. back in the 60's. I found out the hard way that Win. primers would not go in Rem. hulls. I now have every bullet manual and every powder manual, plus a bunch of others. I mostly lurk on here for entertainment, but there is, a wealth of knowledge on here.

The internet makes things quite a lot easier, and also lets you learn from the inevitable mistakes that happen. Fortunately here there is someone who has made that mistake before you did, hopefully you found out about it in time.

I KNOW that I would have bought a ruger 77 in 22 hornet, had I not learned about their issues here.

It is also a good thing to be able to find the source of a problem without having to figure it out yourself. Not saying you couldn't, mind you, but it sure saves some hair pulling.

I remember when I started loading I had a problem wrinkling necks during the seating process. Of course it turns out I had the crimp set too deep, but it took me quite a while to figure that one out, simple as it sounds now.

And then there is other stuff, like High Power competitors and bench rest shooters saying for the most part uniforming primer holes is a waste of time. You sure wouldn't learn that reading catalogs or gun magazines!

So in summary, I guess the results are the same but AR can sure speed the learning curve a bit and save you some money otherwise spent on wild goose chases.

Bought some reloading manuals and read them.

I didn't start before I started reading AR. Therefor eI wasn't frustrated when I got an occaisional flyer, I didn't get lost for days in the room I call "MAN LAND" miking brass, cleaning brass, cleaning rifles, running downstairs to jump on the computer to see if you gus bailed me out again. Ignorance was bliss. I also get alot more miles now on my credit card, Thanks to all the things I absolutely have to have, because the guys on AR said so. No all kidding aside my hat is off to you guys and you have my thanks. I would never have done it without you.

quote:

Originally posted by onefunzr2:
But my question is: If you began your handloading hobby before Al Gore invented the internet, how did you manage to NOT kill yourself? Who answered your questions? Wasn't the handloading manual you bought to get recipes written well enough to teach you how to accomplish the cartridge reloading task???

My stepfather used to say he walked six miles each way to school before they had the school bus.

I always figured he had a point, I just never knew what it was.

Hell, MY grandfather walked 6 miles to school each way also, only he said it was uphill both ways!

besides my Pop...They're called "books". I have room full of'em...

Rich

quote:

Originally posted by ricciardelli:
Hell, MY grandfather walked 6 miles to school each way also, only he said it was uphill both ways!

But did he also reload?

Nope, I was the first ever Ricciardelli to partake of such deprivation!

quote:

They're called "books". I have room full of'em...

Playboy and Hustler don't count! Neither do comic books...

Family, Freinds, Books.