1) Get all the free load data from powder manufacturers; Alliant, Accurate Arms, Hodgdon, IMR, Vihtavuori, and Winchester.
Ignore Norma, Nobel, Rex, Scot, and Ramshot.

2) Buy the load manuals from the Powder manufacturers that sell them;
Accurate Arms, Hodgdon, and Vihtavuori.

3) Buy the load manuals from the Bullet manufacturers that sell them;
Speer, Sierra, Hornady, Lyman, and Nosler.
Ignore Barnes, Swift, A-Square, and Lapua.

4) Load development:
You need safety margin. If you don't know what that is, put some popcorn in the microwave for one hour. The instructions on the bag say 2 minutes, and smoke stinks up the lunchroom in 10 minutes.
It stinks up the whole building in 15 minutes.
That [10 - 2] = 8 minutes is safety margin.

5) Writing the loads part of the book:
Reduce the powder manufacturer's max load by 5%. That is your max load.
Reduce your max load by 10%.
That is your starting load.
Paraphrase any anecdotes about the caliber written in the bullet manufacturer's load books.

6) Calibrating test equipment:
The only thing that counts is a calibration sticker. To make one, on a piece of paper, write, "Popcorn: minimum 1.8 minutes, not to exceed 2.1 minutes". Tape that paper to the front of the microwave. Your equipment is now calibrated.

7) The other stuff in the book:
Find someone who handloads and take pictures of his hands while he loads a cartridge.
Paraphrase the pages of text in the load books you bought; accuracy, safety, blah, blah, blah...

8) Try to do a good job:
With $200 outlay and an afternoon's work you can sell 10,000 books at $10 each wholesale and $3 each to have printed, you will make enough money to pay the rent for a year.

HOW TO REVISE YOUR LOAD BOOK.
1) Wait at least a year, or until the first printing has sold, whichever comes last.
2) Get the latest free load data from the powder manufacturers.
3) Look for any new powders or calibers that were not in your first edition.
4) To add these new loads, reduce the loads by 5% for max load, and that by 10% for starting loads.
5) Charge $12 wholesale per book. Make the money last until you write the 3rd edition.

Cross marketing:
Find some guy who makes benchrest bullets in his garage and get drunk with him. Fix him up with your sister. If you could start selling his bullets by featuring them in your book, you would both benefit. You could find some surplus "blems" to fill in the product line, and he and your sister may spawn a gun culture dynasty.

--
A society that teaches evolution as fact will breed a generation of atheists that will destroy the society. It is Darwinian.

Sometimes the rest of the story is much more interesting than the story itself..... Dutch.

you forgot this one: read someone else's book, "borrow" paragraphs from different chapters, use them word for word (with out acknowledgement or, even,... PERMISSION!!) and kid yourself no-one will notice...
cheers

Come on Clark, I wasn't ready to go to the press' with my new book yet.

Or you could write a load program. Plug in everything in print, take an average, then interpolate from the average. Put in some graphics. Recomended powders would be the only ones in someone elses books. Anything off the scale just return won't calculate.

I knew I should have bought quickload the first time.

We thought we should make a public statement.
Last year when we first announced the "How to make a mediocre load book" project, we used some different data. Someone suggested that it was fear of law suits that made us change. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was just that some new very powerful Asian microwaves were not compatible with Beareto's Organic Popcorn. And we found a way to more accurately measure time. The hour glass technology we were using has been replaced with quartz-crystal oscillators and flip flop based counters driving blinking light emitting diode displays. We feel that the load book writer should start at 1.8 minutes popcorn microwave time and work up carefully looking for burning signs and never exceeding 2.1 minutes.

We have received some personal messages asking if it was the Lee book lifting data or the Speer 12 and 13 making up pressures and velocities that the project is about. Neither could be further from the truth. In actual fact, we are all about that an average American has the opportunity, in few hours and for a few hundred dollars to write a mediocre load book on a par with many of the other mediocre load books available today.

As an addendum I hasten to add: We have had some complaints that 2.1 minutes will not pop all the kernels, and some load book writers have been exceeding our published limits. This is dangerous and foolish. If there is a fire in which someone dies, the load book writer making the pop corn could be tried for murder.

It is much better to be safe and sane and spit out the "old maids" that don't pop.

--
A society that teaches evolution as fact will breed a generation of atheists that will destroy the society. It is Darwinian.

[ 11-06-2003, 06:37: Message edited by: Clark ]

Good one!

Or you could just plug all that into a website. When someone asks a question about barrel length or such just get snotty with them and act like you don't have to answer their questions. Sean

Hummm....

2.1 minutes? I think I got either a bad lot of popcorn, or my nuke is going weak. Takes 3 minutes to pop a bag of Orville Redenbacher...

Steve...Steve...Steve
You should know that you can't just change components like that. Besides that the lot numbers are probably different, and your not using a calibrated microwave etc. etc.

Sure I know that this lot of Orville was different from all the others. That is why I started at one minute and worked-up gradually, in 10 second intervals, until I either got the desired popcorn results or the bag blew open. (First law of popping corn...)

As for the MW oven being calibrated, it was when it was new, but that was many, many, years ago. I know that better microwaves have come on the market since I purchased this particular one. Some have fancy trays, some have thermometers, some have rotating bases, some have synthetic stocks and stainless barrels....opps....kinda got off topic there for a minute...

At any rate, this MW oven has become my favorite, and when the chips are down, or that one perfect bag of popcorn is required, this is the oven to take into the field...err...kitchen!

It may be scarred from the many years of usage, and there may be barrel erosion...there I go again...there may be some stains on the interior walls, but for all intents an purposes, it is the MW I rely on ... maybe not as my primary tool in the past couple of years, but it is always sitting behind the seat of the Bronco.....damn!!!...it is always sitting on the counter for those times when the "new kid on the block" just can't handle the task assigned!

My MW is calibrated for the size of Popcorn bag in oz. You can predict the kernal pressure by the height obtained from poping.

Did you consider that some of your purchased load data might be wrong?