I've been reloading for a while but recently thought that without a Chrony I am, at best, guessing about what my loads are actually doing.
Surprise #1: My 38 s&w load which "worked" with some old brass - such that it didn't seize in the cylinder - in new Starline brass metered a meagre 275-350 fps. Pretty lame. Maybe I had more crimp on that older brass. It did feel the same though.
Surprise #2: Loading 7.62x45 Czech for an old vz-52 with a near max 7.62x39 load for IMR 4198 results in only 1850 fps. That was the fourth half-grain increment I tried and would have bet $ it would be over 2000.
So far these have been my surprises related to my handloading caution. A guy at the range asked if he could shoot a few rounds to get numbers on his rifle. I obliged. I even shot some of the rounds myself. Very shortly I was suspecting this fellow had gone pretty wrong - and probably quite dangerously so. He indicated after seeeing some results that he had these loads "maxed out" on varget. 168 gr bullets out of his 308 Winchester were doing 3300-3500 fps. That's about 700 fps or so faster that what I generally expected to see and what max loads in any of the manuals I later consulted indicated as maximum. That rifle and brass is probably taking a beating - and it was not high quality versions of either to begin with. Hopefully he looks up those results and backs-off before he becomes a casualty. While I like shooting other people's guns, I will decline to shoot anyone's reloads in the future. To borrow a line from Arrested Development "That was a freebie" in the sense that I didn't end up with any of his rifle parts lodged in my person.
Non-surprises: 7.62x54 in Mosin M44 is right where I expected around 2400-2500 fps - on a sober dose of Varget. Various 223 loads were also what I expected out of my Browning x-bolt.
The point is that now I know about my own loads and re-learned to be weary of strangers (at the relatively low cost of about $130 and time to read some instructions).
Surprise #1: My 38 s&w load which "worked" with some old brass - such that it didn't seize in the cylinder - in new Starline brass metered a meagre 275-350 fps. Pretty lame. Maybe I had more crimp on that older brass. It did feel the same though.
Surprise #2: Loading 7.62x45 Czech for an old vz-52 with a near max 7.62x39 load for IMR 4198 results in only 1850 fps. That was the fourth half-grain increment I tried and would have bet $ it would be over 2000.
So far these have been my surprises related to my handloading caution. A guy at the range asked if he could shoot a few rounds to get numbers on his rifle. I obliged. I even shot some of the rounds myself. Very shortly I was suspecting this fellow had gone pretty wrong - and probably quite dangerously so. He indicated after seeeing some results that he had these loads "maxed out" on varget. 168 gr bullets out of his 308 Winchester were doing 3300-3500 fps. That's about 700 fps or so faster that what I generally expected to see and what max loads in any of the manuals I later consulted indicated as maximum. That rifle and brass is probably taking a beating - and it was not high quality versions of either to begin with. Hopefully he looks up those results and backs-off before he becomes a casualty. While I like shooting other people's guns, I will decline to shoot anyone's reloads in the future. To borrow a line from Arrested Development "That was a freebie" in the sense that I didn't end up with any of his rifle parts lodged in my person.
Non-surprises: 7.62x54 in Mosin M44 is right where I expected around 2400-2500 fps - on a sober dose of Varget. Various 223 loads were also what I expected out of my Browning x-bolt.
The point is that now I know about my own loads and re-learned to be weary of strangers (at the relatively low cost of about $130 and time to read some instructions).
