Ladder test in the cold

Klondiker

Klondiker

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Alberta for now, back to the Yukon someday
I've been debating working up a new load, using the ladder test method, but I'm curious if there's any thoughts about doing it in the cold. I typically wait till summer, above +10, but idle hands and some spare time have me considering doing it now.

I get that there would likely be a POI shift from when the load was tailored in the cold (-10 to -20ish), but once I find my nodes, would the load remain accurate when using once it warms up?

Any personal experience with this? Any thoughts would be appreciated.
 
I have no experience at what you ask - but I would think maybe about when is it that you want to use the loads? If for late fall hunting in prairies, likely want to know how it performs at minus 20 C or colder - if for blasting in summer time, maybe more concerned with how it performs at plus 30 C??

I had read, but have not proven to myself - that various powders and primers react differently when they are very cold or very hot - to the extent it "used to be" a recommendation to plan to use magnum primers for cold weather shooting. I never did so - my loads were same - 308 Win cartridge - 165 Grain Speer HotCor bullets - RL-15 powder - Fed 210 primers - used any time of year or all temperatures that I was out in.
 
I would go ahead and do it, if you are using a temp stable powder. If you do an OCW, load in the middle, you can just tweak it when it warms up with a mini test. The worst case is you have colder temp data.
 
I find there is some difference between winter and summer. Do you have access to a chrony? In my experience even with the temp stable powders you need .2-.4gn less charge to keep the same velocity which is what I try to maintain to keep the node. No hard and fast rules- other than a little less charge in the summer, a little more in the winter. The target will show the answer. Instead of the ladder test I like the OCW method to minimize the vertical.
 
I no longer do the ladder method for development, but if I had to, I'd be doing one in temperatures around +5c to best duplicate average conditions when out hunting

Temperature stable powders do make life easier for the handloader
 
I don't believe in the legitimacy or utility of the ladder test in general (though different people mean different things with that name).

I don't believe in the legitimacy or utility of any kind of load development at temperatures below 15C (given that in my case, it'll be used in the 15-35C range).
 
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