Handloading: Old School vs. New School

[PigButtons]

Between those matches, and simply the joy of building and shooting ammo with it, I put a lot of rounds down its barrel. After awhile, accuracy fell off. "Overbore" was a concept I was just learning about.

So the barrel has some milage, 37 years sitting idle and you don't specify how many years of use before it went into the safe: but you expect it to have text book ( computer simulated ) muzzle velocity. Hmmm?

 

[dcali]

I'm at point where I am more comfortable with Quickload than a reloading manual, and I haven't purchased a reloading manual in years. I tend to be pretty comfortable with engineering software, though, and I've been at this for quite some time. For new shooters, I would still send them to a manual to figure things out the old way. It's just safer while you're figuring things out.

Between quickload, a shot marker, and a labradar, it's amazing what you can accomplish quickly with long range handloading.

 

[calgarycanada]

One thing that I haven’t seen mentioned in this thread is powder’s moisture content. As per Brian Litz, moisture content of powder can have significant impact on the burn rate.
Now question arises, what was the moisture content of powder that quickload or powder manufacturer tested to generate data?
With that many variables it’s no surprise that you have to calibrate quickload to your particular situation.

 

[Jager]

One thing that I haven’t seen mentioned in this thread is powder’s moisture content. As per Brian Litz, moisture content of powder can have significant impact on the burn rate.
Now question arises, what was the moisture content of powder that quickload tested to generate data?
With that many variables it’s no surprise that you have to calibrate quickload to your particular situation.

Good point. And perhaps one of the factors that goes into what we think of as lot-to-lot variation in a given powder.

I don't know where or how the QuickLoad developers derive their Burn Rate factor for the various powders in their database. I would be surprised to learn they actually test them.

FWIW, it was 60% relative humidity during the few minutes the first ladder was being loaded; and 64% relative humidity during the couple hours the next day while while the second ladder was being built and fired.

 

[CharlieNC]

One thing that I haven’t seen mentioned in this thread is powder’s moisture content. As per Brian Litz, moisture content of powder can have significant impact on the burn rate.
Now question arises, what was the moisture content of powder that quickload tested to generate data?
With that many variables it’s no surprise that you have to calibrate quickload to your particular situation.

QL doesn't test, the data is furnished by the powder manufacturer. Some will not furnish results which is why a number of powders are not in the QL data base.