HANDLOADS
Handloading is dangerous and before beginning to experiment you should get a mentor and learn the fine points. It’s an engineering discipline in its own right and deserves respect, care and attention. Be honest with yourself before getting into reloading or handloading. Can you stick to rigorous scientific procedures? Can you walk away after finding a load that isn’t as fast as you’d like but is deadly accurate? Can you afford the time? Do you have the patience? Do you have the math skills? Do you have the ability to give 100% attention to details? Can you establish a procedure and STICK TO IT? If you can’t answer every single one of those questions with a firm and unambiguous “Yes!” then it’s not for you. I know it seems cool and it looks easy, and it actually is both but there’s a lot of stuff you have to just know before you start doing it alone. After 20+ years of doing it I still occasionally make a mistake and that often requires me to pull apart ammo I just loaded and start over from step one. My quality control procedures allow me to catch my own mistakes before they get ugly. Please, as a favor to me: Find a mentor before you start handloading. Learn from them. Ask all the stupid questions you can because after you’ve had a case blow apart on you or a gun catastrophically self-disassemble under your face it’s already too late. You cannot undo an explosion and you cannot undo permanent debilitating injury and you can’t turn the clock back on a mistake. Please, be careful. If you need help, ask me. I will help you if I can. Nobody deserves to go this alone.I have been loading brass for 30 years, but have just ventured into shotshell and have found a mentor, and most thankful for his sage advice
There is an old sage that goes something like this...
"Learn from the mistakes of others, because you will not have time to learn then all yourself!"