Handloading

[Aequitas]

So this goes out to any members out there that are interested in hunting, plinking or handloading. There's got to be a few of you out there somewhere.

 

I'm interested in what equipment you use if you handload, and even if you don't I'm interested in what you've heard about the different manufacturers. Advice on choosing a cartridge for competition this spring would also be most welcome. The 9x19mm is currently the most attractive to me.

[Aoslare]

This one really did sound like a Scorpius topic, for at least the first sentence.

[Radix Malorum Est Cupiditas]

You could've mentioned what kind of firearm you had in mind from the beginning.

 

At first I was going to mention the 0.338 lapua magnum, but if you're looking for handgun cartridges then there's no better than the trusty 9mm. Mind you, my experience is primarily militarily oriented, I'm not too sure as it applies to competitions.

 

EDIT: Handloading is much frowned upon where I picked up my experience.

[keira]

i have stuff to reload .270's, .223's, .41 magnum, and 12/20 gauge shotshells. Only really use 12ga (trapshooting) and .270 (hunting) though. For shotgunning, i use an ancient MEC press that jams the wad more often than not, and for everything else there's a RCBS manual press.

 

For the shotshells, i use Red dot, with a Windjammer wad and number 8 shot, and whatever primers are cheapest at the time. For the .270, it's IMR 4895 with a 150 gr hollow point. Can't remember what i use for 223 or 41 mag, it's in the book somewhere

[waterplant]

Water from straight from the tap works best for me. Add a bit of salt or detergent and aim for the eyes!

[Aequitas]

I've never really considered reloading shotshells... in southern Alberta, they're not terribly expensive and can be bought in great quantities. I am also considering membership in an action rifle league, so .223 REM is on the table as well. 3-gun competitions are a little far away at the moment, but they are a possibility. @ Sylae: I know it's a pain to dig up data you know off by heart without having to look at the book anymore, but I am curious as to how you load your .223's. If you come across the bullet weight, type, powder load etc. I'd love to see it.

 

@ Radix: I'll take any advice I can get! A motto of the Canadian Forces is "Train as you will Fight," and I think that holds true for militaries around the world.

 

It seems a lot of people like the classic RCBS single-stage manual press. I'd be perfectly happy with one to start as I had a chance to use one once and really liked it... but I would want to move up to a turret or progressive rig at some point, as my gun interests are leaning towards semi-automatic.

 

The 9x19 definitely has the most attractive balance between accuracy and recoil that I've experienced yet... I aim to explore several other pistol cartridges like .40 S&W, .45 ACP and possibly .357 magnum, though I'm not much for revolvers.

 

EDIT: @ Slarty... Hopefully that won't be the case.

[Student of Trinity]

My father did some hand loading to fire some of his really old rifles, for which the few cartridge cases he had were themselves historical artifacts. He cast his own reproduction bullets, with commercially available molds.

 

The only hand loading I've done myself was to stuff musketballs down the muzzle of a repro Brown Bess. That was the only way to fire those things.

 

Otherwise, why would you want to handload? I know there are enthusiasts who do it, but I've never understood why.

[Rowen]

I hand load my Mosin Nagant every 5 rounds. Its hard to find stripper clips that will fit properly in it.

[Aequitas]

Handloading can be useful where you require exceptional accuracy in a single round (long range rifle comp), where you require massive amounts of ammo (pistol comp), or in your father's case where ammunition is no longer available.

 

Other than that, I do it myself where I can as a hobby. Most of my hobbies have been mechanically inclined, so when I developed a professional interest in guns which later expanded to a personal hobby I decided to take up handloading.

[keira]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

Otherwise, why would you want to handload? I know there are enthusiasts who do it, but I've never understood why.

Cost is the big reason here. When lead shot got expensiver than crap a few years back, a box of AA shotgun shells cost six bucks at every store. Ended up saving over two bucks a box by reloading (part of this was because of the ungodly horde of shot we had, but meh).

Originally Posted By: Aequitas

@ Sylae: I know it's a pain to dig up data you know off by heart without having to look at the book anymore, but I am curious as to how you load your .223's. If you come across the bullet weight, type, powder load etc. I'd love to see it.

i'll take a looksie and PM you if i find anything

[Dantius]

I buy all my ammunition, because it's easie- I mean, more "efficient". I'm not lazy or unmotivated, or anything, but...

 

Okay, yeah, I'm lazy and unmotivated.

[Erebus the Black]

Why is it 0k to shoot a warning shot into the air, wouldn't it be coming down at some point?

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Erasmus

Why is it 0k to shoot a warning shot into the air, wouldn't it be coming down at some point?

It's usually a blank- a cartridge with powder but no bullet. The pressure and velocity of the air and sometimes the wad means that it can still do quite a bit of damage at very very close range (think holding it against somebody's head), but it poses no threat after a decent range.

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: Erasmus

Why is it 0k to shoot a warning shot into the air, wouldn't it be coming down at some point?

It's illegal in some places to fire into the air.

[Student of Trinity]

My dad had some kind of ballistics text that reported in one chapter on experiments firing straight up. They put a machine gun on a raft in the middle of a large lake, and aimed it straight up. They put a heavy metal roof over top, for fear of bullets raining down. Though of course the bullets would only land at terminal velocity, which is much less than muzzle velocity. But still, raindrops of copper-jacketed lead is not what you want falling on your head.

 

They needn't have worried. They fired several long bursts. Nothing even landed in the lake.

 

Are falling bullets dangerous? Probably, somewhat. But the chance that they hit anything seems really low. Even in war, when you're actively trying to kill people, it is notorious that so-called plunging fire is ineffective. From above, a human body is a much smaller target than from any side direction. Historical trivia: that's one reason that the French mitrailleuse was so much less effective in the Franco-Prussion War of 1870 than machine guns later became. Not knowing any better, the French mainly tried to use their secret super-weapon as a form of artillery, firing indirectly in massed batteries from long range. It was disappointing.

 

In a lot of places it's illegal to discharge a firearm in any direction.

 

My dad has a Mosin Nagant. I think he even has clips for it. But I do faintly remember him mentioning that the clips themselves were unusually valuable.

[A less presumptuous name.]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

Though of course the bullets would only land at terminal velocity, which is much less than muzzle velocity. But still, raindrops of copper-jacketed lead is not what you want falling on your head.

Mythbusters tested this, and their results were in agreement with recorded cases of vertically fired bullets. If a bullet is fired straight up, it will end up in a free-fall after a time and then fall at terminal velocity. While this is enough to hurt, it is far from lethal. However, if the bullet isn't fired straight up, it will retain its projectile course and end up hitting with greater velocity (the vertical velocity is terminal and there is additional horizontal velocity).

[Sudanna]

It should be noted that shooting at a perfectly ninety degree angle to the ground is both very difficult and uncomfortable.

[A less presumptuous name.]

If you angle is close enough, there will be a small enough horizontal component. Or we could, ya know, not try!

[Student of Trinity]

There's nothing so special about exactly vertical trajectories. Horizontal motion is also slowed by air resistance. It's just that gravity doesn't pull sideways, only down. So a bullet that stays airborne long enough, which it does if it's shot anywhere close enough to vertical, will eventually lose all of its horizontal speed, and end up falling straight down under gravity. Terminal velocity is just the speed at which air resistance balances gravity, so the falling speed holds steady.

 

There's still wind to move the bullet horizontally. A bullet can travel a long way upwards. I'm pretty sure I remember learning that a high-powered rifle bullet exits the muzzle at around Mach 2, or about 600 m/s. If there were no air resistance, just gravity, it would take about a minute to stop rising and fall back down. Air resistance must cut that time a lot, but then it'll also greatly slow the fall. So the thing is still going to be in the air a good while. A strong wind up there could move the bullet a long way.

[Radix Malorum Est Cupiditas]

@SoT: For assault rifles, that's true. With high powered (read: sniper) rifles it's more like mach 3. The difference is in the amount of powder in the cartridge, the weight of the bullet, the length and rifling of the barrel. The long m-16, shortened m-16, and m-4 despite being almost entirely the same weapon all fire their .223 bullets at vastly different speeds.

[Niemand]

I had an old ballistics simulation program laying around that I'd written several years ago, so out of curiosity I plugged some numbers into it to see what it would say. I vaguely recall that it fairly accurately predicted the range of a friend's .22 rifle when fired horizontally, but it uses a very simplified method which includes no real aerodynamics.

 

At any rate, for a 4 gram bullet, 5.7 mm in radius, fired straight up with a muzzle velocity of 940 m/s (a set of numbers pulled from wikipedia), and assuming a drag coefficient of .295 (claimed somewhere I found to be roughly correct for a bullet shape) I get the results that it should be in flight for just under 25 seconds, achieve a maximum altitude of about 660 meters, and impact with a speed of a bit more than 45 m/s. To see how the results would vary I tried a drag coefficient of .2, which gave a fight time of about 28 seconds, maximum altitude of about 920 meters, and an impact speed of over 55 m/s. Using the original drag coefficient but a muzzle velocity of 1200 m/s gave a fight time of about 26 seconds, maximum altitude of about 740 meters, and an impact speed of about 47 m/s

 

If these numbers are to be believed (which I won't go so far as to claim) it's hard to make a bullet stay in the air for a minute unless you have a really high-powered gun. One effect that I definitely neglected which could make a substantial different is that I'm guessing a bullet will most likely start tumbling at some point, which would alter its aerodynamics a lot. However, twenty to thirty seconds is still a good deal of time to be deflected by a significant wind.