Handloader February/March 2022

It is hard to believe that it has been 47 years since Hodgdon HP-38 was introduced to the market as the potential successor to Hercules (now Alliant) Bullseye as the predominate powder for target and light-duty handgun loads. ...Read More >

I have a question regarding .38 Super bullet diameter. I have found jacketed bullets for handloaders that are listed in both .355 and .356 inch. I also have a reloading manual that lists the bullet diameter as .355, .356 and .357 inch. Are all of these numbers acceptable? I normally purchase bullets that are listed specifically for the .38 Super and are .356 inch. Any insight that you can offer will be appreciated. ...Read More >

This is a short account of the Chrysler Corporation automotive assembly plant at Evansville, Indiana, which had no experience making ammunition, yet in only a few months, it was producing .45 Auto (ACP) rounds, having perfected the drawing of steel .45 cases and invented new machines and processes for such work. Evansville Chrysler – or simply “EC” – went on to produce 96 percent of all .45 Auto ammunition made for the U.S. military in World War II! Nowhere is the old quotation, “The past is a different place, they do things differently there,” more appropriate. ...Read More >

Heckler & Koch GmbH (HK) officially entered the firearms and defense business in 1949. It has developed and offered many innovative guns that have proven rugged and unusually reliable. In the past 72 years, it has never issued a single recall. ...Read More >

Slugging barrels is a process by which an oversized, soft (pure) piece of lead is driven through a rifle or handgun barrel. The idea is to determine a rifled barrel’s diameter across its grooves. This is so cast bullets can be purchased or home-sized to fit, preferably at or about .001 inch over groove diameter. ...Read More >

In 1952, Remington introduced its slide-action Model 760 Gamemaster in .30-06 and three years later, followed with the gas-operated Model 740 Woodsmaster in the same caliber. Other popular chamberings were soon added. The great successes of those rifles prompted Winchester to introduce the lever-action Model 88 in 1955 and the gas-urged Model 100 in 1960. Since their actions could not handle long cartridges, Winchester developed the .284 Winchester specifically for them. ...Read More >

If Rock Island Auction’s experience is anything to go by – and I believe it is – then interest in old rifles is at an all-time high. In October, the world’s largest firearms auction house held its third, three-day “sporting and collector” auction of the year, pulling in more than $8 million. Usually, Rock Island holds only two of these, where mostly second-tier guns are sold, to go with three “premier” auctions, which feature the top-quality stuff. ...Read More >

I handled my first 10mm Auto while wild boar hunting behind hounds about 1990. The borrowed 1911 acted as backup during a bow hunt – which, it turned out, I would actually need. Those northern California boars were especially ill-tempered and dogs have a way of turning up the temperature. To make a rather long story mercifully short, at the end of a gruelingly long chase I stopped a full-on charge by pumping three quick 10mm slugs into the point-blank, grunting blob. The boar staggered onto its side only feet away. The 10mm Auto had lived up to its reputation as a serious thumper, on an animal that later pulled a ranch scale to 368 pounds gutted. ...Read More >

Savage introduced the .250 Savage (aka .250-3000) around 1915 that offered trendsetting performance by pushing a 100-grain bullet to around 2,820 feet per second (fps) and an 87-grain bullet to around 3,030 fps. For several reasons, it was way ahead of its time. Most notable, it was the first U.S. commercially available sporting cartridge to exceed 3,000 fps. ...Read More >

The .284 Winchester somehow continues to rise from the ashes of changing rifle fashions. It appeared in 1963 in Winchester’s Model 88 lever-action and Model 100 semiautomatic rifles, and was designed to basically duplicate the ballistics of the .270 Winchester and, to a lesser extent, the .280 Remington in “faster-firing” rifles. ...Read More >

If logic is applied to the .32-20 (.32 WCF), then one must wonder why it was developed in the first place. That happened in 1882 with the Winchester Model 1873 rifles and carbines. As intended in its previous .44-40 (.44 WCF) and .38-40 (.38 WCF) cartridge options, Model 1873s were meant for hunting game up to the size of deer, or for fighting. Those two ’73 rounds made their debut in 1879 and 1873, respectively. The first handgun chambered for .32-20 was the Colt SAA. According to THE 36 CALIBERS OF THE COLT SINGLE ACTION ARMY by David M. Brown, the .32-20 was added to that revolver in 1885. (Other sources say the year was 1884.) ...Read More >

The .222 Remington is now 70 years old – venerable by any standard except geologic time – and its praises have been sung (by my count) by three generations of writers. It’s unquestionably the most influential small-caliber rifle cartridge of the twentieth-century, ranking with the .30-06 and .375 Holland & Holland in terms of impact and progeny. ...Read More >