Handloader February-March 2024

When it comes to performance among rifle cartridges there always seems to be traits that are desirable among shooters. The capability to shoot bullets with high-ballistic coefficients (BC) at high-speed has been the latest craze and likely will for some time. Some cartridges take this to greater extremes than others. With the vast amount of options available today there seems to be a cartridge that is about perfect for every shooter and given application. One cartridge that stands out is the 22 Creedmoor. ...Read More >

In Handloader No. 344 (June – July 2023), I wrote about Winchester StaBALL Match, one of two new ball powders Hodgdon Powders/Winchester brand introduced at the NASGW annual meeting in the fall of 2022. In this edition of Handloader, I am going delve into Winchester’s “Precision Rifle” powder, StaBALL HD ball powder. ...Read More >

Q: First, I want to thank you for offering such an amazing magazine. I have learned so much from Handloader. I always start with your articles first and then read each issue from cover to cover. ...Read More >

William Fredrick “Buffalo Bill” Cody (1847-1917) was a highly respected cowboy, soldier, U.S. Army scout, contract buffalo hunter and genuine frontiersman long before he became the most recognizable celebrity on Earth at the turn of the twentieth century with his famous “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” show. While he was an outstanding showman, Cody was no pretender. He was the genuine article, a top-rate hunter, an excellent shot, displayed bravery in the face of extreme danger, was loyal to our country and loved the western U.S. and even founded Cody, Wyoming. ...Read More >

Two cartridges from the late nineteenth century, the cartridges are identical but different. Sounds odd? They are actually two completely different rounds intended for different purposes but share the same case dimensions. Those are the 45-2.4-inch Sharps Straight and the 45-90 Winchester Centerfire (WCF). They not only share the same case length but their case rim thicknesses and diameters are close enough to be considered the same. ...Read More >

Japan existed under a feudal system for centuries. Today, it is called socialism. Feudal lords and other elites rode about the country stealing food, girls and property from the peasantry who could do nothing about it. In Europe, the feudal lords were called kings. ...Read More >

I doubt if any cartridge has been “improved” by more people than the mild-mannered little 22 Hornet. From a technical point of view, improved versions of the 22 Hornet existed prior to the introduction of the cartridge by Winchester in 1932. To understand how that could have happened, we will have to turn back the calendar to the 1920s when various gunsmiths began searching for ways to improve the performance of an old black-powder cartridge called the 22 WCF or 22-15-45 Winchester when it was introduced in 1890. One of those gunsmiths was Adolph Niedner whose 1920s 25-caliber wildcat on the 30-06 Springfield case went on to be domesticated by Remington in 1969 as the 25-06 Remington. ...Read More >

Handloader Master Index to Issue Numbers 342 to 347 (February 2023 to December 2023). ...Read More >

Serendipity is a wonderful thing. In the early 1960s, Ballistician Homer S. Powley perfected an idea for a handloader’s ballistics and powder-charge calculator using the principle of a slide rule, but made of high-quality coated cardboard instead of the usual wood or plastic. It was called a “slide chart.” ...Read More >

I can hear the cries now… “Not another Model 1911 handgun joining the ranks of the dozens on the market now”… they say. All of you are probably right, as there are plenty of Model 1911 variants in production now and the question does come up. Do we really need another one? To that, I have to answer yes, especially when the new one from Savage was designed from the ground up, has an affordable price point and is available in a variety of models and two calibers. ...Read More >

A few years ago, I received a phone call from a lawyer I had worked with on several homicide cases. He is one of the finest people I’ve ever met. He was raised on a ranch in Montana and has more than a passing acquaintance with firearms. He was in town and offered to take me to lunch. The hook was that he had a firearms-related question on a case and wanted to talk with me about it. Being hungry, and typically reduced to offering firearms-related prattle for free, I leapt at the chance. ...Read More >

Don’t bother looking for the 9x72R in any of the loading manuals or in Cartridges of the World. Forget searching arcane historical tracts about cartridge development in central Europe. According to all of these I’ve been able to consult – and I have quite a collection – the cartridge simply doesn’t exist. ...Read More >

Kelsey Denton and I have been hunting, fishing and kicking around together since seventh grade. Kelsey was the best man at my wedding and we still take time out of insanely hectic schedules to occasionally hunt, fish and hang out as graying middle-aged men. With a big brain that understands advanced mathematics, Kelsey became a chemical engineer and has lived “The American Dream,” including having the wherewithal to purchase a gorgeous piece of ground in central Colorado with a trout creek running through it and prime habitat teaming with mule deer and elk. It is the latter that ultimately inspired this project. ...Read More >

The 30-40 Krag, or .30 U.S, was adopted by the military in 1892, and was its first attempt to change from traditional big bore, heavy-bullet cartridges such as the 45-70 Government to a modern smallbore cartridge designed for smokeless powders. Despite it being a good cartridge, for several reasons, there was a need for further improvement. While there were experiments with heavier bullets, by 1894, the standard military load contained a 220-grain metal jacketed roundnose bullet pushed to around 1,960 feet per second (fps) from 22-inch Krag-Jorgensen carbine barrels, or 2,000 fps from the 30-inch rifle using 40 grains of nitrocellulose powder. ...Read More >

Charles Newton created two cartridges designed to push .228-inch bullets to high velocities. The 22 Newton was formed by necking down the 7x57mm Mauser case and it became available in rifles built by Newton at the time. The other cartridge, formed by necking down the 25-35 Winchester case, was adopted by Savage and introduced in the Model 99 lever action in 1912 as the 22 Hi-Power. While the name was spelled that way on early boxes of Savage ammunition, the company later often referred to it as 22 High Power as well. Loaded with 70-grain expanding and full-patch bullets at an advertised velocity of 2,770 feet per second (fps), it first appeared in a takedown version of the Savage Model 99 Featherweight at a price of $25. Over the following 29 years, the chambering was also offered in six other Model 99 variations. Ammunition loaded with the two types of bullets at the same velocity eventually became available from Winchester and Remington. ...Read More >