Handloader June/July 2019

Since the introduction of the 6.5 Creedmoor in 2008, the pages of Rifle, Handloader and a variety of other hunting/shooting publications have pretty much covered the so-called modern 6.5s. The other 32 or so that came out of Asia, Europe, Scandinavia and Great Britain from about 1900 to the 1960s or so had been largely ignored – some of which pretty much duplicate the modern counterparts introduced within the last few years. ...Read More >

Bullet technology has improved immensely during my lifetime. Now it is possible to obtain excellent hunting bullets with boat-tails, and today’s hunters want every downrange advantage possible. A boat-tail results in a higher ballistic coefficient (BC). Ballistic coefficient is a numerical value that indicates a bullet’s capability to overcome the resistance of air during flight. ...Read More >

I very much enjoyed your recent “Pet Loads” article on the .444 Marlin. I am having a .444 re-bore made up from a Marlin TK .30-30 and plan to use the rifle here in Alaska for deer, moose and brown bears. Your load data for heavy bullets was timely and helpful! I will be developing a hunting load using the 300-grain Swift A-Frame, and a bear defense load using a hard cast bullet. ...Read More >

The 9.3x74R is one of the world’s great game cartridges, even though many American riflefolk have never heard of it because of our (until recently) disinterest in metric rounds. Collector references list more than 100 9.3mm rounds from 1870 to about 1990! Let’s look at the history. ...Read More >

By now, most of us are likely aware that the Alliant Powder Company is in the process of upgrading its double-base, flake powder line. In 2018, the company announced improved versions of its Red Dot and Green Dot powders. In 2019, Herco was added to the list. In each case, the new releases are weight-for-weight and volume-for-volume replacements for the older releases, meaning we can use the same powder bushings and powder weights we’ve always used, and any published data will work with either release. ...Read More >

The history of Bill Ruger and his founding of Sturm, Ruger & Company is one of the most remarkable stories in firearms history. The first gun he designed and manufactured was the Ruger .22 Standard Pistol that was first produced in 1949 and sold for $37.50. The Standard was followed by various modern single-action sixguns, a variety of rifle actions and designs, double-action revolvers and shotguns. Ruger is now approaching 30,000,000 firearms sold, which results in the company being “America’s largest small arms maker.” ...Read More >

If a revolver is in good mechanical shape, meaning no pitting in the barrel and timing is correct with the cylinder locking up correctly, how can it be inaccurate? Especially if the ammunition used in it is good, clean factory loads or handloads. That’s simple: Perhaps the ammunition – factory or handloads – does not mate with the revolver’s dimensions. These would include barrel groove diameters and cylinder chamber mouth diameters. Guns and loads that have been around for a century or more often have mismatched dimensions, with the .45 Colt being the worst offender. ...Read More >

When the .284 Winchester was introduced in 1963, wildcatters quickly pounced on its case and necked it up and down for several bullet diameters. Many years thereafter, the 6.5-284 would have its time in the limelight, but back then it – along with the .270-284, .30-284, .33-284 and .35-284 – was soon forgotten. ...Read More >

About 20 years ago, I attended a gathering in South Africa where I met an airline pilot. We fell into a discussion about handloading, which he had taken up a year or two previously. His pet rifle was a custom bolt action in some over-wrought 7mm, ammunition for which was extremely scarce. ...Read More >

Many times over the years, readers have asked how gun writers get such good groups from revolvers as shown in article photos. In one respect it’s easy. We get to pick the photos sent in with our work. No writer shows their worst groups in an article. Seriously however, it helps to choose good revolvers for our testing, and unless a machine rest is part of the shooting, it truly is a necessity to be able to shoot well. ...Read More >

Let us get one historical item out of the way immediately. Yes, “Karamojo” Bell took the majority of his elephants with the 7x57 Mauser. However, it was not his favorite elephant cartridge or rifle. That was his 5.5-pound customized 6.5x54mm Mannlicher-Schönauer carbine. However, Bell eventually gave up on the 6.5 because the cases of its Austrian ammunition frequently split, whereupon he went back to his “well trusted 7mm.” That takes care of the 7x57-on-elephants stuff, which somehow many modern hunters feel compelled to mention, even though it has nothing to do with the 7x57 in the twenty-first century. ...Read More >

The .45 Colt is rapidly approaching 150 years in existence, and it remains one of our finest, most useful, versatile and handloaded sixgun cartridges. It is often associated with its vital role in settling the western frontier, where it found favor with lawmen, outlaws and anyone that needed a potent sixgun. It has many additional virtues, primarily its big-bore performance and reliability. ...Read More >

A guy can do an awful lot with 20 pounds of Unique. He can load up a raft of .44 Specials and shoot Cowboy Action; he can prepare some .32-40 target loads for a Schützen match or put together shotshells and either shoot Skeet or go hunting. Unique has been a stalwart for self-defense loads for more than a century, and “eight grains of Unique” is probably the most widely applicable loading formula, in a variety of cartridges, since the end of the black-powder era. ...Read More >

Handloaders handle primers by the millions each year and expect each and every one of them to reliably ignite a powder charge. Despite that expectation, many handloaders seem to have a rather carefree attitude toward primers and consider them no more hazardous than common matches. The priming compound is a pressure-sensitive explosive, though, and primers should be treated with care. ...Read More >