Handloader June - July 2025

When discussing handguns, the 1911 needs no introduction, it has a storied history from battlefields to self-defense. The legacy of 1911 endures to this day. There have been many improvements and iterations over the years, from various slide and barrel lengths to more subtle features such as flared magazine wells and ambidextrous safeties. The 1911 has also been offered in many cartridges from 22 TCM to 10mm Auto and many more. We will be taking a look at two very different 1911s both chambered in 9mm Luger. Both of these handguns are newly released models from Springfield Armory. ...Read More >

There are two commonly used burn rates in the 300 Blackout. On the fast side are magnum pistol powders like Winchester 296, Hodgdon H-110 and Accurate 11FS. On the slower side are Accurate 1680 and Hodgdon CFE BLK, propellants that are more commonly associated with small rifle applications in cartridges like the 22 Hornet. The magnum pistol powders excel at supersonic applications with lighter bullets, where the faster burning propellants can offer higher pressures within the limited capacity of the Blackout. Slower powders, like CFE BLK, are often better fitted to subsonic loads because the charge masses can be larger, providing more gas volume to operate the AR-15 action. The brilliance of Shooters World SBR-SOCOM is that it neatly fills the gap between Winchester 296 and Accurate 1680. It is an impressively useful powder in the 300 Blackout. ...Read More >

Q: I’m looking for high-performance handloading data for 9mm Luger. Specifically, can you provide me with +P and +P+ loads? ...Read More >

Some foreign references refer to the .45 caliber as the American handgun caliber. This is despite the fact that American .45 caliber handgun barrels have .442-inch bores and .451-inch grooves, making them much closer to .44 than .45 caliber. Caliber has always been defined as bore (land–to–land diameter). Incidentally, riflefolk got it right: .45 caliber rifles have .450-inch bores and .458-inch grooves. Anyone finding this too complicated can wait until the ammunition industry converts to mickey-metric like the optics industry. Then, a box of 45 Auto will be marked 11.455x22.8mm, 14.9 grams. Simple! ...Read More >

Giuseppe Pietta started producing replica firearms between 1962 and 1964. However, his company’s most successful and best-known gun is the Single Action Army (SAA) pattern revolver. Beginning in 2003, Early Modern Firearms (EMF) worked with Italian-based Pietta to produce an SAA sixgun that would replicate the original Colt but with some minor changes. EMF began importing this gun as the Great Western II, which has been a huge success, but there is much more to this story. ...Read More >

I bought my first Model 1896 Broomhandle Mauser, a Bolo version, around 1990 for $250. In about NRA Good condition, the bore had been re-sleeved in 30 Mauser, making it a shooter, not a collectible, hence the reasonable price. However, Boxer primed ammunition for reloading, reasonably priced or not, I discovered, just wasn’t around. I don’t recall its source, but for handloading, I found 9mm Winchester Magnum brass formed into 30 Mauser. (Remember the 9mm Magnum? Winchester loaded the cartridge in the late 1970s for the Wildey pistol, which rather quickly failed financially, leaving lots of ammunition and brass collecting dust among irked folks at Winchester.) I sold the Broomhandle, brass and dies 20 years later in a safe-cleaning fit that also saw the re-homing of my Steyr Model 1911 pistol to a stranger, but that’s a different crying towel. ...Read More >

The 45 Super was featured in this column in Handloader (No. 339, August, 2022) and some of the information is included here because it blazed the trail that led to the development of the 40 Super. The 45 Super was created during the 1980s by Dean Grennell, who for many years was the managing editor and reloading columnist for Gun World magazine. He was also a good friend. Dean’s goal was to come up with a more powerful cartridge than the 45 ACP, one that could be safely fired in specially prepared 1911 pistols chambered for that cartridge. ...Read More >

Way back around the dawn of time, when Handloader was in its infancy, ballistician Dr. Lloyd Brownell undertook a series of experiments regarding chamber pressures. He published his findings in 15 articles in the 1960s and early 1970s; in 1990, Wolfe gathered these, along with several related pieces, into a book called Firearms Pressure Factors. ...Read More >

If one were to go through the long list of cartridges designed since the advent of smokeless powder and pick out one for which the most outrageous claims have been made, Savage’s 22 Hi-Power would probably be number one. ...Read More >

There are many modern cartridges that supersede virtually every aspect of the 25-20 Winchester, but they are mostly designed for bolt action or AR rifles and have very little charm. The 25-20, on the other hand, played an important role in early varmint cartridge development, is still useful and fun, and is housed in some wonderful leverguns. It is soft-spoken, accurate and inexpensive to handload. ...Read More >

Norma of Sweden developed the 358 Magnum specifically for the American market and introduced it in 1959. The initial publicity it received was mostly positive. Nils Kvale, who was head of the design department at Norma, had friends in important positions with more than one American ammunition company, and rumor had it that several 338 Winchester Magnum cases were on hand while he was designing his 358 Magnum. Whether or not that was true will probably never be substantiated, but the dimensions of the two cases are close enough to allow the Norma-designed case to be formed by necking up the case designed by Winchester with no fire-forming required. ...Read More >

Developing the specifications and protocol for an accurate handload for a collection of seven bolt-action rifles in 30-06 Springfield-caliber proved to be an interesting project. When the handloader is faced with the challenge of developing a recipe and specifications for multiple rifles in a collection or for a group of friends’ rifles, a few additional planning and measurement steps are required compared to reloading for only one rifle. ...Read More >

I carried a 44 Magnum through 23 years of guiding/outfitting to avert goat ropes initiated by the occasional client’s nervous glitches and the dicey recoveries that followed. I also used that 44 Magnum to bag all manner of big game, from feral hogs to whitetails to a Boone & Crocket Alaska caribou. In recent years, my 44 Magnum hasn’t seen much action. Today, I prefer a Springfield Armory 1911 Ronan in 10mm Auto for “wilderness” backup. ...Read More >