One of the most important sets of tools in my reloading room is a book shelf filled with reloading manuals. I have well over a dozen and add new ones as they come out.
One of the first things you learn when you start reloading is that there is a dizzying array of components on the market. For metallic cartridge loaders, there are more powders, bullets, and primers available today than ever before. And shotgun loaders also have more and more powders, wads, and types of shot available each year. The reloading manuals help you narrow down your search for the right combination for your handgun, rifle, or shotgun and craft specific loads for your gun and load’s specific purpose. You want a varmint load for you .30-06? You certainly don’t want to buy expensive, premium big game bullets for the task. You want home defense loads for your .38 Special? Light, cast bullet plinking loads designed for volume shooting are not what you need to concoct. You want a hot sporting clays load for breaking long targets on that tough station at Raahauge’s?  You probably won’t want to use No. 9 shot and spreader wads. Reading the manuals can send you in the right direction for the array of loads you might want to put together for specific purposes.
More importantly, they also can keep you out of trouble and prevent you from damaging your guns with loads that develop excessive pressures. I don’t care if the load was recommended by your old redneck friend Billy Bob or that you’ve download it off the Internet somewhere (other than an official web site from a powder or bullet company), you need to check all loads in manuals before seating a single bullet or dumping a grain of powder.
All manuals stress safety and following load recommendations for a serious reason: If you don’t, you could blow up your gun and end up in an emergency room. But if you think of the manuals as cookbooks that help you find the perfect recipe, you should never have problems if you stick to the procedures they prescribe and never exceed the loads they recommend.
You should also stay current and use only the most recent books for cooking up your loads. Why?
First, components available today may not have been available just five years ago and even new bullets of the same weight you’ve been using might – no, will – have different pressures. So you need to have the latest books to use the most advanced powders and bullets. We are at a point where most of the bullet and powder makers are going to be revising all of their manuals, most of which last published books from 2002 to 2008 because there has been so much new and better product come out in the past five or six years. Hornady just released its 8th Edition Handbook of Cartridge Reloading. It has nearly 1,100 pages of data for all of the new non-lead and flex-tip Hornady bullets along with data for a host of new powders (Reloder 17, 4007 SSC, 8208 XBR, Hybrid 100V and many others). It also has data for cartridges that are new or newly available here. The new book had data for the 6.5 Grendel, 6.5 Creedmore, .30 TC, the 300 Ruger Centerfire Magnum (RCM), the 338 RCM, 308 Marlin, 338 Marlin Express, 375 Ruger, 416 Ruger, along with ancient African boomers like the 450 Nitro, 470 Nitro, and 500 Nitro because brass and rifles are now being made in this country for those rounds. It also has new data for all the classic rounds with the new components.
Second, the factories have better equipment today for measuring pressures and some loads suggested as top loads 20 years ago, have been found to be excessive and causing damage to guns. While I keep my old loading manuals as wonderful reference tools – and frequently the only place you can find data for older powders, bullets, and cartridges that might be obsolete today – I check their old loads against the current loading manuals before forging ahead.
For example, in my old Lyman 45th edition manual published in 1970, there are starting loads for the .250 Savage that are beyond what three of my books published in the last five years list as maximum for the same powder and bullet weights. Pressure standards were reduced for this old round once better equipment was available to see what loads developed and what old guns could withstand. Other cartridges, such as the .22-250, have remarkably consistent starting and maximum loads on powders that were available in 1970 and still used today.
Most reloaders even cross reference between the most recent companies’ manuals to make sure we don’t exceed top loads when developing a new load. Safe is always better than sorry. I pay more attention to accuracy when working up loads than reaching that maximum velocity. John Barsness, in the most recent issue of Handloader magazine (April, 2011) has a wonderful piece on “Mistakes and Miconceptions” among reloaders. One of the segments in that piece outlines how rifle shooters can find the best powder charge for accuracy in their gun with only a handful of loads.
Reloading manuals and other references, like Handloader magazine, are also great resources to peruse when you are considering adding another firearm to your repertoire. Many new cartridges and component combinations are designed for very specific purposes and may be ideal for your wants or needs. The reloading manuals and other reloading reference works are all great investments.
Jim Matthews is a long-time Southern California outdoor writer and publisher or Western Birds, The Wingshooter’s Newsletter. He can be reached at 909-887-3444, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , or via his web site at www.OutdoorNewsService.com. His column on reloading is a monthly feature.