Just thought I'd toss this out there. I have repeated a lot of mistakes that I should have known from experience not to, so I made a list for myself to post over my bench. Some will get folks' feathers ruffled - they shouldn't, these are for me, if you don't like them, then by all means you do you. Keep in mind Im purely a recreational/hobbyist shooter not a competitive shooter. Hopefully some of it resonates, and may help some of the Newbies from making costly mistakes that I have made over the years in terms of time and money.
RELOADING RULES FOR LONG RANGE SHOOTING
- Don’t load for speed and compromise brass life & safety
- Don’t load for 100 yard accuracy and ignore velocity SD; it catches up to you downrange
- If you’re anywhere near a max load without pressure signs and you have good accuracy (1/2 MOA) & velocity SD (<10), STOP. That’s your load.
- Don’t ignore pressure signs or engage in wishful thinking; when the bolt or the brass speaks to you, listen to it.
- When working up a load without a lot of available data, use 15 cases over and over so if you go overpressure and blow the pockets, you limit the damages. Pulling bullets and dumping charges is a serious buzzkill
- Don’t skimp on components or mix and match; That means Lapua, RWS, Alpha brass unless it's not available. Your factory ammo once-fired brass may be a bargain up-front, but the lack of consistency and longevity compared to Lapua down the road will have you regretting it
- Don't use temperature sensitive powders unless you have no other choice or are not shooting long range. This means most of the Alliant powders.
- If you have done everything right and have a good, consistent load but have a bad day shooting, don’t reinvent your load. You settled on it, after much toil, for a reason. You just had a bad day.
- Never skimp on your barrel. It is the one thing you can't change easily, and if you burn up 300 rounds in load development trying to get a turd to shoot, you're out all the time & $$$ of "load development" AND the "cheap" barrel
- Don’t stockpile brass – good cases last 10+ firings. A couple hundred cases will get you to your next barrel
- Shoot a batch of 100 cases until it’s toast before dipping into new brass; 100 toasted + 100 brand new cases is worth more than 200 once-fired cases, when you change something and try to sell it
- Don’t leave excess lube (especially lanolin) on your cases; it will attract dirt and gum up your chamber (and cause pressure spikes). Wipe it off with a rag dampened in a gentle solvent.
- Don’t waste time with tedious manual tasks of dubious benefit, e.g., cleaning primer pockets every firing, deburring flash holes, turning necks, measuring runout, measuring primer seating depth, weight sorting anything. Especially things that must be done every reloading cycle. Use that time to shoot and have fun and refine your skills
- If you’re spending more time reloading than shooting, you’re spending too much time reloading.
- Do things in large(r) batches whenever possible to save time reconfiguring equipment and for consistency, e.g., annealing, brass cleaning, trimming. Batches maximize consistency
- If it doesn’t shoot, it’s either you, the barrel, the bullet, the powder/charge, or the seating depth. It's not the primer. It's not the fucking primer.
- If you’ve changed a variable 5 times and the problem persists, that variable is not the problem.
- Guys never post pictures of their worst groups and velocity SD. What you see online is cherry-picked and unrepresentative of the average. Don’t chase somebody else's unicorns.
- Don't cherry-pick your own data/results. You will be reinventing your load after the next session shows regression to the mean.
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