No offense taken. If I sounded cross, it was just because of text. Difficult to convey emotion, you understand.
I understand the premise of your thread. I am not sure of its effectiveness however. Simply because all of this information exists already in many forms in many different places. So a thread can not be created which will serve to further educate those asking for help on load dev, because if they were inclined to find this information, they could... easily. Instead they want to take the easy path and receive specialized expert help without researching enough to even provide the correct information required for us to competently help them. Thus, the only real answer to the problem is to answer their request for help with our subsequent request to go gain knowledge and provide sources to that knowledge. ... which this thread could be, indeed, yet it would be only another among a sea of threads already dedicated to this topic over the years. People's interpretation of the information they assimilate can be very suspect as well. Two people can read the same thing and come away with very different ideas of what the information was to convey.
So the way I see it, we have a simple choice to make when someone asks for help interpreting a load dev target:
Option 1) Be patient, grab their hand, and walk them through it step by step, pointing out everything along the way. Provide articles such as the one I wrote above as proof of concept.
Option 2) Scold them for not spending the time to do even the slightest research about one of the most frequently discussed aspects in all of precision rifle handloading.
Option 3) Ignore the thread and move along.
Compounding this above situation is the simple fact that you do not need any kind of credentials to give "advice" on the internet. So you'll have guys that have done this professionally for decades standing next to guys that just got started last year, both claiming to be correct. The professionals rarely tolerate the latter for long, as there seems to be a limitless stock of disrespectful new people whom are so smart they can just "think" about something and have all the answers without even having to actually do anything. As with every previous thread like this, if you post a set number of targets, you'll get people recommending virtually every single one of them at some point. By that measure of load development you could literally blindfold someone and hang the targets on a dart board and be just as successful. As Frank is so fond of saying... people simple do not know what they do not know. Sadly this doesn't stop people from "thinking" they know and making sure everyone else "knows" what they "know" also.
I admire you and your intentions here in this thread. Though I think it will not stop the ever-present requests for help with load dev target interpretation. I also do not think you will ever get those that lack experience to refrain from offering their opinions anyway. I've done load development on 8 rifles just this last week. Pretty common week this time of year. That will continue through most of the summer. I'm going to guess most people aren't shooting that much with as many different rifles. No doubt some are, and they too will have a lock on the process before long with that kind of cadence. You can't buy that kind of experience and you can't read enough to gain that kind of competence.
Regardless of whether I'm right or wrong, one thing stands true above all else: Those that truly want to know the answers to the questions posed, have no choice but to get to pressing triggers and learn their way through it.
Which brings us to the primary point of this windy post of mine. I'm not concerned whether I'm right or wrong as it pertains to load development target interpretation. I'm only concerned with whether or not the rifle/shooter in question are able to find a workable load or not. How it happens is of little concern to me... because frankly, if all of this experience has taught me anything; nothing works all the time. For instance, a couple days ago I worked a load for a 6.5SAUM that needed berger hybrids stuffed into the lands before it shot even remotely well. Never seen that before with hybrids... yet that's what needed to happen in order for it to get beneath half MOA.
The concepts are there to be read, everywhere. Shooting lots of rifles needs to happen to gain experience. There are always new concepts to proof. There are always new rifles to be shot. It never ends.
Thanks for your contributions Ghengis.
