Duplicating Factory Ammunition

Sometimes the reward is worth the work.

- John Barsness

Half a century ago, most handloaders firmly knew they could beat factory ammunition in both velocity and accuracy. Improved accuracy was easily proven, but velocity was a guess. Electronic chronographs were so expensive few existed outside major ballistics laboratories. Shooters instead depended on velocities listed in ammunition catalogs and handloading manuals, which were regarded somewhat like the National Enquirer: Many people believed everything printed inside, while others suspected the “facts” might be fiction.

Eventually the price of chronographs started coming down. I purchased my first from a now-defunct company in 1979. Considering inflation, it cost about the same as an Oehler 35P or Labradar today, something of a stretch for a college student but far less than the chronographs used by ammunition companies.

Like many chronographs back then, “reading” velocity involved turning a knob around a numbered dial: If a light lit up next to a number, you recorded that number. A complete turn of the dial resulted in a multi-digit number, which was not velocity. Instead you looked up the number in a booklet, which converted it to velocity. The process was slow but did result in non-fiction.

The first ammunition chronographed was some .22 Long Rifle loads. The results came very close to factory-listed velocities, so I chronographed some handloads. This could have taken all day, except I only owned three centerfire rifles: a pair of Remington 700s (.243 and .270 Winchesters) and a sporterized 1903 Springfield with the military .30-06 barrel.

Only the .30-06’s handload, a Nosler 200-grain Partition combined with Hodgdon’s original milsurp H-4831, duplicated the velocities listed in my old Speer Number 6 manual. (I also owned several newer manuals, but they only listed IMR-4831, not H-4831.) Sadly, the .243 and .270 handloads ran considerably slower than published data.