THE SAME OLD – OVER AND OVER

RELOADER’S PRESS

- Dave Scovill

Handloaders are by and large creatures of habit, following a fairly strict routine with each cartridge, bullet or powder. The “process” helps to avoid unforeseen problems that might result in excess pressure with self-ejecting primers or little or no powder in the case, which usually means the end of the day at the range to go home and prod the stuck bullet out of the bore. I’ve managed to accomplish both in the same rifle, the same powder, primer and brass in the same week . . . way back in the early 1970s.

I attributed the cause of both problems to distractions. It doesn’t really matter what the distractions were, since anything that draws attention away from the matter at hand is bad news. In those days, I didn’t have a loading block. Following the squib event, I went out to the barn and made one out of a nice piece of redwood 2x6. The hole spacing wasn’t perfect, but the blocks allowed for the last and possibly most important observation, verifying the charge weight on the Redding powder scale, pouring it into the case and looking down in all of the cases (with a flashlight) to make sure they are all filled to the same level.