Working up a Load

Of critical importance to getting the most accurate round possible is working up your load. You can spend thousands of dollars on tools, measure the inside and outside circumference of your brass, cut individual sticks of powder in half to get just the right amount of powder in each case, or even weigh primers individually, but none of these will help if your rifle does not like the powder and bullet combination that you have chosen.

Why:
If you have ever used a tuning fork, you will know that it will only resonate when struck. If you've ever used a tuning fork incorrectly, you will know that you can change how it sounds by hitting it on different types of objects, or by changing how much force you hit it with. The sound you are hearing in all of these instances is the tines of the fork moving at different frequencies. The pressure of impact on the tines caused the change in frequency. A more forceful hit makes the sound last longer; hitting on a softer surface mutes the tone, so it doesn't sound as clear. The more forceful hits have more pressure, and the softer surfaces have a different wave of pressure.

The same thing is happening to your barrel when you fire a round. The powder burning in the case builds pressure. This pressure is what drives the bullet out of the chamber, down the barrel, and ultimately to your target. Different charges of powder will result in different pressures, which changes how your barrel vibrates. Different barrels, even from the same manufacturer will react differently to the same powder charge.

What You'll Need to Look For:

• Brass: You need to use brass in the same condition for the most accurate setup. If all you are going to do is shoot new brass, then that is what you need to use. If you are going to use all once-fired brass, then you will have to get once-fired brass of the same headstamp, preferably fired out of the same rifle. Each step away from new brass will decrease your accuracy slightly, but there are other methods to compensate (neck-sizing, concentricity gauges, etc.). The key here is get your brass as uniform as you can.
• Primers: Primers should be ideally of the same lot, from the same manufacturer. The beginning pressure that primers exert and the amount of spark they give off will vary slightly between lot to lot, and could vary significantly between manufacturers. A different lot of primers could cause a slightly different point of impact than previous examples.
• Powder: Like primers, powder can vary between lots. Ideally, you should use powder of the same lot for as many rounds as you are loading.

How to Do It:

1. Get 100 cases sized and primed. How you do this is not important in the focus of this article. The key thing to remember is it needs to be consistent with how you plan to load your ammunition after you have found your most accurate powder charge.
2. Using the reloading manual of your choice, find the minimum and maximum powder charges. This will be your powder range. Divide your range into 10 separate charges. These will be what you charge with in your next step.
   For example: If your minimum charge is 25.5 grains of powder, and your maximum charge is 30 grains of powder, your charges will look like this:
   
   • 25.5gr
   • 26.0gr
   • 26.5gr
   • 27.0gr
   • 27.5gr
   • 28.0gr
   • 28.5gr
   • 29.0gr
   • 29.5gr
   • 30.0gr
3. Charge 10 cases with each charge from the last step.
4. Seat and crimp your bullet as you normally would.
5. Clearly label your rounds with as much information as you can muster. Keep each set of rounds separated from the others, so there will be less chance of confusion.

OFF TO THE RANGE:
Your next step will be to do the most fun part, shooting your loaded ammo! You will want to take 10 targets and head to the range. Set your targets out at the distance you have zeroed your rifle. Single-load your rifle and fire ten rounds at your first target. Don't worry about adjusting your sights. There may be a small amount of difference from where you zeroed at to where it is impacting now. Mark on the target the load that you fired. Inspect each piece of brass for signs of high pressure.

Continue shooting 10 rounds at a different target, marking it, and inspecting the brass until you run out of ammo. Compare the targets. You should notice that two or three targets are giving much better groups than the rest. These are the sweet spot for your rifle. This load will perform adequately for your rifle. If you want to, you can take the ammo back to your press and start again.

EXAMPLE: 
Let's say that using our example from the previous range that 28.0 and 28.5 and 29.0 gave you the tightest groups, with 28.5 being the tightest. In this instance, I would repeat the above process with the charges by 0.1gr increments, and see which one of these is the best.

FREQUENT ISSUES:
Occasionally, the powder you chose just doesn't seem to work well. Unfortunately, this just means that you need to go back to the drawing board and start again with a different powder.

How do You Make Your Ammunition?

We have been in the business of supplying customers with reloading components, supplies, and information for almost 20 years. During that time, we have learned that are two ways to look at the process of building ammunition: handloading and reloading. Both have their place in the world of shooting, and neither one is better than the other. In fact, most people who reload will often handload as well, and vice versa.

Slash K's bullets and brass can be used by someone who reloads or handloads, and Slash K has numerous ways to help you do either one.

Reloading

Reloading is simplest of the two. We define reloading as building ammunition efficiently, quickly and most importantly safely. While accuracy and consistency are important, they tend to take a backseat to the other being able to make ammunition quickly. When reloading, you have often already done all of the necessary work involved in handloading: you know what powder charge works best with your bullet, and your seating depth.

Handloading:

Handloading is a slow, deliberate process. When handloading, you are painfully crafting each individual round, ensuring that the powder charge is as close to identical as possible. The each bullet is set to as near the same depth as possible. Each piece of brass has been trimmed, sized, swaged, reamed, and uniformed to the greatest of your ability. By tightening your groups by a thousandth of an inch at a time, you are ensuring that the only thing that will be wrong with the round you fired will be the nut behind the trigger.

How Slash K Can Help:

In addition to our components, Slash K offers some tools that will work well to assist in either type of loading.

• The 550b Turbo Bearing: Our Turbo-Bearing helps significantly in both types of loading. For reloading, it allows a smoother rotation of the shellplate. This smoother rotation makes it easier to make ammunition faster.
  This will also help in handloading. Because you can get the shellplate tighter than you can with the factory indexing sprocket, you will notice less variation within the bullet seating and primer seating.

• Redding Reloading Dies: Redding's dies are precision engineered to exacting specifications. If you are handloading, these dies will assist you in getting the absolute best results available from almost any other dies on the market. Between neck-sizing, precision seating, or a taper-crimp, these dies will give you the best results.