By Duane Thomas As you approach the wonderful world of handloading, you might be asking yourself, "Why is the unit of measurement for bullet weight, and powder charge weight, called "grains"? I know I did. Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear! (In this case, ancient Mesopotamia.) The Lone Gunwriter rides again!…

By Duane Thomas I find it really interesting that, although the Boxer primer was invented by a Brit, and the Berdan primer was invented by an American, they have each become the dominant primer in the OPPOSITE country from their inventor’s. I have put some time into considering why that’s the case. Edward Mounier Boxer…

By Duane Thomas As you approach the wonderful world of a handloading, and ammunition in general, you might be asking yourself, “Why are some primers gold-colored, and some silver-colored, and is there anything to be preferred between the two?” Why, I’m glad you asked! Before we go any further, in order to prevent diving down…

By Duane Thomas When we say “pierced primer” that means, when the round fires, instead of the primer remaining intact, a hole forms where the firing pin’s hit it. Let’s walk through why that might happen, why it’s a bad thing, and how to prevent it. WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN 1. The firing pin hits the…

By Duane Thomas While serious handloaders pride themselves on turning out ammunition so bright and shiny and well-assembled that, absent a few nicks and scratches to the cases as they cycled through an autopistol’s action, they could be mistaken for factory ammo, there are a few things that need to be understood in that regard…

By Duane Thomas There are little tricks you learn, as you become an experienced handloader, to make the process go faster and more smoothly. One of them concerns how you pick up primers out of your primer flip tray. A primer has two sides, a smooth, solid, shiny side, and the side containing the anvil,…

By Duane Thomas All bullet types have their own specific requirements, things you have to pay attention to, when loading them. Bare lead bullets are no exception. One such area to monitor is seating dies getting clogged with bullet lube thus reducing loaded rounds’ overall length. Bare lead bullets will feature one or more grooves…

By Duane Thomas The term “misfire” means, when we pull the trigger on a firearm, the cartridge does not fire, we get a click instead of a bang. There are a whole host of reasons that might happen, but fortunately by far the most common is also the easiest to avoid. (Misfires in rimfire ammunition…

By Duane Thomas These days plated bullets are very popular for handloading, for a couple of reasons: They can be driven to higher velocities than soft bare lead bullets without leading the barrel, but they cost less than true jacketed bullets. Thus, many people see them as a nice middle ground between lead and jacketed.…

By Duane Thomas For most serious handloaders, perfecting a particular handload, getting it EXACTLY the way we want it, can be a time-consuming, painstaking process of adjustment until everything is just-so. Okay, we’re not getting the velocity we want; we adjust the powder bar. The load is not feeding; we adjust the overall length to…

By John Kleespies A handheld chamfer and deburring tool is a double-ended tool that looks like Flash Gordon’s rocket ship. Or… rather… Dr. Zarkov’s rocket ship, to which Flash availed himself. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll call it Flash’s ship from here on out… The pointy end of the rocket ship is used to remove burrs from the…

By Duane Thomas In the first three parts of this five-part series on the components of priming compounds, we discussed the initiator which is stored energy, the sensitizer which places the initiator in a more-excited state thus makes it more likely to detonate when exposed to impact energy, and the frictionator which creates little micro-hotspots…