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 I’m sometimes encountered with a conversation that goes like this: The other guy: “I want to learn how to load my own ammunition, but I don’t know where to begin. Help me!” Me: “What kind of a gun do you own?” The other guy: “I don’t know! Just tell me what to…

By Duane Thomas Some people opine that handloading is not worth the time. For some cartridges, I get that, you can buy factory ammunition that fully meets your needs. Having said that, in many cases, you can’t. In the overall scheme of things, there really aren’t that many factory loads. It might seem like there…

By Duane Thomas As you’re getting into handloading, you might look down inside a primer and notice it kind of looks like a radiation symbol down there, a trefoil with three triangular holes in it, and wonder “Why three holes?” The truth is it hasn’t invariably been that way. The portion of the primer that…

By John Kleespies After emptying a dispenser of gunpowder, you may notice a film of gray dust left behind and assume that it is residual gunpowder. In fact, you are probably looking at graphite. During the manufacture process of modern gunpowder, graphite is tumbled with the powder, thus coating the individual flakes in a protective layer…

By John Kleespies For a while now, I’ve wanted to conduct some sort of a bullet test to compare the consistency of rounds between various manufacturers. Having recently acquired an A&D Weighing FX-300i scale – which I’ll use for next-level powder distribution with my precision rifle loads – I now feel that I have the…

By John Kleespies During its manufacturing process, gunpowder is “glazed” (i.e., tumbled and coated) with graphite to reduce the likelihood of the grains rubbing against each other enough to create a static electric spark. Remember, we only want gunpowder to “spark off” at the times of our choosing; otherwise, it becomes an unintended detonation. Glazing…

By Duane Thomas When we say a primer is “sensitive,” we’re referring to the amount of force – firing pin impact energy – required to cause the priming compound to ignite. There are multiple factors determining a primer’s sensitivity, like the thickness of the cup itself, and the shape of the anvil (a piece of…