mikld said:
Reloading manuals aren't hard and fast formula, but they tell us what a test technician found and is safe....
Hi,
True to a point! Problem is, they don't tell where that technician found things started to go sideways, or how badly they did when that happened.
My uncle worked for a company which makes solid rocket fuel: smokeless powder on steroids, for lack of a better description. It turns out, though he was neither a gun owner nor a handloader for himself, he did a lot of handloading in the the lab, as they used shotshells in setting up their initial models for the computer on what was going to happen. They were pretty good at it, too.
Until one day, when they'd been "working up" a load much as we do at our loading benches, except they had a bazillion dollars worth of test equipment we don't. The load had been progressing in a fairly linear fashion. So their predictions were that the next increment should produce x number of PSI in the predictable fashion it had been. They loaded it up, and my uncle took it into the test firing chamber (he said it looked kinda like a blasting cabinet, except for being supposedly explosion resistant) and set up to fire the first round.
KABOOM! It was one of those situations where the last load was just under the safe limit, and it took almost nothing above to simply fly off the chart, regardless of what the computer had predicted. Uncle was injured as the test chamber came apart, and it was touch and go whether he'd lose his sight (fortunately, he ended up ok.) Point being, the lab techs who write our loading manuals deal with this kind of stuff all day, and are prepared for "bad results." We're not. So it doesn't bother me a bit to take those guys' word for what works and honor their limits, not does it bother me to tell Bubba he ain't got a clue when he says "Just a pinch more oughta be fine!"
I know, I know: there are a lot of people who subscribe to the "It ain't blow'd up yet, so it must be safe" school of thought. After damaging a gun beyond repair through such ignorance myself when I first got started 50+ yrs ago (one of the dangers of being self taught with no mentor or overseer), and seeing my whole display case full of bits and pieces gathered from people who did the same at our range, I'm just not one of them.
Rick C