S9 Episode 280: Reloading Safety: The Dangerous Cost of Complacency

While this class was going on, there's something that we talk about, and we're filming our, our Patreon reloading class.

So one of the things a lot of our customers will get into is reloading, and eventually it's for two reasons.

One is to save money.

The other is usually to try to make better ammunition than, than what you can buy.

And what I find with reloaders, especially for most of the personalities, is two things can happen that really can get you in trouble, and this is really important, so I really hope you stick around to the end of this podcast.

The first part is what I call due diligence, and I really preach the daylights out of this in our reloading class that we teach.

In other words, when you're doing your research for a particular caliber, don't just turn to one book.

Have multiple books open from different ages, from different time frames.

So for example, if I'm reloading for a 308, I've got books that go the whole way back to the '70s, and I'm able to look at all these different, you know, case capacities, powders, you know, really paint a great picture on the, A, when I, when I narrow down, you know, what bullet weight I'm gonna use, those, the list of powders.

And then I get to compare powder charges.

You know, where is min and max amongst all these books using these bullets? And it's a great resource, but it also lets you to look at occasionally you find outliers, or in the older books sometimes you'll find that there's a little bit more powder capacity than what the newer books will publish.

So for example, a 30-06, you know, you could have rifles out there that really are 100 years old with that chamber and 100-year-old barrel.

So are they really designed to take the modern pressure of modern, uh, bolt action rifle ammunition? Maybe, maybe not.

So you might find that sometimes they actually dial these loads back a little bit on published data just because they're thinking of all the different rifles that this might actually be put in.

So, uh, you get into that, then you get the difference between the bolt gun and the gas gun.

But doing your due diligence.

And then the other thing is, is complacency.

You know, we are really, we, we take everything like the gospel truth.

So you go out and you buy one reloading manual, and then you look up all your load development, and you think that, yeah, this is it.

This is the most, this is the newest one.

This is the modern one.

This one's gonna actually get me great ammunition.

Um, I shouldn't have to buy new.

This should be the most accurate information out there available.

And you can really get yourself in trouble.