185gr Golden Sabers loaded on ~6.5 grains of HP38. Nice and warm, and just scratching at supersonic. The best part is, I didn’t have to do the work. A customer of mine took up reloading, and I’m just the (quite) willing guinea pig.
Given the current economic downturn and the trend of hoarding ammunition to the point of scarcity, many folks are turning to reloading. More power to them!
Reloading isn’t just about saving money. It allows you to tailor loads to your specific gun and situation, and once you’ve got the process down, you can achieve accuracy easily surpassing many factory loadings.
Case in point: I’ve got a marvelous .38 Special defensive load that runs a 125gr XTP over 8 grains of HS6. It reaches 1220ft/s out of a 4″ barreled revolver, and falls just subsonic in a snubnose, all while running at less that 20,000 CUP. That’s a bit warmish for factory loads, but still well within the tolerances of a good gun.
Of course, loaded ammunition isn’t the only thing that’s scarce at the moment. People have been hoarding primers like crazy the last few weeks. As it turns out, some yokel resurrected the “expiring primer” myth, and people are swallowing it.
Let me make one thing clear: there is no such thing as an “expiring” primer. Stored away from excessive humidity, primers will last well into our grandchildren’s old age. There is no way to make such a thing. If you don’t believe me, ask anyone with a background in chemistry.
What shocks me is that this happened once before, and nobody seems to remember. Back in the mid 1990’s, Winchester introduced a line of lead-free primers. Many of the units that shipped ended up being duds due to faulty testing.
Somehow, this spawned a myth that was funny for about five seconds, before it became utterly tiresome. It went something like this: the Clinton administration had secretly entered into a deal with Winchester’s parent company Ollin, in which it had been agreed to sabotage primers. If I recall correctly, these magic primers were supposed to expire anywhere from six to eighteen months from manufacture, depending on who you asked.
If you went all the way down the rabbit hole, this was all orchestrated to coincide with a ban on ammunition, completely wrecking all possible supply channels. Thing is, none of it was true then.
Nor is it true today.
I have this mental image of suburban basements and living rooms stacked floor to ceiling with ammunition and components that will never be used. It’s the same situation as we saw with military-pattern rifles a couple of months back. People are panicking and binge buying on speculation, and it’s hurting those who actually shoot.
It’ll pass in time, I know. Still, it’s quite annoying. Once the dust settles, I hope that we do see a renaissance in handloading. For people who shoot as much as they should, it’s a rewarding hobby, and some of the most venerable loadings around owe their existence to industrious folks who pushed the envelope a bit with custom loads.