Reduced loads for fun, and economy ~ Low recoil, low cost, more shooting!

welcome back you know is really looking forward to taking you out shooting today I had a bunch of 45 ACPs made up I was going to go to my 1911 and having all kinds of fun but that's not going to happen today because it's pouring out and it looks like the weather's locked in for the foreseeable future for the next two or three days at least so what I really want to do today is answer a question which is sometimes been asked about reduced loads I've gotten a number of queries from people about whether they can reduce the charges that are listed in the manual below the lowest ones listed my recommendation is not to do that while it may be safe with certain powders it's Mother it's not a safe way to proceed because those those have not been categorically tested by the laboratory that produced publication and whenever you're dealing with whenever you're dealing with charges that have not been tested there is always the possibility that you could be running into unknown territory and you could destroy a gun or hurt yourself or somebody else at the range and when I say that certain powders no there's no specific classification or or any readily readily obtainable information on the phenomenon known as detonation or explosive conduct inside of a chamber but it does occur it's it's a fact that it has has occurred on frequent occasions and often times with charges which were used over and over and over again sometimes by shooters who would use those same charges most of their life it can be it can be a very very dangerous thing it's most it's most often associated with slow-burning powders powders which are in the in the slowest burning categories of rifle cartridges you know the the deposit which you used in Magnum rifles in small bore high-velocity rifles 4830 14350 thing Toto's like that and your other Magnum powders they have been known to be associated with detonation if they're not completely loaded to full capacity now the while that's true and while they are the powders that are most often associated with it it is it has been pretty well documented that there have been cases where reduced load besides those have been responsible for detonation and involving more traditional you know medium burning and even you know even quicker burning powders when they are used at rates which are grossly below say 50 percent of maximum so that's why most of your mostly of colors that are listed in your manuals will show probably somewheres on the order of 80 percent density or more not only not only for safety facts factors but it's also to provide best powder positioning within the case so that you have consistent ignition because the distance that of the powder is from the primer can have some significant effect on its accuracy and it's the initial burning of the powder when you reduce it tried below 80 percent there's a possibility that the ignition won't be consistent from one shot to the next if the powder is not positioned exactly the same now for a great number of years it was recommended for people who wanted to reduce charges those'll listed maximum to use you know fat the faster burning powders within a given excuse me within a given cartridge and not to use anything anything less than the quickest burning powders in other words the ones that had that showed the the smallest the smallest load density in a given cartridge and the lowest velocity so those were the powder that they recommended in conjunction with filler materials now filler material was traditionally for many years kapok and Dacron loads were the two Biggie's kapok and Dacron kapok was a that's a buoyant flotation material which were used in Navy and civilian personal flotation devices and and you know both bumpers and things like that dog dummies you know that is thrown out into the water paint canvas covered dog retrieving dummies were made of kapok in most cases it's it's a material that was basically stuck down on top of a tragic powder a reduced tragic powder to keep its position within the case to maintain that uniformity of ignition that I spoke of and it also added density in the case to prevent it from rattling around and you know causing other other issues but it was it was also there to ostensibly to protect the shooter from having issued with differences in powder charge in other words if you had if you had a bunch of cases all loaded up you had your you had your filler material pre-measured and you would stuff it inside each case and if one of those cases wouldn't get stuck your new lid with an overcharge you knew that you had too much powder in the case so it would also preclude it would also preclude the overcharging of a case by the fact you were putting up trying to put a filler in but there are other ways to get around that in recent years it is you know reliable sources laboratories and things like that have have determined that the practice of using filler material and one of the most caught well and more commercial materials became cream of weak tie was the cereal you know that was one of the things that was commonly used for filler materials as well as Dacron and kapok very inexpensive but you know any of these fillers sometimes would become intermingled sometimes the powders would shift shifted position within the case which wasn't necessarily such a such a problem with things like cakewalk and Dacron but it could happen if it wasn't completely filled properly but the the thing that many of these studies have recently found in the last number of years and I'm not sure exactly when this status surfacing but I can tell you it's been in recent years it's believed that the phenomenon of detonation or unexpected explosive discharges have been associated with with using filler material and so you'll see you'll see a lot less written about using filler material and reduced charges with standard powders the things that used to be written up commonly you know like the late great Dean Grinnell and people like that used to used to popularize the use of and and they were they were fabulous they were fabulous authors that knew what they were doing with this stuff and but you know that this we learn as we go along and one of the things they're learning is that there's there's some questions about the reliability of such charges and that's always something that piques my thought whenever there's a question I just assumed steer clear if there's a if there's another way to get around things you know there's no reason there's no reason to take chances if there's no reason to take chances if there's another way to do something which is entirely safe that's the best a way to proceed what I recommend and this is probably I consider this the authoritative source for our reduced load is this Lyman cast handbook cast bullet handbook this has got every contra Genet handgun and rifle cartridge in it whether you're loading up a 3030 whether you're loading up a 300 Winchester Magnum or this is even this has even got a 338 Lapua in it it's got it's got them all plus it's got all your handgun loads for standard cast bullets and you know you'd be surprised a lot of people are not familiar with the fact that that you can get cast bullets for your rifle you for instance it is here's a 308 Winchester page it lists now this is not certainly not all the different task bullet shapes and weights that are available for the 308 Winchester there are in fact as another there's another pager over here this is certainly not the not the end all of the various bullet weights and styles that are that are made because this only list for instance there's a few lineman naturally this is a lineman book so Lyman is a manufacturer of very high-grade cast-iron bullet molds so it lists although the Lyman both but also in here under 308 it lists a Lee bullet 450 grain it lists well apparently they were all in 308 they're all the ones that they look to roll alignment but there's also Seiko and icbs unlisted under other under contra jizz other than that caliber me see 30 to 40 for instance our CBS and Seiko which is reading so you have you have different manufacturers with different bullet styles and weights that are listed in this book and the reduction in charges is quite is quite significant for instance if you if you're interested in loading up the seven millimeter seven millimeter await you know that standard standard velocities with 140 grain bullet run upwards of twenty eight hundred feet per second and if you reduce the tractors you might you might be able to get down legitimately to twenty five twenty four hundred feet per second or something like that with standard putters but if you're if you're loading 100 135 grain Lyman bullet you can you can very easily find loads that will reduce the velocity down to 1500 1495 feet per second with a Lyman number two eight seven three four six bullet that's the catalog number for that bullet so you can you can be down to fourteen hundred and something feet per second with that particular bullet or you can drive faster bullets heavier bullet rather 160 grain bullets you can you can drive those down to 1,400 feet per second as fast as 2,300 feet per second so this really gives you a huge selection of reduced loads that are a lot of fun so if I want to go out and take my take my 32 Winchester special and rather than rather than shooting standard factory loads which are 170 grain 165 grain bullets shocking out at you know 2300 feet per second I'll tell you you know wearing a shirt like this on a summer day with this steel buck plate it gets a little bit in a hurry so that's sort of load is not what I would say is a fun plinking load you know you have to you have to put some sort of a padded material on here or put a padding on your on your shirt or something but that's not really something that's a lot of fun to clink with so but on the other hand I can load up some nice 32 special cartridges with reduced loads using the the powders which are recommended and get the velocities way down I can get the velocity down significantly to in fill in any load category that I want well let's just see for instance what that would do say you had a 30 30 I'll I'll say that we're dealing with a 30 30 now you don't have to shoot hundred you don't have to shoot hundred and 70 grain bullets you can 250 grain bullets and there are others out there that are even lighter than that but I can I can reduce the charge it was 150 grain Bullock using trail boss powder down to eleven hundred and thirty nine feet per second that's really a that's really a cool load for for plinking and it's you know it's barely it barely over the speed of sound you might even be subsonic in some cases but that's the sort of thing that's a lot of fun you know you could whether you're whether you're just punching holes and tin cans rolling them around and sometimes you know when you when you have a load that's a little bit reduced like that with a big bullet the can actually moves rather than just sitting there with hold going through it because that's what usually happens when you have high velocity bolts is you don't even you don't even move the can they just simply stay there but by the same token I can work up loads that will get up to standard velocities and beyond I can go up to toward you know 23:55 with a lineman cast bullet so there's a great there's a great wealth of information in here and this is a resource that everybody who is interested in hand loading should have this is again this is the Lyman calf bullet handbook now is it usable only for cast bullets say your say you're just interested in buying your jacketed bullets in a box the way you've always been buying your bullets for your standard loads certainly you can use you know you can use you can use standard bullets jacketed ammo in that in that data without any difficulties whatsoever simply work up your load don't just accept expect that you can use the highest maximum charges without working your charges up as you would normally do it's just the same thing you just normally you would you would customarily do you work your charges up by how much and what what amount of increment well you just simply reduce the increment to the to the level of the charge that you're using in other words this scale down so if you're using for instance where the 308 for instance may have a standard charge weight of around around 40 grains of powder where you're using increments of four tenths of a grain to work up your Chargers these these loads may be down as low as 15 or 20 grains of powder so you could be working up your increments in say two tenths of a grain at a time so in other words just moving a decimal point over from a rounded off average of your taste capacity so that's what you do you just simply you just simply follow along the recipe for cash bullet loads but use your own use your own jacketed bullets and you'll be fine and you have some extraordinarily fun shooting they're useful for so many things you know if you want to have if you want to have a great small game load for your 3006 that won't blow that won't blow your small game to smithereens you know at 3,000 feet per second you know you can get it you can get a cast bullet load that will fly out you gun it at less than 2,000 feet per second maybe even down to 1,400 1,500 feet per second that will really chug along now remember that's not that's not over slow that's that's a that's a heavy bullet you know anything like 150 grain bullet is traveling at supersonic speeds is still in excess of the speeds that you encounter with most of multi rimfire cartridges and certainly is going to be a lot of a lot of power on a relative scale is not a lot of power compared to its full-size counterpart do you know it's factory counter property you can you can reduce the loads you can also reduce the loads for very very practical purposes if you've got somebody in the house who is a small small framed individual they just can't stand you know shoot just 308 or even you 30 30 Taylor down load load things down have some good practice sections with some very very reduced mild load now you're going to have to Jack your sights up you know you because the bullets going to come out and it's going to be it's going to be heading to the earth quicker than it does when it's shooting out at its standard velocity so you have to take that into consideration you might be standing you might be standing 50 yards away from a target expecting to see holes in the paper when a reality they are going underneath the paper that it can be that significant so with a gun like with a gun like this it's kind of handy because you just simply take the you just simply take the the ladder and throw it up a couple of notches or more and you'll have yourself you'll have yourself the the sight in that you need so you can you can adapt your gun to to those circumstances if you're shooting if you're shooting a 22 to 50 and you're shooting reduced loads at you know 1,900 2,000 feet per second or something like that it's just simply a matter of just changing the scale on your your turret and bringing the brain the crosshairs accordingly so those are all those are all super reasons to you know consider we do it slowed you're in a different world of powders now so let me let me explain a little bit about some of the things that you need to do to be very very cautious the powders that you're going to be using for these reduced loads that don't require fillers remember that as I say filler material has been blamed they can't in a laboratory they can't replicate this stuff for some strange reason it evades replication in laboratory conditions they try it so often and they just can't seem to get a gun to detonate on demand but they know what happened so they and they know that it occurs with with unexpected results that it just suddenly happened so what they do what they do know is that certain powders don't need to have a bulky case they don't need to be filled up in order to burn correctly.i without regard to party positioning it was oftentimes seen at ranges where you know back in the day when people would shoot not all people who shot reduced standard powders would use fillers even even then there were people who just simply didn't want to bother you that didn't want to bother or they were skeptical about using filler material so you would see them at the target line it ranges which would allow it they would they would chamber around and then they would bounce it on there they would bounce it on their arm and then slowly lower down to maintain that position from one shot to another so used to see that quite frequently and is still done it's still done on occasion now but the powders which you typically use now for indifference is listed in this in this book right here they really don't need to have that any more than you have to worry about the positioning of you know red god powder or something like that in your 44 special they just simply burn so efficiently that the powder flash inside the case reaches it and they they always burn with the same consistency so the filler material is unnecessary however this brings up a very very serious situation and that's the possibility of overcharging some of these powders can very easily be double charged without without detection in my 44 special load video I show you how to take a flashlight and to use the flashlight down the cases to illuminate any cases that were double charged and you could easily see them with that big gaping hole and the same with 38 special and 357 magnums is very easy to spot anything that's overfilled because the flashlight easily points it out but when you've got it when you've got a case when you get a case which is a bottleneck case for instance if you're if you say you're loading reduced trying to see a 223 it's not easy to see down inside that case you really can't you really can't see down inside that case even with a flashlight and reliably see with your naked eye whether that case has been appropriately filled but what you can do and which what's absolutely imperative is that you use some sort of a gauge and I'm speaking here of when we're loading from a block if we're loading from a progressive machine that dispenses the color automatically as it goes around whirligig then it takes care of the safety issue all by itself because it can't be double charged most most progressive machines simply can't double charge because they can't they can't go through the same cycle twice but I have here I just simply made a just a Rube Goldberg gauge this is nothing but a door hinge and I and I I simply put a piece of tape at the standard I take a case which is felled to the depth that's necessary for a properly charged case then I go one after another and I verify each one and there we go you see I did this for a demonstration purposes true this is not this is not something that I did by accident this is something I did and setup purposely in advance so there we go that's a case which has been grossly overfilled and that one I can I can immediately set aside and call out so that one there I know that I had for whatever reason my concentration had been disturbed and I can continue to go on down through and there's another problem a case that hasn't been a case that hasn't been filled at all which can be every bit as similarly dangerous because I could I could fire that you know in a hasty in a hasty shooting situation I could fire that put a bullet in my bore or struck the bore in the next round we'll take the gonna pack so that's just an illustration of how to gauge your cases that's the only way to reliably tell that you have all your cases properly filled and I really I can't overemphasize the need for gauging a cases when you have when you have such powders that all you need to have is a device like that or you can just take a piece of dull and put a line on it at your standard load and go through all your cases and it's very very simple it's worth it's worth the trip it's worth the effort that you take to go around the cases no matter how many it is just to make sure that you not double charged it if you double charged one of these things your pressures will go right through the roof and they go to a nice model 94 or amo 700 or whatever it is it's going to take it Patt guaranteed and it probably will it probably will hurt you too because when these things when these things blow they blow with vigor there are a host of things that a person really needs it's a whole nother world when it comes to cast bullets and reduced loads I I can't tell you again I recommend getting this getting this book because the the preface to the book the beginning chapters tell you all about telling you more you more than you really need to know in some cases tell you all about metallurgy and tell you about things that give you it gives you stuff that means above my head way way above my head atomic percentage of being antimony and stuff like that I mean I don't know it doesn't it doesn't relate to me but there's other things in here that will tell you about for instance how to address certain types of certain types of firearms with cast bullets especially there are certain things that are not there are certain things that are not necessarily going to work out if you've got a rifle for instance with Marlin microgroove rifling right rifling with the micro groove for the very fine rifling don't spin well with with cast bullets and with would we even with reduced loads that rifling just does not grab the dekat the cash led bullet properly that's why certain that's why certain rifles that Marilyn makes advertised ballard rifling because they know that they're likely to be used by people who do bullet casting so be mindful of that I'm not saying not to try it if you want to give it a try but I'd say rather than going out and buying buying a mold for it first of all just order up a few bullets from from a bullet manufacturer who makes cast bullets and lubricates them and try them if they were a gun if you can find a load of the speed that works that's fine because there are sometimes you know microgroove barrels that will accept cast bullets if they've if they're not you know sped up too fast but those are the important issues to make sure that to make sure that you don't try to our reduced loads that are below the stated minimums listed in a loading man that's that's a no-no and if you if you don't know what I mean I'm just turning for instance yes if I can find the crackers at everybody we're fine familiar so here's the 308 Winchester the if I were loading hundred fifty grain bullets and I were using a standard powder of forty-eight IMR 4895 the lowest charge lifted this thirty seven point seven grains now there are quite a number of people out there who would say that 4895 is one of those powders that is in this is it's in a medium burning range and you know I'll get people writing to me to say that they use we do try to the 48 95 and they've been using them for the last you know fifty three years or something without any issue and I'm not going to argue with this that's fine but what has come to light in recent years is that there have been some questions about such practices that those powders can have problems especially if they're used in conjunction with fillers that can for whatever reason the filler has been associated with some problems too so whether it's powder positioning whether it's the burning rate whether it's the fillers whatever it is these are not the power that are recommended necessarily unless they're recommended by this book here which deals with by the very nature is not a reduced load handbook and yet it is because of its nature because it because these loads are intended for cast bullets cast bullets are by their very nature slow you know a slow projectile compared to jacketed bullets because they have to be kept generally speaking they have to be kept somewhere below about 2,300 feet per second or less so that's that's the correct source for reducing load and once you once you start looking at the powder you may very you may very well find some reduced loads that use powders such as 4895 and things like that if you get it in that book you can take it to the bank but if you get it in this book and you're trying to if you try to monkey with loads by bringing down below the listed minimums you can get into some serious trouble so it's never recommended most of these manuals will clearly state someplace do not reduce load below those minimums listed it's just it's fraught with danger so don't go there and as I said at the very beginning there's no reason to go there because there are cutters which are well suited to it some of the powders which have been commonly used for reduced loads are some of the most popular pistol cutters that you may already have on hand such as unique red dot green dot sr20 stuff what's the other ones you've got IMR 42:27 there's some of the SR powders there's all kinds of powders that are in that categories that are you know typically pistol powders another very popular powder right now is trail boss because trail boss does two things that not only give you a reduced load but it can also it has great bulk in it and it fills the case up a lot more than the elder powders its only drawback is that because it's so bulky when you don't buy a pound of it you buy a less you know for the for the money that you spend you don't get quite a pound you get less than a pound I can't tell you exactly what it is but if you don't get a full pound in the jug because it won't fit in the jug so that's it I hope to get out shooting as soon as I possibly can but while I was taking a day indoors I thought I'd introduce you to something that can save you a little bit of money it's not much of saving you money on mostly as saving you money on powder if you can load your own you know lead if you can cast your own bullets all the better and then you save a lot of money but that's the name of the game you can you can have a lot of fun reduce the recoil on your shoulder take your kids out shooting something that they normally wouldn't be able to shoot shoot a game that you wouldn't normally be able to shoot without destroying it so it opens up a whole nother world with all the guns you already have so thanks for watching don't forget to tell your friends and subscribe god bless

Channel: GunBlue490

Views: 53,775

Keywords: cast boolits, boolits, cast, lead, loads, reduced, light, rifle, case, full, capacity, bullet, bullets, powder, primer, handload, unique

Id: s1jnuTZ9R6A

Length: 33min 52sec (2032 seconds)

Published: Tue May 30 2017