Loading Manuals

[Bassfish1952]

I have Hornady's App. on my phone but don't have anything else. What do you guys use that has loads for the Bolt gun ?
Are there any that I should stay away from ?



Thanks

[grayfox]

The 6Arc bolt gun data is a pdf, I think we posted it on here somewhere, it's also in their 11 edition.
Also, hodgdon has data, online and probably also in their mag. It's limited to gas gun pressures however.

As far as "staying away from...", watch out for any interweb data that far exceeds hornady MV data. I've found their stuff to be pretty reliable. For myself early on I was using some loads that turned out to be too hot, (95 sst for example) didn't really find this out until I went to resize that brass and primer pockets were really loose. So going forward I backed off of those early ones.

For "other" bullets but same or similar weights, I still start with hornady data. As an example, however, I think I'm ok going a tad higher on a 95 gr Berger vld as compared to the 95 SST, my reasoning is the vld has a lower bearing surface and as a vld I can seat it farther out....
I have in my notes, "Book max for hdy bullet (2.180, 18"), 29.7=2600, 29.9. 29.7 is for hornady sst/btsp, seating shorter..." I can seat the vld hunter to 2.260, and in grt my pressure estimate for my load (>29.7) is ~43 Ksi, which is less than the 52 Ksi max, in my 20" AR frame. My actual MV for this one is still close to the hdy MV for 95 sst.

While on the subject, when for example hornady has data for bullets of differing weights (like the 95-100 data), the printed values are for the highest weight; example again, on the 95 sst you can expect about 50-60 fps higher for it at a given powder load, than printed. Also, a 20" barrel will obviously give higher MV than the data for an 18"-er... I like a higher MV if it can land me on a node and still be safe/ok to shoot, so sometimes these little adjustments help to get me there. If I get too warm/hot then I have to just back down to a lower node.
But I don't push this on every bullet.
Hope this rambling helps a bit.

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edit to add: quoting Leroy Jethro Gibbs on this: "Paper, I like paper..." my load workups are done at home so I have the computer (excel) and paper (books/ pdfs).