Attempts at amateur gunsmithing, citizenship, and other skilled trades

Category: Reloading

Hand-loading your own ammunition

Hey, dope!

Shooting over distance requires you to adjust for bullet drop and windage. Calculating these corrections, or “dope,” ahead of time improves your chances for success.

My Opa learned over a lifetime of hunting to instinctively aim where he needed to cleanly hit his target. If he could see it, he could knock it down, quickly and humanely.

Unlike Opa I didn’t hunt to feed my family, so I lacked his motivation–and, sadly, his talent–to make every shot count by just looking.

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Neck turning brass–worth the trouble?

In an earlier journal entry I mentioned neck turning brass as a possible way to improve accuracy.

“Neck turning” consists of shaving the outer diameter of brass case necks to minimize variations in thickness. By uniforming the brass you’re supposed to get consistent neck tension, therefore consistent velocity and better accuracy.

A lot of smart people swear by it, but I couldn’t find much in the way of hard evidence for or against.

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