Literature Search Eileen Clarke
ddly, I am regretting not pay- ing better attention in 10th grade geometry class. Sure, the room was warm, the teacher a pedantic dron-
O
er, and the theorems a permanent fixture of every inch of the three blackboards in the room – was just the beginning, simply stated with a simple stick figure
diagram – and absolutely no up-on-her- feet drawing on the board to explain the concepts to a dull student. (She would have had to erase something.) But I find I actually need it now.
Well, not all nine of them, or
however many there were, but the one that relates specifically to bullets, because my biggest problem right now in learning how to handload is what bullet, of all the bullets in the world, is the best shaped bullet to stuff on top of my guided trajectory. It seems the shape counts, and the shape actually relates to that over-heated classroom. And the fact that I’m just a little dyslexic. That aside, I think I’m not the only one in the reloading room who wishes the front end of reloading manuals – fonts of all kinds of basic information – had a few more diagrams. Let’s start with tangent and secant,
and why I shouldn’t have slept through that class. The brand new first ever Berger
My new-to-me $300 Savage in 22-250 Remington has caused me more headaches than any other rifle I’ve ever owned. Of course John’s always done the load development before. This time, I decided I should learn how.
My reloading manuals started looking like porcupines – color coded porcupines. Eventually, I checked out the “universal drop” tables and “energy” charts, but first I got bogged down on the “appropriate shape” of my ideal bullet.
Page 100 Winter 2013
reloading manual had just arrived, and I just happened to be sitting next to my handloading mentor/husband, John Barsness. A few minutes after I started reading it, he noticed I was flipping madly through reloading manuals – and not just Berger’s. I had the Nosler 6, Barnes 4, plus a Speer and Hodgdon book on my couch as well, trying to organize a “literature search” to work up a load for my new-to-me 22-250. At this point I was off track. My literature search, as John had advised me, should include a combination of appropriate bullets and powders, starting with minimum powder charges, and one or two grains more for each, keeping well under the maximum charges. An ab- breviated Audette or “ladder” method, as he explains in his new book, Rifle Trouble-Shooting and Handloading. It was the word “appropriate” in relation to “bullet” that was sending me to the books. Weight is a concept I have a tentative handle on: light bul- lets are for small things; heavy ones for big stuff. But the lightest bullets get pushed around more in the wind than
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196