The Firearm Blog

Snowflakes in Hell is hosting a very interesting discussion about the pro's and con's of handloading ammunition for self-defense.

There is also a smaller discussion on the same topic at SaysUncle.

The SurvivalBlog have published a blog post detailing the cost savings of hand loaded vs. factory ammunition based on the ammunition and component prices as of this month.

Aside from price, reloading also allows you produce better quality ammunition and tune the load for accuracy in your particular gun.

Thanks to Solomon for sending me the link

These photos are of a AMT Combat Government Hardballer 1911 pistol that fired a handloaded .45 ACP round that was overloaded with powder. The result is quite spectacular. The top of the chamber has been blown right off taking a considerable section of the slide with it.

That looks sore.

The photos are from Photobucket via. the Blue Gun Blog.

UPDATE: Elvis for identifying the pistol.

Sinclair International, seller of reloading supplies, have explained the lack of primer availability on their blog (emphasis mine):

The first driving force has been the huge demand for loaded ammunition through 2008 and continuing into 2009. The large primer manufacturers like ATK (which would include Federal and CCI), Winchester, and Remington are directing the majority of their primers into loaded ammunition.

…

the result has been consumers stockpiling and hoarding primers. Individuals are buying and keeping more primers in their own personal inventories and this has prevented some reloaders from having any primers at all. We normally see people buying 1,000 or maybe 5,000 primers at a time, now we are seeing customers buying 25,000 at a time.

…

Federal told us a couple of weeks ago to not be surprised if we don’t see many primers from them until the end of 2009.

A very dire situation indeed. I expect few of us will ever forget the ammunition drought of 2009!

I highly recommend reading the whole blog entry.

Thanks to Commodore for emailing me the link.

These photos are of a Springfield XD .45 was blown up after a squib load (a low powered load that does not have enough energy to push the bullet out the muzzle) blocked the barrel and another full power loaded round was fired.

The pressure generated blew off the top of the chamber, caused a bulge in the slide, and gorged the frame and also destroyed the extractor and loaded chamber indicator.

Note the bulge in the slide next to the chamber.

I am pleased to be able to say that the shooter was not injured. He is one lucky guy.

More info at XDTalk forum.

Hat Tip: Blue Gun Blog

A couple of weeks ago SayUncle asked for advice on getting started reloading. The comments are worth reading if you are thinking about reloading, as I am.

I came across this chart showing over 260 powders form 15 different manufacturers.

The chart of relative quickness of powders below is intended as a guideline only. Powders within three lines of one another are similar in relative quickness but cannot be directly substituted without due regard for safe reloading procedures.

It is a South African website so you may not be able to get hold of some of these powders.

This is *very* *very* funny:

Hat Tip: Yuri @ The Read Gun Guys

Jeffersonian has a fantastic reloading tutorial on his website. It is very comprehensive and has many photos to help explain how it all works.

It is a great read. I highly recommend it.

I’ve received a lot of charity, some of it shockingly spontaneous, from the Gun Culture. I therefore felt motivated to give something back, so I created these pages, showing how (and why) I reload ammunition.

The main reason to load your own, especially for rifle cartridges, is to save money; when I first started shooting competitively in 2003, I was using either Berdan- (and corrosive-) primed surplus ammunition in my Mosin M44 carbine, or expensive factory ammunition in my VZ24 Mauser. In a match in February 2004, I won a gift certificate for a set of Hornady reloading dies at a Vancouver-area gun shop; I chose 7.92×57mm (”8mm Mauser”) for what was at that time my best rifle, the VZ24. At the time I calculated that, ignoring the capital cost of equipment, tools, and used cases, and counting only the cost of consumables (bullets, primers, powder), I was paying about 30¢ per reloaded cartridge, vs. 75¢ for factory rounds. So there’s your motivation.

Other reasons to load your own are to control the precision of the end product, for better accuracy than the factories produce; and, to make a load that the factories don’t offer, like the superlight 12 gauge shotshells I make for my antique side-by-side shotgun, to vastly reduce both chamber pressure and recoil (which are not necessarily connected to each other).

More here.

I hope no one was shooting next to this person shooting this Colt Anaconda. Half the cylinder must have gone flying left!

Hat Tip: The Real Gun Guys

The Smallest Minority blog has a extensive post how to get into reloading. Well worth a read if you have been thinking about starting to reload:

After my offhand comment the other day about how people should get into reloading, I’ve received over a dozen emails asking how a complete tenderfoot would get into it: with a low budget, modest reloading amounts, and so on.

I would appreciate advice from you all as the a “basic” set of equipment one would need, as well as some recommendations for stuff like powder and such.

More here.

Hat Tip: Mr Completely