Load development confusion

Reloading
1

Hi Jim,
I am a fairly new to reloading, but after watching your course on load development, I’m left with a few questions….

I am understanding your ladder test results, and have noticed a bit of that trend myself.

So you pick a well suited powder.
Then a bullet.
Pick a primer- limited options at the moment, but run a quality one.
Pick a charge that is safe and well suited towards the goal you want.
Pick a seating depth.
Then go shoot the load.

Ok, so now if your load doesn’t work good, where do you go from there???
Are you putting the powder charge and seating depth in a random generator and picking a different combo out of the blue, or is there a more scientific way to tune the load from this first set???
You say powder charge doesn’t have the biggest effect, and I can believe it according to your data, and from some of mine, but then what….
Seating depth? But some say that will be random like the powder ladder….

And how do you make a load to shoot 1/4 Moa vs the 1-2 moa???
The pros are doing it, so there must be a way
And I’m talking bout common combinations that others are getting good results from, not something totally out to left field (bullet, powder, etc)
And to do it without shooting 500 round to find the load.

Any help would be great
Thanks

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2

If you shoot a load and it doesn’t work, then it’s time to tweak the recipe.

If you aren’t married to the bullet, then trying another bullet is a good bet. If you want to use that bullet, then I’d try either a very different powder, or go to seating depth.

In testing seating depth, I’d try .025, .05, and .075” and see if it likes one of those.

What I would NOT do is try shooting tiny tweaks. Changing .3 grains of powder, or .005” of seating depth, or .001” of neck tension… that’s a path to failure.

Also, ignore results without enough shots to verify the result. 3 groups of 4 shots would be the minimum I’d look at to determine how a particular recipe is shooting.

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