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pet loads
- Thread starter cptjack
- Start date
When Waters wrote much of what wound up in Pet Loads, No. 4350 would have been IMR 4350 made by DuPont. It was then made by a somewhat different process than it is now (changed around ten years ago). Also, as of about 1990 and a little later, Accurate and Hodgdon via ADI have their own 4350s. Primers, cases, and bullets have also evolved and changed some, even since his retirement in 2002.
One thing to watch out for with Pet Loads is the data was developed by watching pressure signs on the case. As shooters have adopted the Pressure Trace and more tested data with pressures has become available online via Hodgdon, in particular, a lot of the case pressure sign loads have turned out to be too warm. This is because cases are not calibrated for showing pressure signs, so all you can conclude from such signs are the particular case showed them in a particular gun. This article shows that the same amount of head expansion in the same gun with the same lot of brass with the same load history, as checked against Pressure Trace readings, occurred at about 40,000 psi in one case and not until almost 70,000 psi in another. So the old assertions that such and such an amount of head expansion indicated 65,000 psi and so on is pretty much as accurate as reading tea leaves unless ±50% is an acceptable tolerance to you.
The gory details are in this article.
The bottom line is, don't trust the pet loads blindly. Compare them to loads as close to similar as you can get on the Hodgdon site or from Lyman or other load data sources that publish measured pressures. A friend of mine loved the Pet Loads book, but a couple of them popped the action open on his Contender consistently. Probably overpressure in his gun but not in Ken Waters' gun.
One thing to watch out for with Pet Loads is the data was developed by watching pressure signs on the case. As shooters have adopted the Pressure Trace and more tested data with pressures has become available online via Hodgdon, in particular, a lot of the case pressure sign loads have turned out to be too warm. This is because cases are not calibrated for showing pressure signs, so all you can conclude from such signs are the particular case showed them in a particular gun. This article shows that the same amount of head expansion in the same gun with the same lot of brass with the same load history, as checked against Pressure Trace readings, occurred at about 40,000 psi in one case and not until almost 70,000 psi in another. So the old assertions that such and such an amount of head expansion indicated 65,000 psi and so on is pretty much as accurate as reading tea leaves unless ±50% is an acceptable tolerance to you.
The gory details are in this article.
The bottom line is, don't trust the pet loads blindly. Compare them to loads as close to similar as you can get on the Hodgdon site or from Lyman or other load data sources that publish measured pressures. A friend of mine loved the Pet Loads book, but a couple of them popped the action open on his Contender consistently. Probably overpressure in his gun but not in Ken Waters' gun.