GUNS AND AMMUNITION. 



Anybody can shoot all day, but a gentleman will quit when he gets enough. 



AGAINST HAND LOADING. 



In your November issue appears an. 

 article on the use of the revolver by Dr. 

 Conyngham. He says therein, "Do not 

 use factory ammunition. Buy the best 

 shells and powder you can and load them 

 yourself, starting with a 5 grain charge." 



To this portion of the doctor's otherwise 

 valuable paper, I take serious exception. 

 Such advice in similar articles is becoming 

 much too frequent. If every man who 

 reads the article were an expert on pow- 

 ders, black and smokeless ; understood 

 their effects under all the physical condi- 

 tions that surround their use ; were able 

 to say, within the truth, that he knew to 

 a nicety the exact load the exceeding of 

 which would wreck his weapon ; then I 

 should endorse such advice. Unfortunate- 

 ly, the vast majority of shooters do not 

 know the difference between a high and 

 a low pressure smokeless powder. They 

 have little or no knowledge of their adapt- 

 ability under varying service conditions, 

 and because of the fact that the old black 

 powders were safe under almost any 

 reasonable conditions, assume unwisely 

 that the various nitro compounds are 

 equally safe. Nothing could be farther from 

 the truth. The majority of expert ama- 

 teurs, shooters with wide experience, ma- 

 ture judgment, and caution born of 

 knowledge of the disastrous results likely 

 to come from the improper use of high 

 explosives, are loath to experiment, even 

 in the most careful way, with the modern 

 high pressure smokeless powders. Arms 

 and ammunition manufacturers owe much 

 to the loading experiments of the expert 

 amateur. A large part of modern ballis- 

 tic progress is attributable to their pains- 

 taking work; but to assume that anyone 

 equipped with a reloading set, some pow- 

 der, primers and lead is capable safely of 

 making accurate, fixed ammunition, is dan- 

 gerous and unwise. 



If the fatal and maiming accidents that 

 have resulted during the past 5 years from 

 inexperienced use of smokeless powders 

 could be tabulated, it would strongly em- 

 phasize my contention. There are certain 

 nitro powders on the market which, un- 

 der improper loading conditions, errors 

 easily committed by the tyro, might de- 

 tonate, and wreck any barrel or action. 

 Sometimes the addition of 2 to 4 grains 

 to the safe and proper load will produce, 

 with these powders, breech pressures far 



beyond the limit of safety which the weap- 

 on possesses. These dangers are equally 

 common to rifle, shot gun and revolver. 



Under the present status of nitro ex- 

 plosives, only the most expert should at- 

 tempt to load with high pressure smokeless 

 powders. The danger of confounding the 

 various grades of rifle powders, even of 

 the same manufacture, and of shot gun 

 smokeless with rifle smokeless make such 

 loading extremely hazardous. Unless one 

 has had careful training in the produc- 

 tion of home-made ammunition, he would 

 far better purchase factory ammunition. 

 In using the product of any of the lead- 

 ing American companies he is assured of 

 more uniformity in every factor going to 

 make up his load than he can hope to ob- 

 tain by hand work. In the factory prod- 

 uct, primers are correct for the powder 

 employed, and are all seated to the same 

 depth in the pocket ; bullets are swaged 

 in powerful, accurate machines to exact 

 size; and no method, other than the use 

 of the apothecaries' scales gives more ac- 

 curate measure of the powder charge than 

 do the factory charging machines. The 

 variation in factory loads can be meas- 

 ured, if present at all, in fractions of 

 grains. 



There is, of course, in some branches of 

 target shooting, more particularly in mid- 

 range work, employing heavy, black pow- 

 der, single shot rifles, ample scope for 

 hand loading, and with a reasonable de- 

 gree of safety. There is scarcely a vil- 

 lage or town in the country which does not 

 possess one or more experts in that sort 

 of work. Practically all the target work 

 done at present in the United States, except 

 military long range shooting, is done with 

 black powder or some modification of it, 

 and a large part of the ammunition thus 

 used is loaded by the shooters themselves. 

 The character of black powder is so well 

 known that small danger exists and I can 

 see no reason why the careful experimen- 

 tal shooter, or the economical shooter (for 

 hand loads are cheap) should be debarred 

 from making his own ammunition for use 

 in work as just indicated. 



However, few except the superlatively 

 expert, can hold as close as good factory 

 ammunition can shoot. Therefore, unless 

 you are expert, or can have the tutelage 

 of one who surely is, do not accept the 

 dictum that hand loading is as easy as 

 a, b, c, and as safe as ping pong, 



T29 



