Reading List

[Rcmaveric]

Since I cant reload or play with lead for the moment I figured i would read and learn. So far i have read the NRA Suplimentals, A bullets flight: From Powder to Target by DR. Mann, From ingot To Target, Cast Bullets For Beginers and Experts, and Hand Loaders Manual plus various reloading manuals (all the Richard Lee books, different issues of Lyman and Ideal books). Which posed new questions and curiosities leading me to read Engineering Properties of Lead and Lead Alloys, Innovations of Lead Alloys, and also Mixed Metals: or Metal alloys. Also re read a lot of LASC articles as i saved them all.

By far the best things i read that I feel really taught me things was Handloaders Manual, Cast Bullets For Beginers and Experts, and The Bullets Flight. I learned some new tricks and ideas (some subjects had contradictions with both theories being plausible) and now i just have more questions and curiosities. I could spend a life time experimenting with what i learned seeing what my guns like.

Up next is Hartcher's Note Book. I really want to read Veral Smiths book (as version 4 is in the works). I also want to read the latest edition of Cast Bullets for Beginers and experts (my copy os the first edition pdf). Those last two will have to be ordered when i get home. What else are good books to add to my reading list?

Lingering questions and curiositie now is: 1) We have devoted over 200 years ballistics, but yet there isnt much research on the chemistry for lead alloys for bullet use.

2) why has no one ever mentioned you can make lead shot by streaming lead on a spinning disk? (Wife is going to be mad when i try that one).

3) I really shouldnt have read the metallurgy. The government is probably looking st my search history and i am probably on a hit list now. Was definitely looking up Thorium and Arsenic Oxide.

4) random fact (learned while researching ellements): Plutonium degrades into Uranium, Uranium Degrades into Lead. One day, trillions of years from now, when our sun is dying, it will turning Carbon into Lead and once thats burned over it blows. The sun will literally be made of Lead. That was akward rabbit whole as i can only read technical manuals for so long before my mind squirrels or i need to take a break.

 

[RBHarter]

You only missed ferns into diamonds sounds like .

 

[462]

Good one, RB!

 

[RicinYakima]

I really liked Joe B.'s edition of Cast Bullets for Beginner and Expert in that you get many individuals' experience with cast bullet shooting instead of just one person. I have the printed 2007 edition that was state of the art 10 years ago.

That is the fault with the Lyman new cast bullet book, if you read Mike "the Duke" Venturino articles, you have seen it all.

Handloading by Mattern takes you from 1880's through 1925.

The third edition of Sharpe's Complete Guide to Handloading is very good from 1925 through 1950.

The technical works for lead alloys were written between 1880 and about 1905. That was the age of newspapers and they funded much research on every useful compound they could think about using. Google Books has several scanned for retrieval.

Other than those, you have good handle on things.

 

[Ian]

Lyman publications have always lacked sufficient peer review, same as Lee's.

 

[fiver]

of your List I have read the LEE promotional book, the DR Mann book, and Lyman's third.
the rest I have figured out for myself or had to go off 3am WWW searches, burnt fingers, and visit the library.

 

[Rcmaveric]

Handloading by Mattern takes you from 1880's through 1925.

The third edition of Sharpe's Complete Guide to Handloading is very good from 1925 through 1950.

Both tomes were found on-line and added to my library. Thank you for the recommendation.

 

[Bret4207]

Honestly, I found the Lee books, at least the ones I've read, to be more promotional (as Fiver said) than substance. A lot of the Lee conclusions and claims haven't worked out for me at all. Dr Manns book is great, especially if you have the edition with Popes notes but it's a bit too esoteric for the beginner. Matterns book is great as is Sharpes and some of the older Lyman books have info not found elsewhere. I would include Ken Waters "Pet Loads" as a MUST HAVE. It's not cast specific at all, but his methodology is sound and has proved out for me over the years. There is no "one" super book on cast or reloading. Probably Glenns on line book is a close as you'll come for cast. The problem with all of them is that some of what they say is based on conclusions considered "law" without argument, or they at least don't add qualifiers such as "seems to indicate that..", "worked for me in this case...", etc. For decades the "law" was that harder alloys simply had to be better, that a gas check would fix everything, that leading was caused by the bullet melting, that a bullet should be at groove diameter and no more, that obturation was a good thing, that a particular lube amde out of ground unicorn horns and fairy dust would cure all your problems and that leading was just something you lived with. I started out in the late 70's with magazine articles from Skeeter, Elmer and Dean as my sole guides. Much of what was written was contradictory. For instance- back in the day it was assumed you needed obturation to "slug up" the bullet, yet we weren't suppoed to try to use over groove diameter bullets and harder alloys that resissted obturation were supposed to be the answer! ????!!!!!! Today you can get scads of info on line, and some of it is even right! My advice would be to gather info from where ever you can find it and hang onto it. I have folders of threads off various sites and articles written by numerous people I've found over the years. It all gets used from time to time. In the end, if you even like casting, you'll end up bouncing ideas and observations off other people at this or other sites and you'll likely get more solid ideas here than in a book written by an "expert" or something written in 1935. Not to disparage the older volumes or experts, but you have to extrapolate from a text, and that's not the same as being able to have a back and forth with multiple people with exerpience today.

 

[Ian]

Well said, Bret.

 

[fiver]

yes.
one caution though, they are relating their experience through their observations with their stuff.
similar... yeah probably.
are they seeing what your looking at and describing.. no.
even with a picture.

I make a lot of disappointed Marge Simpson sounds.

also Bret touched on the old time stuff.
while they were edge cutting for their time and place, and much of what they did and wrote was Brilliant,,, it doesn't really apply to most of what we are doing today.

 

[Ian]

Sometimes we see two different things with rifles cut with the same chamber reamer and shooting bullets from the same mould part #. Sometimes things work identically. If there's one thing that makes this hobby challenging it's how much different things can be between two people's loading benches when they swear they're doing the same things with the same components and same tools.

That factor is the whole point behind my signature line.

 

[david s]

Early 1970's Nonte "Modern Handloading" and a bit off topic but I can recommend L.R. Wallack "Encyclopedia of American Gun Design and Performance" mid to late 1970's. I forget why but for some reason I had a problem with something that was made by Lee. This was before the internet existed so I wrote them and they took care of whatever the problem was and sent me a copy of there reloading manual. I like some of what Lee produces but not there manual. And I'm a big fan of reloading manuals.

 

[Bret4207]

People tend to come to different conclusions when working on the same problem. Even St Elmer admitted to some ideas that turned out to be duds. And the harder and faster you try to push something, the more issues you'll run into. That holds true for jacketed too. There have been relative fortunes spent on getting jacketed stuff to work as desired compared to cast. About all you can do is test, observe, WRITE IT DOWN!!! and test some more. Never change more than one item at a time. Change 2 things, say seating depth and neck tension, and you'll never know what was the fix or what screwed things up further. That's the science-y part of this game. Bounce ideas off others that seem to know what they're doing. Go through the archives of sites like this. Yeah, you'll find 100K questions repeated time after time (Can I shoot a GC design w/o the GC?) but you'll surely run across some sentence or paragraph that applies to your problems or ideas too. We've got close to 25 years of internet posts out there now, plus whole books scanned on line. You can watch the progression of knowledge if you take the time.

 

[KeithB]

I was a member of the NRA book club for many years, nicely made books that were reprints of pre-WWII gun/outdoor/shooting books. Some very interesting, many boring as all get out but an insight into people’s thought processes a century ago. I plan to keep several that have useful data and sell the rest sometime.

 

[462]

Those books are still out there. Search Amazon, Thrift Books, etc. for Firearms Classics Library.

Sharpe's The Rifle in America and Taylor's African Cartridges and Rifles, for instance, can usually be found for under $10 each

 

[Bret4207]

And they are gorgeous books too, gilt edged and leatherette covers. Just beautiful.