Chambering a rifle at home

[Mram10us]

Definitely planning on keeping a log with this barrel. It's not something I've done before, but want to start.
As to load development while running the break in and checking velocity, how will I know if the velocity change is due to powder increase or just the barrel speeding up? I would surely like to do all simultaneously, but don't fully understand how it works

You can do load testing while the barrel is still speeding up. You just cant finalize it, generally. A lot of great info can be gathered in the first 50 shots rather than just waste.

 

[ThrdKllr]

The velocity won't make a big jump all at once. From logging the velocities you will see where a certain charge gave x fps and later it increased to x. It will probably take 50-100 rounds for the velocity to increase or level off.

 

[birdiemc]

Ok...looks like time to break out the charts in excel. I'll start with the 3 readings I got today cuz like a dummy I cleared out my magnetospeed and lost the first session velocities.

 

[ThrdKllr]

Records keeping is a big part of reloading. I keep records of # of shots, temperature, humidity, and very detailed information on my loads, how many times brass is loaded, trimmed, annealed and cleaned. Any detail out of the ordinary is also listed.
I use Excel also so my load data can be kept with me on my phone, but I periodically print a hard copy of it and keep it in a binder for safe keeping.

 

[birdiemc]

How do you manage your brass? Right now I have ziplocs and write on the bag with a sharpie, but inevitably I'll stop in the middle of doing something thinking I'll come right back to it, but honestly I went several months without touching my reloading stuff, so when I started dragging things out the other day I have a mess. Fortunately I know for a fact that none of the brass I have has been fired more than 3 times so I plan to anneal everything and monitor. But interested in hearing how you prevent this

 

[ThrdKllr]

The ziplock bags work great. I have a separate room in my house for all my reloading stuff. I also weight sort my brass and keep the lots together. I'll take a lot of 50 cases and load each 1 until I've fired all 50 and then start over with the same 50. If I have 1 or 2 or however many that have issues (loose primer pockets, split necks or anything else that makes them unusable) I'll mark those and use them for dummy rounds. After I fire some I put them in my loading block and leave them untouched until I've fired all of them in that batch. I also have different brands of brass that I'll rotate in loading. The ziplocks with the pertinent info written on the bag with a Sharpie are the best way I know of.