Hey, this stuff's good

IMR-4350. What did you think I was talking about?

I've been away from handloading for too long. Yeah, I loaded up some '06 ammo for the little bro a few months back, but otherwise it's been lean times at the loading bench. So today I started loading up some .243 ammo for my coyote rifle. Should have lubed the case necks better - I was out of case lube and had to go pick some up, but since these cases were already resized and capped, I thought I'd be okay.

Well, not quite, as it turns out, though it took a bit to figure out that it wasn't the case lube itself that was the issue. It was a couple of other things:

1) Since these were once-fired factory cases, the mouths were not beveled, as I normally do, and the bullet jackets were scratching a bit on the mouths. But that wasn't actually the main issue:

2) Somehow, I had set the crimping shoulder on the die too far down, not sure how, I had though the set ring was pretty secure and it seemed to be okay when I ran a couple of blank cases through it.

Bottom line: I accordioned the necks of three or four cases before I figured out the problem. I is a idjit, I guess, and should have figured out the real problem after one case.

But on the up side, it turns out I had more available .243 bullets than I thought I did. I still have some 70 gr. Speer MHP (since discontinued, it seems) from a few years ago. Also, I have an unopened (well, technically, unused, I've opened it to look inside) box of 65 gr. Hornady V-Max varmint bullets. But I ended up going with a recently purchased box of Sierra matchKing 70 gr.

But no matter which I had chosen, 45 grains of IMR-4350 would have been the load of choice - not too heavy, not too light, just a sweet middle of high-velocity shootin' goodness. And the 4350 is not only good for my .243, it's a sweet powder for the 6mm Rem, and for the ridiculously large numbers of .280 Rems in the family, and even for the little bro's '06.

Yea, verily, I sayeth unto you, on the seventh day God took a breather and invented IMR-4350. And it was good.

Hey, it's the last day of vacation and I have to go to work tomorrow. I'm allowed to get a little strange...