Reloading journal

General Firearms Reloading & Ammunition
1

I sort of had a panic last week when I could not locate my 3 ring binder. The one that represents thousands of dollars in reloading components for testing metallic cartridges. The one that represents hundreds of hours of range time since 1995. Chronograph data, reloading recipes, test string analysis.

I eventually found it. Hid it from myself. But!! I did have a thought that I should probably have a digital copy of some sort backing up the information. How do you fellas journal your experiments?

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I dont see a journal beeing so important. Lot changes kind of negate a “journal”. A map of methodology/process and starting-point recipie for a powder would be good and save time for the next guy.

Do you reference it often? What do you look for?

I imagine all testing data is obsolete since its for that batch which has been consumed and that specific barrel that is likely shot out by now.

3

Yeah. My old data is loaded into Excel, but it’s somewhat useless when the powder lot has changed.

I’ll reference it when I revisit a load, but the bigger asset is a Garmin Chrono.

1 Like
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I just keep notes on favorite loads with the respective dies fof that caliber.

MV figures for different loads/barrels are logged in the weapons maintenance log.

5

I reference my journal every time I reload. A reminder of what I did last time. A starting point if I have to run a different batch of powder. A lot of my rifle cartridges are Wildcats and I need that data to make good ammunition.

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[quote=“Krazykarl, post:5, topic:485706”]I reference my journal every time I reload. A reminder of what I did last time.
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I use those Sierra labels with my rifle loads. I stick them on the edge of my bench so I don’t have to go to the computer to look up my various 5.56 loads for different powders and bullet weights.

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I have my baseline loads on the powder measure. Each lot gets chronod and adjustments would go on the bottle

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I have all mine in digital now. all in excel. But you can use the free notepad from windows. organize calibers by sub folders.

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I have a weird combination of Excel spreadsheets and Word docs.

I keep track of components in a spreadsheet.
(I keep an inventory of loaded ammo that way, too.)

I default to Word to keep track of recipes for different calibers.
(I use it to keep a “log” for each gun and car that I own, too.)

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This might be one of the great uses of AI (YMMV). Taking files, word, excel, and older versions of spreadsheets and word processing documents, digesting them and summarizing in an update file. At this point most can summarize, format and save into a new format. Not creating per se, more of a research and summary tool.

Recently used at work to summarize 1000 word documents, some updated in the last 5 years some updated last 2005-2016. It brought them all up to last week’s date in a common format in the most recent version of word and saved a PDF of each one and the same naming convention.

Going to try with my inventory of multiple hobbies I have at home (NSFW) with a free version to see if it works in a small way.

11

Holy fuck man, you’re givin’ Skynet the keys to your armory?

Jist pen & notebook here…

One thing I do also, as I keep track of all ammo on hand, I keep aside what I call a “training surplus”, and that’s the amo7nt that fluctuates as I use it and load.

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I took pictures of each page and generated PDF of the contents within the binder. This will cover me just in case something bad happens to all that data always have a back up. Overtime, probably transition over to a spreadsheet of some sort. Thanks guys for all your input.