Books. Remember them? In this day and age of web access and information overload, I thought I might do a review on The Speer Handloading Manual #15. A small disclaimer here. I own many great handloading manuals. All of them are fun to have around, informational, time stamping, and controversial in some ways. This review however is from my latest purchase. The Speer Handloading Manual #15. Shop products in Education today | Speer Ammunition.
My relationship goes way back with Speer. The old half jacket HP for handguns (inferior by today’s standards) took the trip many times down my barrels. This book is was Edited by Michael Brussard. I first met Mike at the Foshay Tower in Minneapolis back in the day. Federal had offices in that skyscraper. This hardbound book is 948 pages of quality semi gloss paper and is a very handy bench reference. Whenever I get a new manual. I read it through like a novel first, then I use it for reference. I find that books and printed material is still comforting to have around as when something is printed, it stays printed. Web material is always updating, refreshing and moving around so it is difficult sometimes to find what you think you saw.
For each caliber are drawings, dimensions, case data, ballistic data, historical notes, ballistic and technical notes, handloading notes, all followed up by safety notes. This is followed by loading data charts with various powder, starting loads and maximum loads, etc. One might think that handloading books only cover components made by their parent company. While it only has data for Speer bullets, data includes various powder manufacturers. The how to handload in Chapter 4 is second to none in handloading education. It is complete, detailed and easy to understand. While along the way this manual has dropped Shotgun data from this book. Shotgun data is available from the powder companies free guides for the asking.
If you can find a copy of this book, you won’t go wrong in having it around. The websites offering load data are vast and are nice to have available for up to the minute information, but for this crusty old shooter, I will keep these books on hand. Gotta go, the newspaper is here.
Good Day.
My relationship goes way back with Speer. The old half jacket HP for handguns (inferior by today’s standards) took the trip many times down my barrels. This book is was Edited by Michael Brussard. I first met Mike at the Foshay Tower in Minneapolis back in the day. Federal had offices in that skyscraper. This hardbound book is 948 pages of quality semi gloss paper and is a very handy bench reference. Whenever I get a new manual. I read it through like a novel first, then I use it for reference. I find that books and printed material is still comforting to have around as when something is printed, it stays printed. Web material is always updating, refreshing and moving around so it is difficult sometimes to find what you think you saw.
For each caliber are drawings, dimensions, case data, ballistic data, historical notes, ballistic and technical notes, handloading notes, all followed up by safety notes. This is followed by loading data charts with various powder, starting loads and maximum loads, etc. One might think that handloading books only cover components made by their parent company. While it only has data for Speer bullets, data includes various powder manufacturers. The how to handload in Chapter 4 is second to none in handloading education. It is complete, detailed and easy to understand. While along the way this manual has dropped Shotgun data from this book. Shotgun data is available from the powder companies free guides for the asking.
If you can find a copy of this book, you won’t go wrong in having it around. The websites offering load data are vast and are nice to have available for up to the minute information, but for this crusty old shooter, I will keep these books on hand. Gotta go, the newspaper is here.
Good Day.
