TROUBLESHOOTING is a word I often associate with Western movies; the good guy rides into town, cleans up the baddies and rides off into the sunset. According to my dictionary, a troubleshooter is “one who eliminates sources of trouble”. Nothing could be more apt when you are assembling handloads for hunting. In this context troubleshooting is a straightforward process since it is wholly concerned with recognising and correcting any problems or faults with your reloads.
Firstly, I’d like to emphasise the importance of sorting brass. This should be the first step in any kind of metallic reloading, because the number of times a lot of cases have been fired is important. For this reason I like to load all cases in a lot, or identifiable sub-lot, each time I load any of them, to avoid having to keep track of some which happen to have been through the rifle’s chamber a number of times and others which have been fired only once or twice.
The second equally vital step is to carefully inspect each one of the cases. Once you have selected a lot of brass for a planned load and have them set up in a loading block, pick up each one individually and give it a visual inspection. Check for split necks, cracks in shoulders and especially in the case body about 6mm ahead of the rim that might
