This is not to be construed as a criticism of Ed Harris, who knows more about guns and reloading and cast bullets than I'll ever claim to know.
This is an explanation of why I believe that some of what Ed has written is incorrect. I do this because what gets written by knowledgable people lives forever, correct or incorrect, and we've got about all the incorrect cast bullet information we need floating around now.
Ed Harris writes and wrote that 13 grains of Red Dot in a wide array of cartridges is “THE LOAD". When he writes “THE LOAD” he somewhere between asserts and implies that there is something unique about 13 grains of Red Dot in a set of cartridges.
Ed also started the ball rolling on the “chamber pressure and brinell hardness” business in TFS in the distant past; the ball then being assisted on it's path by many others. It will never die, unfortunately.
Yet the pressures with the 13/Red Dot loads and the BHN/Pressure/performance are contradictory, suggesting to me at least that something ain't true.
After spending hundreds of hours on the matter I concluded that the BHN/Pressure/performance notion is just plain not true. The work is in the book.
I've always been suspicious of "THE LOAD" because of the good luck many have had with others of the Hercules family and the many listed loads in reloading manuals. When Ed resurrected the contention here I thought I'd look it over and subject it to a little peer review. The result is the listing below of pressures and velocities of the (ex BE) old Hercules family, and IMR4227 that John Bischoff included.
It is absolutely true that low cost accurate loads can be constructed with a wide variety of fast powders. It is also absolutely true that we can't tell which of thse fast powders will yield the best accuracy using analyses from Quickload. It is painfully obvious to me and to John Bischoff that Red Dot produces the highest pressures for the 13 grain velocity of a number of powders, and that on it's face it appears that others of the listed powders might prove more suitable than Red Dot.
And it seems eminently clear to me that Red Dot at 13 grains or any other charge has nothing about it that makes it unique or “best” or even good as a lead bullet rifle powder.
13 grains of Red Dot ain't “THE LOAD".
