Robert Hutton and Pressure Estimation
Guns & Ammo March 1963 Issue
Bob Forker and Robert Hutton became friends after Forker and Homer Powley approached Hutton to help develop the Powley Computer for Handloaders, a revolutionary slide rule that calculated chamber pressure and velocity. Months later, Forker joined G&A as its first handloading editor. This story below, originally by Robert Hutton and Homer Powley, is about handloading and appeared in the March 1963 issue of Guns & Ammo.
Pressure estimation has long been a difficult problem for handloaders. Safety, accuracy and barrel life depend to such a great extent upon pressure that some way to measure the pressures developed by handloads is very important. Much has been written about the inaccuracy of attempts to estimate pressures by primer appearance, case extraction ease or difficulty and by other rules of thumb. The unreliability of these methods has been established beyond any reasonable doubt. The most useful information that can be gained from these tests is that the pressure is too high and sometimes this knowledge comes too late.
The commercial ammunition manufacturers have for many years used special pressure rifles that use the chamber pressure created by the burning powder to crush a small copper cylinder. …Read the Rest
Source:: Guns and Ammo
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