First, I know very little about reloading but my father has been doing it for 50 years and with Covid, he is doing more than ever. He enjoys doing it so I have been buying brass, powder and bullets to keep him occupied. Dad is approaching 81.

Lately he has been loading some .50AE for me and I have noticed that the last few hundred rounds have larger variances on the OAL than I expected but I don't know what it dangerous and what is acceptable. So for example, a .50AE rounds with a 300 grain bullet uses between 30 and 32 grains of powder, depending on the brand, and should have an OAL of 1.575 - 1.58 - more or less. Some of these recent loads are 1.54-1.55. Are these short enough to cause concern? There are others that are 1.3 - 1.4 - I am not shooting those. Or should I? I am shooting from a Desert Eagle.

I love the low-cost ammo but I am wondering if I should back off on supplies?

Is he trimming brass? is he crimping in crimp grove?
Is the longer ones wrinkling at mouth?
That answered questions will be helpful'
You are probably GTG in the eagle
Sounds like you need to help,us old folk don't see well anymore.

Hold on a minute here. You mean there's more to it than filling the case and hammering a boolit in place? Who knew?

You getting jams? Too long for the magazine? Maybe there is more to reloading than just stuffing them full?.

Since it sounds like your worried about the shorter loads being over pressure, you could pick up a chrono for pretty cheap and would give you another important piece of info to work with.

Shooting the longer ones and getting an FPS number would allow you to back into a rough calc on the pressure.

Besides COL variances, I’d want to know his powder & charge weight, compare it to book numbers. Some(not saying him) think they have to load everything right to the max, while just shooting targets at modest range.

With some handgun cartridges, especially at the higher charges, shorter length can be a real issue. It’s less so with rifle rounds.

I had a gunsmith, about 80 yrs old, enjoyed & still did just fine reloading.

Another issue is to be sure what’s planned inside the case is correct, powder charge.

I have dismantled other’s reloads to check charges, even reduced the powder then reloaded.

He has a Labradar chrono that I gave him a year ago. The loads are supposed to be around 1400 fps as loaded. I guess we will need to break it out and see what the shorter rounds show and go from there. Thanks!

If it fits in mag. Bolt closes without beating it.
Shoot it.
Jumping it never hurts anything.

quote:

Originally posted by Haveme1or2:
If it fits in mag. Bolt closes without beating it.
Shoot it.
Jumping it never hurts anything.

Is over-pressure not a concern?

Shorter oal doesn't necessarily increase pressures to unsafe levels.

Here's a graph of a study done by CCI/Speer where they gradually decrease OAL, then shoot and record/graph pressures.