Editor: Jeff — You raise a good point, but the Hodgdon reloading data center (on the web) won’t tell you about Alliant powders, or Vihtavuori, or Ramshot. And likewise the Alliant website won’t give you info on other brands. It IS handy to have a pre-printed resource that covers loads from a variety of sources, including ALL the powder mfgs. PLUS the bullet-makers. These spiral bound books contain “unabridged” data from many different sources, placing load data for 40-80 powders at your fingertips. The amount of time you save in transferring loads one by one from websites to spreadsheet or notebook is worth the money invested.

Personally, I haven’t used the rifle data books a lot, but I used the pistol data books for .38 Spl, 40SW, and .45 ACP. The .45 ACP manual led me to my favorite powder for that caliber. The .38 Spl book provided low-pressure loads using inexpensive shotgun powder. Such loads work great for Cowboy Action Shooting. I loaded American Select behind 100gr LRNs, and my fellow competitors were constantly amazed how clean my fired brass was, and how little fouling got on my guns. I’m now surprised more pistol shooters don’t explore the use of shotgun powders for low-recoil loads.