SigMatt
Ultimate Member
All,
I am new to reloading but a pet peeve of mine in the time of scarcity and reaction is finding matching components to start loading. I have five reloading manuals and find myself sitting on a site flipping around to answer the questions of "They have powder X available, what can I load with it?" and "Bullets XXX are available in ###gr, what powders work with them?".
After a few hours of this, I got annoyed.
So I writing an Android app that will contain the powder/bullet combinations gathered across all of the manuals. So if I select a Sierra .308 190gr HPBT, it will tell me what powders work with that round and the page references in the manuals the information is derived from. Or if I select Varget as a powder, it would tell me the calibers I could load. And including a function to mark what calibers I shoot, it would tell me how many different rounds that powder would support.
Please note, this does NOT contain the reloading data! I full on recognize that as a violation of the manufacturer's rights to their information. However, building a bibliographical cross-reference of facts across this different books should not cause problems. Especially since the app will contain the information to source back to the load data assuming you own the manual. If you don't own one or more the manuals, all the app will tell you is the data available indicates a given powder/bullet combo is valid.
I see this as a useful utility for the new reloader, the reloader looking to change or develop a new recipe or someone standing at a gun show (as I was) or a shop wondering "Can I use these bullets or powder?"
To my knowledge, no one has done this in automated form. Lots of reloaders apparently maintain spreadsheets or books with this type of cross-reference. I started to do that and it got unwieldy quickly. So I fired up Eclipse and started to bang together a prototype.
I think there's a niche market for this. I'm thinking of offering a free version with a limited database or random caliber selection and a full version with everything for a couple of bucks. And then maybe reach out to the companies in the future at adding in an Ultimate version that would containing licensing reloading data as well.
Thoughts? Or am insane? Anyone interested in beta-testing?
Matt
I am new to reloading but a pet peeve of mine in the time of scarcity and reaction is finding matching components to start loading. I have five reloading manuals and find myself sitting on a site flipping around to answer the questions of "They have powder X available, what can I load with it?" and "Bullets XXX are available in ###gr, what powders work with them?".
After a few hours of this, I got annoyed.
So I writing an Android app that will contain the powder/bullet combinations gathered across all of the manuals. So if I select a Sierra .308 190gr HPBT, it will tell me what powders work with that round and the page references in the manuals the information is derived from. Or if I select Varget as a powder, it would tell me the calibers I could load. And including a function to mark what calibers I shoot, it would tell me how many different rounds that powder would support.
Please note, this does NOT contain the reloading data! I full on recognize that as a violation of the manufacturer's rights to their information. However, building a bibliographical cross-reference of facts across this different books should not cause problems. Especially since the app will contain the information to source back to the load data assuming you own the manual. If you don't own one or more the manuals, all the app will tell you is the data available indicates a given powder/bullet combo is valid.
I see this as a useful utility for the new reloader, the reloader looking to change or develop a new recipe or someone standing at a gun show (as I was) or a shop wondering "Can I use these bullets or powder?"
To my knowledge, no one has done this in automated form. Lots of reloaders apparently maintain spreadsheets or books with this type of cross-reference. I started to do that and it got unwieldy quickly. So I fired up Eclipse and started to bang together a prototype.
I think there's a niche market for this. I'm thinking of offering a free version with a limited database or random caliber selection and a full version with everything for a couple of bucks. And then maybe reach out to the companies in the future at adding in an Ultimate version that would containing licensing reloading data as well.
Thoughts? Or am insane? Anyone interested in beta-testing?
Matt
