You can buy everything from preprinted data sheets to books and computer software for recording handloading data, but homemade sheets on standard, lined school paper work quite well. No electricity required, no new computer program to learn, and the three-hole punched pages can be inserted into binders wherever and whenever required. You can take a single page to the range to record velocity and group data, then return it to the “office” file binder. Add as many pages as necessary as your records grow. Add new binders. Divide binders by caliber. The system is as flexible as it is simple and inexpensive.

What do you put on the page? Every bit of information that contributes to load development and testing. Here’s a good sample of column categories: Bullet, Powder, Grains, Velocity, Case, Primer, OAL, Seating Depth, Lo Hi Average, Group, Comments.

All columns are self-explanatory. Under comments you may enter pertinent data such as neck-sized, new brass, range temperature, pressure signs, wind, humidity, elevation, whether you shot off sandbags, bipod, bench or prone – pretty much anything you think will contribute to understanding your load’s performance.

Store each page in a tabulated section of your three-ringed binder dedicated to the rifle for which each load is developed. Due to differences in barrel and chamber dimensions, loading data cannot be freely exchanged among rifles chambered for the same cartridge. Thus, each rifle and its loads is a unit unto itself You may have, then, a section for your .22-250 Weatherby Varmint rifle, another for your .22-250 Remington Custom and another for your .22-250 Kimber.

Maintain separate pages for brass lot histories and keep them in the rifle section for which they are used.