Modern Handloading by Richard Lee: A Comprehensive Guide to Handloading, Reloading, and Bullet Casting

I recently picked up the second edition of Modern Reloading by Richard Lee. Modern Reloading is a comprehensive guide to reloading metallic cartridges, shotshells, and bullet casting.

As many loading manuals are, Modern Reloading is divided into two basic parts. The first half of the book is devoted to explaining the process of handloading cartridges and shotshells, as well as describing bullet casting. The second half of the book is devoted to load data.

Richard Lee, the founder of Lee Precision, does an excellent job in walking the reader through the steps in reloading a cartridge. Lee’s causal writing allows the reader to easily grasp an understanding of headpsace without bogging down into unneeded complicated explanations. Although I have been reloading for some years now, I still found the front half of the book to be an enjoyable and informative read.

Modern Reloading claims to have the “world’s most comprehensive load data.” I do not have any way of proving or disproving this claim, but I can tell you that I found a lot more load data than I expected to find on some less common cartridges such as the 7.62×54R (3 pages) and 7mm Shooting Times Westerner (2 pages).

One unique aspect to the Modern Reloading load data is the inclusion of powder measurement by volume in addition to weight. All other load manuals list powder measurements exclusively in weight (grains). Modern Reloading also includes the volume measurements for reloaders using the powder dippers associated with Lee Precision’s gear. If you are using dippers, this book should be mandatory for your loading bench.

Modern Reloading is one of the least expensive load books on the market. I suppose that I should expect that it would be, as Richard Lee built his company for the value-conscious buyer. Frankly, I would suggest this book at double it’s price, so at $17.93 on Amazon, I feel it is a great bargain.