Website Updates 5/19/2025

It has been a long time since I have updated the website. At the beginning this absence was due to some family issues. That has since been resolved, favorably. After that it was about getting settled into a new home and a new job. After a 3 year hiatus, I have finally found some time to start back again.

During this time I worked primarily as the New Product Developer for Creedmoor Sports. Odds are you may have seen videos of me on YouTube going over new products. I can honestly say doing product development in the reloading space has become a passion of mine. I worked closely with and developed a deep friendship with Marcus Brown. Together we brought nearly two dozen new products to market with many other getting design updates and improvements. 

That began to change in the fall of 2023, there was a noticeable slowdown in the market. The shooting sports, and particularly our little niche area is highly dependent on disposable income. I strongly suspect that as COVID money dried up and as Americans began to feel the pinch of inflation all the disposable dollars people spent on their hobbies began to dry up.  COVID created a bubble of demand, and I suspect many companies gobbled that demand up, not realizing it was a bubble, and made plans to grow and expand. When the bubble began to subside, the companies that made purchases and tried to expand were left with crippling debt.

Marc and I had more ideas and more designs than we could bring to the market. It was an unfortunate reality of the business, the development cycle is expensive, and it can be hard to go from concept to design unless you have capital to back it. When sales fell so did the appetite for risk, and despite our successes with items like the Wind Indicator, the line of Enhanced Turret Heads, The Comparator Tool, and various other reloading items, the company became risk averse and scaled back.

I have been part of sinking companies before and could see the writing on the wall. I started looking for another job early in 2024, leaving Creedmoor Sports at the end of May 2024. We moved north to the New England area not far from where I grew up.  Marc was at Creedmoor for about another year, and we stayed in touch. He was unceremoniously dismissed from the company at the end of February 2025, due to slow sales. As a southern boy through and through he remains in the south.

Despite some bitter moments, I largely see the three-year period as an amazing period of growth for me. I learned a tremendous amount from the industry, about the product development cycle, and about the market. I also made several connections and lasting friendships that have extended well beyond my employment. It also gave me an opportunity to be exposed to a lot of different reloading tool brands, and I began to develop more of a sense of what I liked and what I didn’t. Brands like L.E. Wilson, and Triebel began to help me see what quality reloading tools could and should be.

I’ve also added new cartridges to my handloading menagerie. Most notably .458 SOCOM and .357 Sig. This has come with a few new guns and gun builds which I am sure I’ll discuss at some point.  It was not a direct intention of mine to get into short and squat cartridges but I have a collection now. 300 Blackout, 357 Sig, 458 SOCOM, and 338 Spectre it’s becoming a trend.

What is the future for the Ballistic Assistant?

The move north has brought stability and an opportunity to finally set up my reloading presses and spend evening slowly working through the backlog of handloading tasks that have piled up over the years. As handloading does, you have lots of time to think, and both Marc and I have a long list of things we would like to bring to market. That will be our next step. I’ll continue to build out this site, offer commentary on current firearms news. Discuss and share projects I am working on, and overall try and keep building this website as a resource for the handloader.

In the meantime, I have been working on an updated burn rate chart. There have been some new powder releases in the past three years that are absent from the chart. SAAMI has also accepted several new cartridges, including the 5.7x28mm, and the 338 ARC which is Hornady’s interpretation of the .338 Spectre.

Federal has introduced the 7mm Backcountry, which has elicited an eyeroll from me on the marketing. I remain unconvinced that steel case ammo and 80kpsi cartridges are the wave of the future. I am also skeptical of Federal’s claims that it can be reloaded, the rumors are that die manufacturers are having a hard time creating functional sizing dies.

We are likely to see big changes on the ATF’s positions on several firearm accessories. We have already seen an about face on the Forced Reset trigger, I suspect there will again be reclassification and changes regarding the rules around pistol braces for the 100^th time. I’m also not convinced that any of these changes will last much longer than the next Democratic Administration. I have seen a lot of enthusiasm for possible removal of suppressors from the NFA. Something I completely support and would love to see. However, the realist in me will “Believe it when I see it”, it is not something I expect will happen in this congress.

The industry has seen an explosion in double stack 1911, often called 2011 though the term is trademarked by Staccato, who used to be STI. Everyone who is anyone is putting out double stack 1911’s. I have to admit, they are a pretty nice update to a 100 year old design. Time will tell how long this trend continues.

I have all but dumped the social media scene. It was a tremendous time suck and while I know it is good for website and business growth it also kills a lot of my time.  So I have unceremoniously abandoned Facebook, Reddit and Instagram. For now, it is those who have subscribed, which thankfully, it has seen growth in my relative absence.

As always, if you want to get in contact the best way is send me an email at jay@theballisticassistant.com

Till next week,

Jay