Hey, thanks for the mention guys, but I am definitely not a .308 shooter.
I have shot varmints sinceI was a kid, but I am no Big Game Hunter either. These days I'm just shooting targets for accuracy & I am having very good luck with Varget Powder so far.
I have a background as a manufacturing engineer, so making things is not foreign to me but I'm pretty new at this re-loading business.
As for the actual process, I have a manual from Speer, one from Hornaday, one from Lyman, one from Lee and one from Hodgdon. They all explain the process, and give you various charts. All with a slant towards using their particular products, however.
If you're using a variety of products, you would do well to read them all (and even more.) BUT I tend to think that the Speer book from RCBS is the best, & I use the RCBS press. I love the Lyman trimmer but I don't care for their book. Lee's book is very interesting to read, and he gives you some special insight. Hornaday is worth reading too.
What I can tell you about load development is this:
Read the charts from several different loading manuals for one size of bullet.
Look at where they agree and where they don't agree and figure out why.
Different velocities for the exact same charge? Yup. Thry have them. So did they use different twist/length/profile barrels? Different than yours too? A different cartridge length? A different starting charge?
Read the data carefully and you will learn things about constructing your own rounds that the manuals do not tell you, by a process of mental interpolation. That's a fancy way of saying you read between the lines.
The books will tell you never never never to do this, but you will discover things when you do.
I'm shooting loads that aren't listed exactly in any of the 5 books I have so far found. This could be because they've all determined that such a load isn't workable, but it's not the case because mine works.
In reality, it's because there are so many possible combinations of things that nobody tests them all. In fact, if you took all the major reloading companies together, they couldn't test them all.
Doctors say "what's normal is what's normal for you", and I say that the best load to run is the best load you can make for your exact gun.