Are we over loading when we should be under loading? 6UM<300WMS?

[Wprinkle]

Well hunting season is over for me so now time to obsess and over think.. I am relatively new to wildcats +- 6 years. All my wildcats require fire forming. I now fire form most everything even if not blowing out shoulders just because I believe it helps.. not enough to matter but I like it lol.

So to the point. I am sure you all have noticed as well as I have that "fire forming" loads are stupid accurate and normally I get a SD of less than 3-4FPS over 60-100 rounds. And groups under 1 MOA and most of em way tighter and those groups hold true at long range. (all from prone with bags no timer) So what If we have been going at this bass awkwards?

RokSlide for the most part is in the camp of getting the most acceptable wound channel we can out of the lightest recoiling delivery system we can. So we have taken "small" cartridges and hopped em up to achieve this. What if we take large cartridges and castrate em ie fire forming loads to achieve the same thing?

PROS: Longer barrel life, longer brass life, would we see the stupid good accuracy and tight SD (even though Form proved it is pretty much irrelevant for field shooting/hunting), Easier for new reloaders and non wildcatters to achieve.

CONS: nobody wants to walk around with a 300 RUM that performs like a 243 lol,

Yep, pole-vaulting over mouse turds but hay season is over, calving hasn't started and Im bored....

EDIT; That is supposed to be 300WSM not 300WMS

 

[longrangelead]

great, thanks!
another rabbit hole!

There does seem to be something to that within reason.
Most handloaders have probably found pushing most cartridges too hard degrades accuracy.

 

[Wprinkle]

great, thanks!
another rabbit hole!

There does seem to be something to that within reason.
Most handloaders have probably found pushing most cartridges too hard degrades accuracy.

I really noticed it with the fast 6mm. Maxed out I was basically getting two groups. A first shot/ cold bore group and a follow up shot group. Both extremely tight groups and when combined still sub 2MOA but I backed off .5 grains and poof all that went away.. And as you said when it was maxed out there was a noticeable accuracy degradation.

 

[ckleeves]

It’s a funny thing, I think most reloaders know the advantage of not running max +.5 and yet a whole bunch of them get caught up in it even while knowing better, myself included.

When I screw a new barrel on I tell myself “I’ll be happy with 2900 out of this barrel” and then 8 hours later after 30 rounds I’m thinking “Man, with XX powder I bet this baby will hit 3050!”

My usual technique is to start with a very achievable goal, exceed it by a lot, trash some brass, maybe pull some bullets just for fun, come to my senses and back way way down to my original goal and then happily shoot the barrel for the rest of its life at the happy load after killing 40% of the barrel life and ruining a couple hundo in brass for a few extra yards of minimum expansion velocity that I’m not gonna use anyway.

PS- This is an advanced technique I don’t recommend for anybody but the extremely simple minded like myself.

 

[Dark timber]

It’s a funny thing, I think most reloaders know the advantage of not running max +.5 and yet a whole bunch of them get caught up in it even while knowing better, myself included.

When I screw a new barrel on I tell myself “I’ll be happy with 2900 out of this barrel” and then 8 hours later after 30 rounds I’m thinking “Man, with XX powder I bet this baby will hit 3050!”

My usual technique is to start with a very achievable goal, exceed it by a lot, trash some brass, maybe pull some bullets just for fun, come to my senses and back way way down to my original goal and then happily shoot the barrel for the rest of its life at the happy load after killing 40% of the barrel life and ruining a couple hundo in brass for a few extra yards of minimum expansion velocity that I’m not gonna use anyway.

PS- This is an advanced technique I don’t recommend for anybody but the extremely simple minded like myself.

This is exactly what I do

 

[wind gypsy]

Well hunting season is over for me so now time to obsess and over think.. I am relatively new to wildcats +- 6 years. All my wildcats require fire forming. I now fire form most everything even if not blowing out shoulders just because I believe it helps.. not enough to matter but I like it lol.

So to the point. I am sure you all have noticed as well as I have that "fire forming" loads are stupid accurate and normally I get a SD of less than 3-4FPS over 60-100 rounds. And groups under 1 MOA and most of em way tighter and those groups hold true at long range. (all from prone with bags no timer) So what If we have been going at this bass awkwards?

RokSlide for the most part is in the camp of getting the most acceptable wound channel we can out of the lightest recoiling delivery system we can. So we have taken "small" cartridges and hopped em up to achieve this. What if we take large cartridges and castrate em ie fire forming loads to achieve the same thing?

PROS: Longer barrel life, longer brass life, would we see the stupid good accuracy and tight SD (even though Form proved it is pretty much irrelevant for field shooting/hunting), Easier for new reloaders and non wildcatters to achieve.

CONS: nobody wants to walk around with a 300 RUM that performs like a 243 lol,

Yep, pole-vaulting over mouse turds but hay season is over, calving hasn't started and Im bored....

EDIT; That is supposed to be 300WSM not 300WMS

I think I’m on that page to a degree other than the big cartridges part. Basically what I see is people setting their mind and sights on maximizing a given cartridge and running on the edge when it might be more productive to just plan on being 100 fps off from those “maximized” (read: stupid hot) loads you see posted on rokslide.

 

[NWBLKTAIL]

I know this applies to most people eventually when hand loading cartridges and squeezing every last bit of performance out them

But I do notice a lot of guys cutting barrels down then trying to load back what they’ve lost in velocity after chopping

Edit: it is hard to not get sucked into the numbers but I very seldom yield good results from running things to the max and beyond.

 

[TaperPin]

With all the emphasis on loading up to the bleeding edge, I’m constantly surprised guys have so little interest in learning how to tell how hot loads actually are, other than having to hammer a bolt open. That so few guns are blown up says a lot about modern steels. Lol

It’s probably human nature, since even old magazine articles often poked fun at quite dramatic case failures that don’t just happen if someone is paying attention. Editors washed out enough details to protect the guilty, but blowing guns up sounded like the adult version of M80s - usually everyone had fun and kept all their fingers, and well, if they lost a finger or eye it makes for a great story. I’ve heard some old timers that were at the top of their game in the 1950s and 1960s say their generation was far more comfortable with extreme pressures than today’s shooters and case head separations and primers that just fell out were not unusual events. No doubt plenty of bolts were hammered open.

 

[Chris in TN]

I've sort of hit the age where I don't care to push anything.

My .223/5.56 loads are mild - 77s at 2575' from a 16" with Benchmark.
My dedicated .223 loads for my old 12-twist bolt gun are only 3200' for 53s from a 26" tube (varget)
My 30-06 165s are about 2675' from a 22" (IMR4895)
My .280ai 180s max out about 2925' with VVN565 but I am loading to 2870'. (25" tube)
My 6.5cm with a 20" and 147s is moving 2610' and I know I can get 2650'+ from this powder and faster with others. (RL16)

I shoot smokeless muzzleloaders with loads that don't even surpass what is claimed for BH209 and 'magnum' loads.

I get the desire to go faster but once you figure out what you might need to do with a rifle and you have consistent loads that perform within that envelope, there's no real need to push things, unless you're already pushing by trying to do more than the rifle will do. Like, if I was trying to shoot elk at 400 yards with a 5.56, yeah, I'd want to step on it and get all I could out of it. But I'm not. Or if I was hunting in high winds, yeah, sure, better wind performance would be awesome. Not really an issue in 300-yard eastern deer hunting or 1st rifle season elk in mild weather.

We live in a day where we know what sort of performance envelope we need and most of us can easily pick a caliber just a hair bigger than that, then run it below maximum.

 

[Lawnboi]

Blowing primers is normal on the internet.

I’m not sure what’s being asked exactly. Less pressure is good, ammo that is safe in all conditions is good. Lots of reloaders if they havnt will eventually find out what happens when your on the ragged edge of pressure and it starts raining.

As to fire forming. With good brass it dosnt matter. Iv had some of my best performance with virgin alpha brass. I’d have zero issues hunting or shooting a match with virgin brass so long as the chamber is good and the brass is quality.

 

[amassi]

If you go too far down this rabbit hole and crunch the numbers you’ll realize the perfect cartridge is the 6GT. Buy a 12 pack of barrels on Black Friday, few kegs of Varget and bulk cases of 109-eldms
It’s 50 state legal, silly easy to load and just cruises along with a very stable powder. Upset velocity to ~900 yards depending on your altitude and recoils like a kitten without running on the edge of pressure

But having one rifle, one set of dies and one powder, primer and bullet would be boring and cost effective
Worse yet it feeds from all magazines well even blind box mags


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[sierracharlie338]

If you go too far down this rabbit hole and crunch the numbers you’ll realize the perfect cartridge is the 6GT. Buy a 12 pack of barrels on Black Friday, few kegs of Varget and bulk cases of 109-eldms
It’s 50 state legal, silly easy to load and just cruises along with a very stable powder. Upset velocity to ~900 yards depending on your altitude and recoils like a kitten without running on the edge of pressure

But having one rifle, one set of dies and one powder, primer and bullet would be boring and cost effective
Worse yet it feeds from all magazines well even blind box mags


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk