H4350 - am I doing it wrong?

[Wrench]

I load h4350 over a srp and have had zero problems. The one mile videos I did were done with that combo.

H4350 has held the 1k br record for quite a while.

 

[Mtndawger]

As I noted, this is across the number of different guns over a long period of time, so I don't really think so.

As an example, one of my Remington 700 30-06's will drill 30 rounds into a 1 inch hole when fed with Varget and 150 Accubonds seated at 3.340. I've tried 150, 165, and 180 Accubonds over H4350 in the same rifle, and yes I played with the seating depth, and it's never shot a five round group under 3 in with any of those experiments.

That example is pretty extreme, most of my rifles are not that dramatically worse with H4350, but other than my 7x57, that is the kind of results I usually get.

I was mostly trying to zero in on neck tension. Also have you read the Painless Load Development thread? Highly recommended.

Thread 'Painless load development (mine)'

Oct 25, 2021

I have had multiple people ask me to lay out how I do load development being that what I do is different. Since Shaen @Shooter71 just rebarreled a Tikka 595 in 6XC I thought it would be easy to show how I do it. It’s a Master Sporter with a T3 lite profiled 20” barrel- keep in mind it is a T3 LITE barrel. So by conventional “wisdom” it should be more picky and less accurate than a heavy barrel. His work is shoddy (), but I bet I can overcome it.

The rifle-


First was @Unknown Munitions factory load with 105gr Berger Hybrids. 5 rounds to zero, 5 for a...

• Formidilosus
• Replies: 1,071
• Forum: Reloading

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[fraz01]

I currently have 4 rifles using H4350. I'm running to different 8 LB lots of powder with 2 rifles and using up some 1# cans on a 2 other rifles. 30-06 AI and 6CM are on the 8# lots, powders were purchased when rifles were barreled. H4350 gives me good case fill and great consistency in velocity. I can usually get good velocity before pressuring out. Your swing in accuracy and pressuring up is definitely not the norm in my experience. I would move on

 

[NorthIdahoDude]

I was mostly trying to zero in on neck tension. Also have you read the Painless Load Development thread? Highly recommended.

Thread 'Painless load development (mine)'

Oct 25, 2021

I have had multiple people ask me to lay out how I do load development being that what I do is different. Since Shaen @Shooter71 just rebarreled a Tikka 595 in 6XC I thought it would be easy to show how I do it. It’s a Master Sporter with a T3 lite profiled 20” barrel- keep in mind it is a T3 LITE barrel. So by conventional “wisdom” it should be more picky and less accurate than a heavy barrel. His work is shoddy (), but I bet I can overcome it.

The rifle-


First was @Unknown Munitions factory load with 105gr Berger Hybrids. 5 rounds to zero, 5 for a...

• Formidilosus
• Replies: 1,071
• Forum: Reloading

• 

​

So basically, you are saying, seat the bullet to what's most convenient, pressure test to find max charge, and then load and shoot. To be fair, I agree in the sense that I have never had a gun that could not shoot a known good combo for squat that I ever got to shoot great with something else. But I have had more than a few that were 1.5 or so MOA that I could get down to 1 MOA by messing with seating depth and powder charge.

 

[NorthIdahoDude]

So basically, you are saying, seat the bullet to what's most convenient, pressure test to find max charge, and then load and shoot. To be fair, I agree in the sense that I have never had a gun that could not shoot a known good combo for squat that I ever got to shoot great with something else. But I have had more than a few that were 1.5 or so MOA that I could get down to 1 MOA by messing with seating depth and powder charge.

To follow up on that - for examples:

I have a a particular Rem 700 in 30-06 that will shoot a hair over 1 MOA all-day-every-day with Varget fueled 150 Accubond's seated at 3.340 OAL (which is still about .095 off the lands). At 3.30 OAL it shots near double that group size (and with H4350 and any depth, it's well over double that size).

My 7x57 likewise, seat it too far away from the lands, and it shoots like an accuracy problem, but get the bullet within about .050 of the lands, and it shoots pretty good. And this is my odd duck, in so far as I have only ever got H4350 to shoot well with this gun - nothing else is particularly good at all.

 

[punklife505]

I've used it on about 5 different 300wsm and with 1 tikka 30.06
no complaints from me. 2925fps in my 300wsm with 178gr's with a 20" barrel.

With 175 LRX in my WSM it goes 3150fps, I love some H4350.

 

[madcalfe]

With 175 LRX in my WSM it goes 3150fps, I love some H4350.

that seems oddly fast.
With my old wsm with a 24" barrel and 178's I was only able to get 3025fps any hotter id get extractor marks and split necks after 2 reloads

 

[S.Clancy]

Hmmm, I've got 10lbs so maybe I'm biased, but I've got loads for 6.5 CM and 270 Win that H4350 works great for.

I don't do a lot of tinkering, so once I get good loads I just crank up a pile of them

 

[Vern400]

I gave my brother some Varget and his groups from his heavy barrel 6.5 improved. I read tons of comments about favorite powders for 6.5 cm and h4350 was perhaps the most commonly recommended one. I bought him a pound for his birthday. They weren't wrong and we're shooting 2.5 and 3.5 inch groups at 500 m.

I have an alternative idea for you.
The cartridge and rifle pair is the biggest factor for accuracy.
The bullet is probably the next most important factor. I have one rifle that will shoot a good quality tangent ogive bullet almost regardless of seating depth. It is so picky with a secant ogive bullets that I have to stick with hybrids. Some of my rifles will eat anything and shoot pretty good.

So in your 30-06 take a 168 SMK not tipped and put it 0.020 off the lands and shoot it with h4350. If a 30-06 or 308 won't shoot a 168 smk, it might not shoot at all.

Take a 140 grain Hornady standard hollow point match bullet and shoot it in your 6.5 with H4350 some people say the Hornady 140 is better than the Sierra 140 in the 6.5 and I can't argue.

I'm just saying you may not have a powder problem because just about everybody else on the planet can make that stuff shoot. You might be Force feeding bullets into your gun that doesn't like.

I'll probably get beat up for this, and I really don't care. But when Berger came out with hybrid bullets it was because so many people were having trouble getting the full potential out of secant ogive bullets.
I might be dumb, but they probably aren't. There are a lot of things about your situation that I don't know. I don't pretend to understand. I'm just giving you something to think about. There's enough tribal knowledge here saying h4350 is good to warrant perhaps a different approach. And it's available!

 

[Fireflyfishing]

If RL-16 were on the shelves right now, I’d walk right past the H4350 and get that…every time.

 

[cal30_sniper]

I’ve been messing a lot with H4350 recently. I’d call the results okay, but not spectacular.

The two I’ve been working up for are 9.3x62 and .358 Norma Mag. It seems to be working better in the .358 than the 9.3. I was using IMR-4320 for my 250gr Accubond load in the 9.3 before, but that stuff is no more.

I had a little IMR-4350 left over that I used up first, and have noticed a decrease in overall performance with working up H4350 in the same rifles and similar bullets. Across the board, velocity has been about 100fps slower than it should be, and most groups are so-so, but within family for a good shooting 70 year old rifle.

I think for the 9.3x62 it’s borderline too slow, especially on the loads with long copper bullets eating up space. I’ll probably go back with those and try H4895 to see if I can find the missing 100fps. H4350 seems a better fit for the .358, I’m going to keep working it higher and see what I end up at.

The below load would be perfect if it wasn’t 170fps slower than GRT says it should be. 2500fps is pretty slow for that bullet/cartridge combo, and it’s already getting fairly compressed: