NorthIdahoDude
FNG
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2022
So this is just kind of a random thing I thought I'd throw out for discussion and see what kind of feedback I get. I've seen a great deal of praise of H4350 over the years, particularly for use in cartridges like 30-06, 7x57, and 6.5 Creedmoor. So every time I get a new rifle for which it should in theory be good stuff, I give it a good solid try (1/2lb or so worth of experiments), and with only one exception, all I've ever gotten is surprisingly low velocity, surprisingly high pressure at those low velocities, and shockingly poor accuracy using H4350.
The one exception was my 7x57 with the Shillen barrel - if I got the seating depth perfect (0.050 off the lands) and used a light-ish charge, would shoot 140 accubonds pretty decently (around 0.8-ish MOA), but only that load and only at that seating depth.
I feel like my reloading skills are reasonable enough - I've had a number of 308's that would drill 5 to 15 round groups as one ragged hole when fed with Varget or R15, a couple of 223's that likewise loved life with Varget or AR-Comp, etc.
Back to H4350 - to be fair, none of the 30-06's I've had (not even the Tikkas) were better than 1.25 MOA with a well tuned load of R16 or IMR4831 or even Varget with light bullets - but with H4350, they were 2 to 3 or more MOA guns and ran bullets about 100 to 250 FPS slower than the load data or QuickLoad indicated it should before the primers started coming out flatter than I was comfortable with in terms of heating the loads up further.
So what gives - have I just had a string of bad luck to have more than half a dozen rifles in a row that don't "like" H4350? Am I doing it wrong as a reloader when playing with H4350 (but not when playing with other powders)? I dunno - 20 years of reloading later, it still remains a mystery to me.
What says the Internet?
The one exception was my 7x57 with the Shillen barrel - if I got the seating depth perfect (0.050 off the lands) and used a light-ish charge, would shoot 140 accubonds pretty decently (around 0.8-ish MOA), but only that load and only at that seating depth.
I feel like my reloading skills are reasonable enough - I've had a number of 308's that would drill 5 to 15 round groups as one ragged hole when fed with Varget or R15, a couple of 223's that likewise loved life with Varget or AR-Comp, etc.
Back to H4350 - to be fair, none of the 30-06's I've had (not even the Tikkas) were better than 1.25 MOA with a well tuned load of R16 or IMR4831 or even Varget with light bullets - but with H4350, they were 2 to 3 or more MOA guns and ran bullets about 100 to 250 FPS slower than the load data or QuickLoad indicated it should before the primers started coming out flatter than I was comfortable with in terms of heating the loads up further.
So what gives - have I just had a string of bad luck to have more than half a dozen rifles in a row that don't "like" H4350? Am I doing it wrong as a reloader when playing with H4350 (but not when playing with other powders)? I dunno - 20 years of reloading later, it still remains a mystery to me.
What says the Internet?
