What did you do in the reloading room today?

[KyleR1985]

Loaded 40-50 rounds of virgin Peterson brass for 6 dasher Howa Mini.

16” barrel, 95tmk’s 87vmax’s 108eldm’s, Varget, and of course some lever.

Already know what the 95 and 87 do, looking forward to see what the 108’s do.

 

[Rugger7622]

I checked about 150, 6.5 saum primer pockets with a go/no gauge due to light seating pressure. About 80% of them failed! Originally shot with magnum primers, 4X!

 

[ridgeline]

Hit the range to run some Barnes 112gr Match Burners on 100 Meter paper and grab some Garmin chrono numbers ! Landed on 44gr H4831SC with an avg 2950 fps from it's 20" barrel... Fresh barrel is at 75 rounds now, time to mass produce.

 

[Castle Rock]

I checked about 150, 6.5 saum primer pockets with a go/no gauge due to light seating pressure. About 80% of them failed! Originally shot with magnum primers, 4X!

If they don’t fall out you will be fine, the cup obturates to form a seal under pressure

Hit the range to run some Barnes 112gr Match Burners on 100 Meter paper and grab some Garmin chrono numbers ! Landed on 44gr H4831SC with an avg 2950 fps from it's 20" barrel... Fresh barrel is at 75 rounds now, time to mass produce.

First Rocstock in Oz?

 

[ridgeline]

If they don’t fall out you will be fine, the cup obturates to form a seal under pressure

First Rocstock in Oz?

Yes sir !! Won't be my last either. Also, that was shot prone via Atlas bipod and Game changer rear bag with git lite fill, with me breaking position each shot... The Rokstok rocks.

 

[Castle Rock]

Don’t call me, sir. I work for a living.

 

[Ramem7mm]

Yesterday I was finishing up some 25 Creed ammo and when I was done I had one cartridge from a previous batch that didn't go bang. I extracted the bullet expecting to dump powder into the tub and to my surprise there was no powder. I must have missed powder on that one.

I have loaded thousands and thousands of rounds and that was a first. When I initially fired the round and pulled the trigger I didn't notice a noise or anything it was silent. Primer did go off though, there was burnt residue on the base of the bullet.

I always pour powder in and then insert a bullet right after but must have got distracted on that one.

 

[doc holiday13]

friday afternoon i did up 75 rounds of hunting ammo. Next I need to get my brass prep station put up

 

[Vern400]

Move in day. Time to bolt down the presses and get started up again. Plus more organizing 27 years of mixed brass and shotgun hulls buddies gave me. Moving everything, I found stuff I have no idea how I got it. 30-378 Wby brass? Really? Looking forward to having HVAC this year so I can load when Hell's Front Porch gets here. (That's after what many of you call summer

 

[letrbuck]

I've had a Dillon 550 sitting in a box for nearly a decade. Finally live in a space where I can set it up.

Came in to 900 168 TMKs for a song and bought the cheapest primers and suitable powder I could find. Followed Forms load dev and loaded a few to check accuracy. I'll be damned if i ever measure things to the nats ass again.

Loaded 200 up last night in no time at all.

 

[sierracharlie338]

I've had a Dillon 550 sitting in a box for nearly a decade. Finally live in a space where I can set it up.

Came in to 900 168 TMKs for a song and bought the cheapest primers and suitable powder I could find. Followed Forms load dev and loaded a few to check accuracy. I'll be damned if i ever measure things to the nats ass again.

Loaded 200 up last night in no time at all.

Just put my 55C in storage preparing to move, still unopened

 

[solarshooter]

Following up on this, I finally went and shot this 162 ELDM test I loaded up.

First test was same IMR7828SSC powder and charge as above but switching primer to a FED210. Mean radius 0.98"!! If I look at each sub-group independently, I get 0.43" and 0.47". Overall group size is 2.5" for 10 shots, vs 1.75" for 6 in the initial test above. I don't know what happened here, either some change in my shooting input, I made a mistake in the reloading room, or this is just a real, weirdly shaped group.
View attachment 851619

What's really really weird is I shot this full test of 30 round robin style, in sets of 3/3/4 of each load, and the scatter into two groups manifested across multiple strings for this load. I would also expect whatever systematic error I had here to manifest in the other two loads, but here's the H4831SC/CCI200 group:
View attachment 851624
MR 0.33" for 10 - awesome, and a 40% improvement over the initial load.

And the H4350/CCI200 group:
View attachment 851626
MR 0.45", not great, but a 18% improvement over the initial load.

So, putting aside the very strange double group, my conclusion so far is that powder can make a HUGE difference in accuracy, but primer not so much. I'd like to hear the "nodes and harmonics don't exist" crowd explain that! No seriously, someone explain it to me - I thought precision was just proportional to recoil. Even though these are all different powders and speeds, the difference in precision is way bigger than the difference in recoil, and also not correlated.

Next up, I want to pick one of these loads and make a change in seating depth and a change in powder charge. I will also try and pick one load that I can keep constant and switch bullet, to really round out the test matrix.

Finally wrapped up this test. Shot baseline - 2gr of powder, MR = 0.64":


Then baseline with 0.040" less jump, MR = 0.72":


Then finally baseline with a Berger 175 (and slightly lower powder charge of 55.0), MR 0.43:




To recap it all, here is a summary of tested combinations and results:

Load	Variable being tested	10-shot Mean Radius	% of Baseline	T-test vs Baseline
57.0gr IMR7828SSC, 162gr ELDM, CCI200, 0.060" jump	Baseline	0.55"	-	-
57.0gr IMR7828SSC, 162gr ELDM, FED210, 0.060" jump	Different primer	1.04"	189%	0.00
55.0gr H4831SC, 162gr ELDM, CCI200, 0.060" jump	Different powder #1	0.33"	60%	0.02
50.0 H4350, 162gr ELDM, CCI200, 0.060" jump	Different powder #2	0.45"	82%	0.18
55.0gr IMR7828SSC, 162gr ELDM, CCI200, 0.060" jump	Different charge weight	0.64"	116%	0.29
57.0gr IMR7828SSC, 162gr ELDM, CCI200, 0.020" jump	Different seating depth	0.72"	131%	0.12
55.0gr IMR7828SSC, 175gr EH, CCI200, 0.060" jump	Different bullet	0.43"	78%	0.15

My conclusions are that changing primer and changing powder are the only things that made a significant difference (>95% confidence) to precision. One of the two powder changes, a major seating depth change, and a bullet change, all had >80% confidence of being significant changes, and qualitatively I'm guessing would show a higher confidence difference given more samples. Changing charge weight by 2gr (3.5%) had the least significant effect on precision.

So to put this into practice, I would pick a bullet of interest, and then test different combinations of powder and primer with that bullet while holding other variables constant. This once again agrees with @Formidilosus and other's conclusions that changing components is really the only "load dev" worth doing, and if you start with known good components and combinations you will likely get good results with very little fussing.

What's pretty interesting is that changing bullet for a given powder didn't have as much of an effect as changing powder for a given bullet. This maybe implies the POWDER is the most important thing for precision. The best performing combo here was the 162 ELDM with 55.0gr of H4831SC with an MR of 0.33", my go-to load for this gun is the 175 EH with 55.5gr of H4831SC with an MR of 0.30"....

 

[Harvey_NW]

What's pretty interesting is that changing bullet for a given powder didn't have as much of an effect as changing powder for a given bullet. This maybe implies the POWDER is the most important thing for precision. The best performing combo here was the 162 ELDM with 55.0gr of H4831SC with an MR of 0.33", my go-to load for this gun is the 175 EH with 55.5gr of H4831SC with an MR of 0.30"....

I think this is barrel dependent, I've seen both instances be the difference. Sometimes it doesn't like a powder, sometimes it doesn't like a bullet. Mystifying dynamic really. Awesome stuff!!

 

[cal30_sniper]

Loaded up a dummy round for one of the projects that’s been rolling around in my head for a while:

 

[Slick8]

Man, that looks like a beast.

What magazine is it in?

 

[cal30_sniper]

Man, that looks like a beast.

What magazine is it in?

That’s the Tikka T3x Waters Rifleman 0022M magazine.

33 Nosler Peterson brass necked up to 9.3 and seated using a 9.3-300WSM die set I snagged a while back. COAL on this one is 3.346 which gives right at 100% engagement of the accubond with the neck while still fitting in the WR mag (they list 3.38 will fit in this mag, so I could go a little longer).

I'm also looking at loading Barnes 250gr TTSX and Hammer Hunter 242 HHT, both of which would require a longer mag to avoid seating super deep. Something like the UM DBM for a Tikka (at 3.54") might be the trick for that.

 

[Slick8]

Again, that's a beast. Whats your plans for it?

I had a 30 nosler a few years ago, one of the few I regret selling. Was a pleasure to load for.
Once while cleaning up some unused ammo I had a 230 and 215 berger, a 200 accubond and a 212 eld fired 1 each at 300 yards into a 2.75 inch group. Loved that rifle.

 

[stan_wa]

This maybe implies the POWDER is the most important thing for precision. The best performing combo here was the 162 ELDM

I suspect that this is coincidence.
It makes sense to me that powder can change accuracy. However I suspect there is no way a bad bullet with a great powder would shoot well.
A good reason to save money and load the 162 eldms tho!

 

[cal30_sniper]

Again, that's a beast. Whats your plans for it?

I had a 30 nosler a few years ago, one of the few I regret selling. Was a pleasure to load for.
Once while cleaning up some unused ammo I had a 230 and 215 berger, a 200 accubond and a 212 eld fired 1 each at 300 yards into a 2.75 inch group. Loved that rifle.

Ha, does someone need a plan for something like this?

My scheme is to build up a rifle for “meat hunts”. I’m in a rythym of cow elk hunts for putting good meat in the freezer, and I’d like to experiment with some non-lead bullets. My thinking is a larger caliber copper bullet moving at velocities that are ballistically effective to ranges id take a shot at should work pretty well.

I’ve also been messing with 358 Norma Mag, and may end up doing a fast twist barrel (shorter profile and threaded) for it instead, but so far I’m hung up on the better brass, shorter COAL, and superior bullet selection that seem to make the 9.3-33 a better option. Though the .358 is a “factory option” and has a theoretically pro as such, these days it might as well be a wildcat also.

Edit to add that I also have this in mind as an advantageous cartridge for states with .35 caliber minimum diameter regs. It seems like more states could head that way over time.

 

[TripleOption]

Loaded a ladder for my 6.5x47 to find a sweet spot for the 153 a-tips with H4350.