I got back to the reloading bench for the first time in two decades to make some .25-06 with 134-grain ELDM’s.
I started off by reading the first couple of chapters in my reloading books (Lyman and Speer). Always good to refresh yourself on the process. Then, I set about finding a post where someone pasted a page from the Berger reloading manual for their .257 135-grain bullet (I didn’t find any published data for .25-06 with the 134-grain ELDM). That suggested a maximum charge of 4831SC which didn’t sound insane, but probably hotter than I wanted. So, I backed off about a grain from that as my starting point. I expected to get about 2800 FPS from my chosen load.
I had about a hundred primed, previously fired, brass that had been sitting in a ziplock bag out in the barn for about twenty years (I found them a year ago and brought them in the house). I couldn’t remember whether I had FL resized them or whether I was doing neck sizing only back then, so I lubricated them and ran them through the FL resizing die.
After setting up and calibrating my Chargemaster, I programmed in the load and loaded up a handful. I set the COAL to 3.34, which seemed to be just about the maximum length for the box magazine on my FN Mauser action. I ran the first five through my action a few times to check for proper feeding. No issues.
I fired one and checked for pressure. It looked good to me. It was at the bottom of the target from last night (when I confirmed that the rifle was sighted in, albeit with lighter, faster bullets), so I dialed up a mil, put on a new target, and sent four. They came in at an average of 2799 from my 24” 1:8” twist Douglas barrel with the OG 6.5.
The first four seemed good enough (shots 1, 3, 4, and 9 below), although I felt like one of the shots wasn’t great (probably the one marked “4” below), so I loaded up six more and sent them. I was happy enough with the result that I went ahead and loaded up the rest of the primed brass.
I may do some more careful load development the next time. But these will be great for just about whatever I want to do, except bragging about my rifle or my reloading ability.
I knocked off some rust and remembered how fun it can be to reload.
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