Your Groups Are Too Small

[HighUintas]

@solarshooter great work on proving all that out. It's a lot of time investment and you've proved to yourself what needs to be done for load development, rather than listening to faceless strangers on the web.

 

[mxgsfmdpx]

I like that you did all the crazy weird math and graphing to put your own mind at ease with "load development". All the work you did basically 100% confirmed what has been known and documented for a while now. But sometimes we do need to see it and experience it for ourselves to just accept it.

Agree! Exactly why I sold all of my reloading equipment this Winter. Never again. I'm going to spend that time being productive in the field. My retired father in law can make me ammo from now on if I don't just shoot factory.

 

[willfrye027]

Agree! Exactly why I sold all of my reloading equipment this Winter. Never again. I'm going to spend that time being productive in the field. My retired father in law can make me ammo from now on if I don't just shoot factory.

Dang it, right now I am the reloading guy for my whole group…

 

[id_jon]

Dang it, right now I am the reloading guy for my whole group…

As long as you're not doing it for free

 

[wind gypsy]

Dang it, right now I am the reloading guy for my whole group…

I'm between you guys.. Trying to shoot a lot more factory but there's still some stuff that's just not available or palatably priced to give up on hand loading. For example with those 106 TAC bullets - I can load 6 creedmoor for $0.57/ea vs $1.70ish (with tax/shipping) for factory 108 ELDm.

"Never Again" for handloading is a bold prediction. Who knows what pricing, availability, and quality will look like in the future.

 

[mxgsfmdpx]

I'm between you guys.. Trying to shoot a lot more factory but there's still some stuff that's just not available or palatably priced to give up on hand loading. For example with those 106 TAC bullets - I can load 6 creedmoor for $0.57/ea vs $1.70ish (with tax/shipping) for factory 108 ELDm.

"Never Again" for handloading is a bold prediction. Who knows what pricing, availability, and quality will look like in the future.

True. I guess never again personally as I sold all of my equipment to my father in law. I have a few folks who can make ammo for me luckily.

 

[hereinaz]

"Never Again" for handloading is a bold prediction. Who knows what pricing, availability, and quality will look like in the future.

I am with you on this one. I will shoot factory .223 all day long. I have the dies but can't justify time reloading.

And, for the other stuff, I am so done with "load development". To get away from it, I chose cartridges that are inherently accurate, short and fat is where its at, as established from the benchrest world. I load up some ammo that should shoot and try it. If it doesn't, I change powder. If that doesn't work I change bullet.

Once I find a load that shoots sub MOA, I am DONE. Then, I load and shoot.

And, for my 6.5 creed and my 6 creed I know that I can go buy match ammo (FGMM, Hornady, Sig) off the shelf and it all has shot sub MOA for me in all the barrels and rifles that I have.

 

[solarshooter]

The group size is absolutely solid, and is better than the vast majority actually have. It’s that you went through all of that- for what could have been achieved with 20 rounds and no mental circle jerk.





Hit rates on deer sized vitals (10-12”) do not dramatically increase in field shooting going from 1.5 MOA to 1 MOA, and almost not at all from 1 MOA to .5 MOA- if you could even have a true .5 MOA field rifle.




Load dev is not shooting practice at all for hitting things in the field. It’s bench shooting. If you don’t flinch- then it’s no real benefit; if you do flinch, then it’s not load dev.





No one is talking about 3 MOA. You went through an involved process to arrive at a just over 1 MOA load for 15 shots- you feel like you did something, but in the end you are shooting about the same groups that any decent 6.5cm, 308, etc. will do with factory match ammo. Not only that, but that you could find a load to shoot like that in about 20 rounds, with no math, no fuss.




How did any of that teach you how a rifle works, down to the inner anatomy; and how does that translate to hitting things in the field?

My experience with factory ammo has not been as positive as yours. 6.5cm is the exception there - tight chambers and low recoil seem to make that cartridge work amazing out of the box in hunting weight rifles. I have seen factory ammo groups over 2moa from many rifles, especially in the magnum class. I have done load development and validation that improves these guns by 50-100% with a larger number of shots. This is pretty much universal for my experience. There may be some particular brands/types of factory ammo that work just as well, but by the time you buy and test 4-5 different types of ammo I don't think you're doing better than the load dev process I outlined. The reloading equipment is overhead but that gets defrayed across many rifles and years to the point I don't really consider it anymore. And as far as time, I can reload 20-50 rds in an evening after dinner when I would otherwise not do any shooting or other such practice - no loss there in my estimation.

For my gun, I have statistically valid improvements relative to other loads I tried. One example is 50.5gr H4350 and Federal primers. Across 49 shots with the H4350, I had a mean radius of 0.35 and an SD of 0.18. This translates to a 3 sigma group of 1.78moa. My current load with 55.5gr H4831SC and CCI primers is mean 0.27 and SD 0.16, 3 sigma group 1.5moa. A T-test shows my current load differs from this load to 99% confidence. This is a statistically significant improvement of 19%. Maybe the delta in hit rate at long range is small but this seems like a significant and real improvement due to load dev methods. Would you take a 20% improvement in precision for 50rds sunk cost?

As far as inner workings, what I mean is details of seating depth, jump, chamber and ammo dimensional tolerances, barrel free floating, barrel quality, bullet geometry, powder characteristics and how to optimize for certain bullet weights, etc, etc. I take it you've done alot of reloading and know all these things, but I think reloading is the only way to learn them. Most people who don't reload are not well informed on any of these things.

 

[solarshooter]

I like that you did all the crazy weird math and graphing to put your own mind at ease with "load development". All the work you did basically 100% confirmed what has been known and documented for a while now. But sometimes we do need to see it and experience it for ourselves to just accept it.

Using mean and SD radius is known and common only in professional munitions specification and testing, like government rifle/ammo specifications or artillery/ballistic missiles/you name it. Applying it to small arms load dev doesn't seem common at all. I haven't seen much of it at least.

 

[solarshooter]

I am with you on this one. I will shoot factory .223 all day long. I have the dies but can't justify time reloading.

And, for the other stuff, I am so done with "load development". To get away from it, I chose cartridges that are inherently accurate, short and fat is where its at, as established from the benchrest world. I load up some ammo that should shoot and try it. If it doesn't, I change powder. If that doesn't work I change bullet.

Once I find a load that shoots sub MOA, I am DONE. Then, I load and shoot.

And, for my 6.5 creed and my 6 creed I know that I can go buy match ammo (FGMM, Hornady, Sig) off the shelf and it all has shot sub MOA for me in all the barrels and rifles that I have.

Sub MOA by what metric? Genuinely curious.

 

[TaperPin]

Not to revive a dead horse just to beat it to death again, but here I go...

I have read through the entire thread, and I think I have something to offer. Like many others I was very disturbed by Bryan Litz's chapters (Modern Advancements Vol 3) on rifle accuracy and small sample testing (which by the way came out well before Hornady's podcast). I was just about to begin development on my new barrel, a 26" Benchmark chambered in 284 win (Tikka platform), and this rocked my world.

I used to consider my load dev method a 5x5 on powder in 1% increments, then pick best powder based on group and poi trend, do a 5x5 on seating depth, pick best combo based on group/poi trend, then load up 25 for verification and MV.

Once I read the book, I was thrown into a world of doubt. So I decided to do some testing myself. I grabbed my T1x and went to 50yds and shot 19 10 shot groups over the course of a couple days, and began crunching numbers. This activity resulted in the video below, an interview with Keith of Winning in the Wind, who is a local F class champ and fellow aerospace engineer.

Now I understand not everyone wants to sit through over an hour of two engineers rambling (though I think it's worth your time, obviously biased). So I'll put some cliff notes here of the relevant findings from my testing and how it influenced my load development method.

Actually before I do that, let me say a little bit about load development. I am a structural dynamicist by education and profession, meaning I model and predict structural dynamic loads, deflections, and accelerations. ALL elastic structures have modes of vibration which are determined by their stiffness and mass characteristics. Elasticity means that the material stretches under load. Most materials we interact with on a daily basis are elastic, including the metal of your barrel. The material and contour of your barrel determine it's stiffness and mass distribution, and therefore it's vibrational frequencies and shapes (modes). For a free floated barrel, this can be considered a cantilevered beam in engineering terms, and the stiffness or rigidity of the barrel attachment to the action/stock/shooter/ground system also influence its modes. This page explains the math https://endaq.com/pages/bernoulli-euler-beams, see animations of modes here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler–Bernoulli_beam_theory.

So when I talk about load dev, I'm talking about adjusting bullet time such that the bullet leaves at an extreme of barrel motion, where velocity is close to zero (at least for the largest amplitude modes), and small variations in bullet time don't produce large variations in bullet exit angle. I DO NOT believe that certain powder charges posses magical better MV properties - MV is linear with powder for the useful charge range. MV ES and SD are a function of your components and your reloading consistency.

OK now on to the critical findings:

• Impact radius is far more useful and meaningful than group size. You get more data for the same set of shots, converge to the "correct" answer faster, and characterize the system more accurately. Learning to work in terms of mean and SD radius is game changing.
• Using radius, you can continuously "overlay" more and more shots, so as you go and practice and shoot your baseline load, you can end up with a database of 100s of shots informing your mean/SD radius stats. This is like having a group size of 100s of shots, only much easier and more informing.
• Small samples (3-5 shots) CAN be useful for assessing differences between populations, provided the differences are large (50-100%). As the differences become smaller you need more samples to tell them apart. Due to the large samples required to fine tune a load, it's probably not worth doing. Assessing major deltas across component combinations and broad sweeps of powder is most worthwhile, and once you get below your required accuracy threshold, characterization is more valuable.
• The "T-Test" can be used to statistically assess whether populations of data are actually different. You need a mean and standard deviation of each population to do this.

My load dev process after all this is as follows, and keep in mind I'm always working in radius and logging every shot as I go:

1. Load up 5 shots for each bullet/powder combo I want to test (I don't mess with primers until I look at MV stats). Shoot and look for best combo by a large margin. If all similar pick my preferred and move on.
2. Load up a 5x5 broad powder sweep, 1-2% powder increments. Shoot and look for best combo by a large margin. If all similar pick my preferred and move on.
3. Validate - load up 20-30 and shoot for groups and MV. Note that these groups will later be overlaid via radius methodology, but you get 4-6 5 shot group agg for comparison to that metric and other rifles. At the end of validation you will have between 20 and 40 shots informing your mean and SD radius stats, and your mean and SD MV stats.
4. If at the end of this process (~80rds) you don't have a load you like, start over with new components. If you do like it, start shooting and practicing with it and log all your data as you go to increase your statistical basis.

It's worth noting this is about the same number of shots as before, but I am using different metrics and looking for different information. I'm also making much more significant changes in each set of testing.

I appreciate the time and effort you put into the description of your process - it’s fun coming up with best practices.

As a hunter, rather than accuracy competitor, I lean quite hard toward Keith’s hunting rifle load development (since you mentioned being interviewed by him). When a load shoots “good enough” for the purpose the process is done. Also like Keith, I’m a firm believer the easy/least cost path to a 1/2 moa hunting rifle is a good barrel and abbreviated load development.

I really like engineers and some of my most enjoyable friendships are with aerospace guys. It seems with them I’m often interjecting the idea of an ideal time of development based on constraints, rather than an idealized best practice. Time is limited, so somewhere between shooting factory loads and burning out a barrel doing load development is a person’s ideal time of development. As we get older and life gets more complicated the constraints grow and time becomes even more valuable - the econ and management classes make me want to draw out an equation for ideal development time and bullet list of assumptions, but that’s a different Youtube channel. Lol

Keep up the good work!

 

[hereinaz]

Sub MOA by what metric? Genuinely curious.

I generically use 1 moa gun in the “common parlance” to encourage people to just shoot more if they aren’t geeking and enjoying the load dev and such.

For me, a “1 moa gun” in that parlance can generally do 5 shot groups sandbagged off a bench.

In my guns, I do mean an actual 1 moa capable gun. I like to run a cartridge and powder that is easy to load, like 6BRA and H4895 and doesn’t require much tuning. I turn my trigger down light for testing the gun/load.

I know if I shot enough rounds, I will get more that fall outside the bell, so a 30 round group the gun might be more.

Here is a post I made so you can see a gun I would call a one moa gun. I shoot .25 to .5 three shot groups all the time with it. To impress the noobs on the range I never shoot more than three, hahaha.

How do my 3 shot 1/4 moa groups look?

Here is a group of 11 shots, but I could only legitimately find evidence of 10. It’s .89 moa per the app. Not bad for a gunner like me. Gun is my 6 BRA in the Mini Howa shooting 95 grain VLD hunters. Forgot my chronograph… If I randomly drew any three shots from this group of 10, what are the...

rokslide.com

 

[TaperPin]

I’ll be glad when the Ukrainian mess is cleared up and reloading component cost will be back in a normal range. Outstanding orders seem to indicate a few years of ammo production are already spoken for, and maybe non of us will live long enough to see Europe at ease.

I was going to suggest reloading isn’t out of fashion, just on pause, but dang it’s taking a long time. *chuckle*

 

[BjornF16]

More shoot. Less think.

“If you think, you’re dead…”

 

[solarshooter]

How did any of that teach you how a rifle works, down to the inner anatomy; and how does that translate to hitting things in the field?

I realize I didn't answer this directly. It doesn't, you're right. But knowledge of how rifles work informs all future builds and diagnosing issues with my gun or those around me. But again, I don't see how it detracts from practicing hitting things in the field, other than the ~100rds spent doing development on a barrel life of 2k+ rds in my case. So arguably 5% less positional practice with this gun over it's life.

 

[BjornF16]

I used to follow a load development regimen that took a lot of time and components…now I follow Form’s “painless” method. Allows for more field shooting time

Painless load development (mine)

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...

rokslide.com

 

[solarshooter]

At some point you have to ask yourself "why."

80/20 is the way: do the thing that gets you 80% of what you need, with 20% of the effort.

Standard deviations via a 5x5 load ladder didn't cause you to miss that mule deer. Failure to practice did. I say this with a ton of respect, as I have been in your shoes. I get it.

More shoot. Less think.

I do appreciate this and am practicing positions a lot more than load dev these days. But I argue the work I did and the methods I derived are the "best way" to do load dev. And if I spend 5-10% of barrel life optimizing any given gun and the remaining 90-95% practicing and hunting, that seems worthwhile. Especially since the improvements can be large.

 

[willfrye027]

One thing I would love to see, and have yet to see anyone post…

On your OCW or whatever load development:

Shoot a 10 shot group with your “chosen” “”node””

Shoot a 10 shot group with the WORST looking group, assuming it’s not due to being over pressure

 

[solarshooter]

One thing I would love to see, and have yet to see anyone post…

On your OCW or whatever load development:

Shoot a 10 shot group with your “chosen” “”node””

Shoot a 10 shot group with the WORST looking group, assuming it’s not due to being over pressure

For my gun, I have statistically valid improvements relative to other loads I tried. One example is 50.5gr H4350 and Federal primers. Across 49 shots with the H4350, I had a mean radius of 0.35 and an SD of 0.18. This translates to a 3 sigma group of 1.78moa. My current load with 55.5gr H4831SC and CCI primers is mean 0.27 and SD 0.16, 3 sigma group 1.5moa. A T-test shows my current load differs from this load to 99% confidence. This is a statistically significant improvement of 19%. Maybe the delta in hit rate at long range is small but this seems like a significant and real improvement due to load dev methods. Would you take a 20% improvement in precision for 50rds sunk cost?

 

[Harvey_NW]

"Across 49 shots with the H4350, I had a mean radius of 0.35 and an SD of 0.18. This translates to a 3 sigma group of 1.78moa. My current load with 55.5gr H4831SC and CCI primers is mean 0.27 and SD 0.16, 3 sigma group 1.5moa. A T-test shows my current load differs from this load to 99% confidence. This is a statistically significant improvement of 19%."

Those are 2 completely different combinations of components, not a comparison of 2 different loads identified by an OCW test of 1 combination.