I don't disagree with anything fritz said, but I will share my thoughts.

First off, I have said for a long time that in order to produce handloads that are better than factory ammo requires skills, tools and patience. To produce handloads that perform better than factory match ammo requires serious skills, excellent tools, premium components and oodles of patience.

FGMM is great ammo because it was developed properly and after lots of testing they came up with the right load (OCW) that works in regular length barrel and then they do great quality control on the ammo (or so one likes to believe.)

Producing a load for a rack grade AR-10 is something that may be pointless because FGMM and any number of other factory ammo will do just fine, better than most handloads, but that does not mean you can't handload for it. OCW is a very basic technique to find the proper powder charge with the combination of components you want to use; there's nothing magical about it.

3 shot groups in an OCW is not a good way of doing it, because you just don't know if 33% or 66% of the shots were bad technique. 5 round groups start to set a trend. 10 rounds would be even better, but who has time for that?

Finding the proper charge is a critical first step. Once you have that charge you can then refine to your heart's content or just call it good and go from there.

If you are pushing the bullets out during a scatter node instead of an accuracy node, there is NOTHING you can do to fix this load. It's like building a house on sand.

I totally agree that a load that shoots tiny groups at 100 yards is not guaranteed to keep performing well down range; we can discuss the various other things that can and will cause groups to open up much too quickly further downrange, but I will say this: I have yet to see a load that groups badly at 100 yards do well at 1000 yards.

I have seen loads do a certain group size at 100 and the same size at 200 and slowly open up further down. But I just have never seen groups shrink with distance.

I will also state categorically that I have never, ever seen even a just a good competitor shoot factory ammo in F-class and I sure as rain have never seen a top competitor to that. So it is possible to make better ammo than even factory match ammo, but read my second paragraph above again.

That said, one the OP gets a feel for the proper OCW, that should be the extent of load development needed. From that point forward, it will be a question of producing consistent ammo that cycles well in the AR-10 and feeds properly from the magazine. That's all I ever asked of my AR-10 because the barrel albeit great, is definitely not world class. if I ever get Krieger to rebarrel it for me, I may change my tune, but for now I'm producing great ammo for it that fits the magazine, cycles well and I watch the cases get flung all over the place and cringe. (One should remember that my match F-TR rifle does not have an ejector; I pick the fired case from the bolt and place it gently in the ammo box. The case never touches the ground.)

NikonUser:

I agree with you in that I don’t disagree with what fritz has written.

On the one hand you guys and others on this board with similar knowledge and experience albeit from slightly different disciplines are an asset to be treasured and respected. Not trying to be repetitive, there is a ton to learn from y’all but not all at once. True learning that you convert to skill takes commitment at many levels—financial, physical, mental and the big one, TIME.

On the other hand, as a group, you guys are so niched-out (specialized at an extremely high level) that it is sometimes difficult to relate what you are saying from my more common (much lower knowledge/ability level) goals and objectives.

I have been reloading for five years plus. I don’t reload for rack-grade guns but your definition of a rack-grade gun is likely galaxies apart from my definition. Without getting stuck in the detail of that thought, I reload for three reasons.

Reason 1: (Cost) I am okay purchasing 8 lbs of my favorite powder for ~190 bucks and 500 of my favorite projectiles for ~170 bucks. Primers are inexpensive especially when purchased in 5000 unit lots. I have saved and collected all the brass I have shot over the past 5 years and am only now thinking about purchasing some expensive brass. This is much more preferable to me than spending 500+ bucks or more on a similar number of FGMM 168s or 175s and feeling guilty about shooting 3-4 boxes in a session. This is my issue and I don’t want to project that on anyone else but $1 per trigger pull is a lot of money if you do it several times per month. You might be tempted to ask me how much my time is worth and what is the real cost of reloading but my answer is that I enjoy it.

Reason 2: (Accuracy) Once again, my definition and capability of accuracy and yours and fritz’s and others definition of accuracy are likely galaxies apart. I have shot my 168g SMK load successfully out to 800 yards shooting steel. 900 proved to be much more difficult (excuse warning) but after a review of data collected that day, the bullets were going subsonic prior to 900 yards and I did not compensate for that. I am confident that my reloads are every bit as good and consistent in my rifles and in my hands (!!!) (not necessarily your hands) as is FGMM. This is not intended as a boast, this is my experience. I would not hesitate to use the FGMM or some other Match ammo if I thought it was better. I am dying to shoot and take a picture of a target full of 10-shot .25 MOA bug holes. I’d gladly pay several thousand dollars for a box or two of ammo that could make me do that - just so I would have the picture!

Reason 3: (Challenge/Enjoyment) I enjoy many (not all) of the aspects of reloading. I like knowing exactly what is in each cartridge. I like knowing that a bad shot was not the ammo and, I like a nice group where you have a right to think or say that “a lot of things went right to produce that group/shot.” I used to race professionally. Guess what? I picked as my platform the most flawed from an engineering perspective car to race. Why? Because those cars had a fantastic winning record and if you could master one, you would likely experience great results too. Though I recently sold it, guess what kind of planes I like to fly—you got it, tail draggers. Why? Because anyone can land a tricycle gear plane in a heavy crosswind but actual skill is required to do the same with a conventional landing gear plane. Does that make me stupid? Probably but in the Land of the Free, stupid should weed itself out eventually.

With regards to reloading, while FGMM is a great cartridge, I don’t seek to duplicate it, I seek to improve upon it for my rifle.

To wrap this up, here is what I have learned in this experience/post:

I should have shot more than 3-shot groups to give more data points about each powder charge

Shooting OCW strings is not much fun at all but it does look like, if performed correctly and with a capable shooter, it is a lot better than guessing at what a “magic load” might be. I am willing to continue down this path.

And, SIGforum humans are complicated—each with his own biases, perspectives and egos and while that may sound like a setup for failure, we are able to learn some amazing stuff from each other and I want NikonUser, fritz and others to know that I do enjoy learning what they are willing to teach and often the manner in which they teach it. Thank y’all for sharing so much knowledge with this board. I am a direct beneficiary of that knowledge and have been able to measurably improve my reloading and shooting just over the past 6 months!

Henryrifle

Henryrifle -- Good to know you have some experience with loading FGMM-type ammo. Within its limits, the SMK bullet is pretty accurate. At high altitudes, I've shot them out to quite long distances and they have held decent vertical variation. They don't buck wind all that well, which has become very noticeable when ballistics are compared to my 6.5 Creedmoor rifle.

If you really want to chase 308 accuracy via handloading, I suggest you also test other bullets.
Hornady's AMax bullets are good, and their ELD-M are even better.

Sierra's tipped matchking (TMK) have better ballistics than SMK. I'm uncertain about accuracy in factory loads, however handloads may be better.

SMK 190 works well for me in a Corbon factory load.

Lapua's Scenar bullets are very good, with the Corbon 155's the best in my rifle.

Berger makes some great bullets, however as a factory ammo guy I have no experience here.

Just saying that if you're going to take the time and effort to improve upon FGMM's accuracy, it's worth trying bullets that might show similar accuracy and noticeably better ballistics.

Reason I do not do round robins when working up a load. It is very difficult to get off my rifle, stand up... get back on my rifle and shoot to the EXACT POI. If I can't shoot to the exact POI, a round robin will give me false/worthless info.

Try this. Shoot a group with your FGGM with out breaking your position, establish what you and your load can do. Then shoot a dot drill at a 100yds, (15-20 1" dots, one shot at each dot) getting up and down off your rifle between shots, see how you maintain your POI. Very challenging! I'm shooting extremely well if I can clean a 1/2" dot drill getting up and down between shots.

Lots of ways to go about this stuff, we all have to figure out works best for us. Have fun!

offgrid - your post is timely. I realized last night that I had a little time this morning so I reloaded several cartridges to go do some follow-up testing. I have not abandoned the OCW testing but I knew there wasn't enough time to get through another round of it. I don't know why but today was an off day but it didn't start off that way.

In the target below I shot some fouling rounds into the center target. I wasn't focused on being as accurate as possible but it turned out to be one of the better groups of the day. The upper left hand group was a re-test of an OCW group that just didn't look right. The retest was no better. That was good, I thought, no need to consider that load further. The upper right group was built from the results of the OCW testing and I was initially very excited about the results even though it is only a .8 MOA group. I thought it was going to be very repeatable:



In the next target, bottom left, I tried the same load as the upper right, 175g SMK over 43.4g Varget and shot a 1.25" mess. In the bottom right, I tried one other load from the OCW testing that looked promising which was .5 more grains of Varget or 43.9g under a 175g SMK. I shot an even worse 1.6" group:



Maybe today just wasn't my day. I like the idea of shooting a dot drill and will try some FGMM next outing.

Some days it's fun and some days, not so much.

Henryrifle

quote:

Originally posted by henryrifle:
I like the idea of shooting a dot drill...
Some days it's fun and some days, not so much.

Bingo.
A few months ago a friend gave me a Feinwerkbau 124 springer air rifle. I worked out a 30-foot lane in my basement and tried "precision" shooting with .177 pellets. What an eye opener -- I suck.

The two-direction recoil impulse of a springer has thrown me for a loop, and I've had to completely learn a new way to hold a rifle. I must be "loose" on the gun, allowing it to move both slightly backwards and sharply forwards before the pellet has even left the barrel. Oh yeah, the trigger is heavy and nebulous. The slightest change in pressure, hold, cheek weld, or trigger pull throws a shot. Muscling the rifle or using a firm hold only makes it worse. Other than that, it's a piece of cake to shoot.

Most quality center fire rifles can shoot amazingly well at 100 yards with decent ammo. We trigger pullers are generally the weak link in the chain. We don't get into consistent shooting positions, keep the sights on target, press the trigger straight back, follow through after the shot, or manage recoil properly.

I know. I just finished shooting 25 pellets. The FWB 124 cocks via a break-barrel action and is a single load. I'm shooting from a prone position -- I must rise to kneeling to cock the action and load each pellet. Then rebuild the prone position again. Roughly half of my shots were good, the others not so much.

Focus on a consistent shooting technique, with dot drills as one training tool. When you get it all figured out, please let me know your secret.