quote:

Originally posted by RNshooter:
Good analysis.

Ping me when you're at the SHOT show. I figure I owe you dinner for all the good advice.

Bruce

I have an email address in my profile, shoot me an email with some contact info.

You don't owe me anything, I'm happy to share what little knowledge I have.

Okay, caliper in hand. I measured several loaded Federal GMM cartridges. All were .355 to .357

I figure I am looking for .352-.354?


I went to Brownells to look at Redding TiNi neck bushings. The sizes jump down from .357 to .345 with no options in between. I also looked at steel ones. Same options.

I will look around for other sources, I guess?

Bruce

This message has been edited. Last edited by: RNshooter,

quote:

Originally posted by RNshooter:
Okay, caliper in hand. I measured several loaded Federal GMM cartridges. All were .355 to .357

I figure I am looking for .352-.354?


I went to Brownells to look at Redding TiNi neck bushings. The sizes jump down from .357 to .345 with no options in between. I also looked at steel ones. Same options.

I will look around for other sources, I guess?

Bruce

Anything between .346-356 seems to be rarer than hens' teeth. I suggest calling Redding directly.

Thanks. Will do.

A question about safely working up loads:

The load my rifle really liked was as follows: 44.0 gr Varget in a Lake City case, Winchester LR primer, 175 SMK seated to 2.806 (if my notes are correct).
My question is, how much do you back off on the powder charge when changing cases? I have a large supply of Federal cases and a small supply of Lapua cases. Lake City I have very few of.
All the other components would stay the same as the original load.

Bruce

quote:

Originally posted by RNshooter:
Thanks. Will do.

A question about safely working up loads:

The load my rifle really liked was as follows: 44.0 gr Varget in a Lake City case, Winchester LR primer, 175 SMK seated to 2.806 (if my notes are correct).
My question is, how much do you back off on the powder charge when changing cases? I have a large supply of Federal cases and a small supply of Lapua cases. Lake City I have very few of.
All the other components would stay the same as the original load.

Bruce

I trust you had a nice Christmas.

The Hodgdon website (the source of all knowledge for their powders,) shows the 175gr to be at maximum with 45gr of Varget (starting load is 42.0.) It says that 45.0 will be a compressed load, but if you use a long drop tube or spin the kernels in your funnel, that should not be the case or much of an issue.

Now to your exact question, changing the case brand can cause issues. I one substituted by mistake, LC brass with Winchester brass in .223. As you know, Military brass in .223/5.56 is lighter that commercial brass and that cause my rifle to start piercing primers. I had to disassemble 95 cartridges and worse yet, withdraw from the match. Bummer.

In .308/7.62 however, the reverse is true. Military brass is heavier that commercial brass. I have zero experience with Federal brass in .308 as even the few boxes of FGMM that were given to me and then fired in non-match rifles, were dumped in the trash; I have heard from many reputable sources that while FGMM is excellent commercial ammo, the Federal brass is soft and almost not worth reloading since its primer pocket opens up pretty quick (3-4 firings.)

LC brass in .308 is pretty good, but Winchester and Remington brass is better than LC and if you want to spend more and get even better brass Lapua, Norma, and even Hornady match is a way to go.

I standardized on Lapua Palma brass, which has a SRP (small rifle primer) and my eternal Remington 7 1/2 primer. Yep, the same primers I use in my .223/5.56 rifles.

Nikon, I did have a merry Christmas. I hope you did, as well.

I guess I will back off to 42.0 of Varget and work my way back up in the Federal brass. I may continue to play with the original load in the limited LC brass.

I didn't know about the Palma Lapua brass and the small primers. The Lapua brass I have is all LR primers. I will consider the Palma when I buy a quantity.

I did reach out to JLK about getting some of their bullets to try out. Supply problems and no stock. Swampy told me "Check back in the Spring". Now I know why you order 6-8 months out.

Bruce

quote:

Originally posted by RNshooter:
Nikon, I did have a merry Christmas. I hope you did, as well.

I guess I will back off to 42.0 of Varget and work my way back up in the Federal brass. I may continue to play with the original load in the limited LC brass.

I didn't know about the Palma Lapua brass and the small primers. The Lapua brass I have is all LR primers. I will consider the Palma when I buy a quantity.

I did reach out to JLK about getting some of their bullets to try out. Supply problems and no stock. Swampy told me "Check back in the Spring". Now I know why you order 6-8 months out.

Bruce

The Lapua Palma brass, as its name indicates, was created at the request of the Palma group, which gave Lapua the permission to use its name for that product. The Palma folks are just as crazy as the F-TR folks when it comes to pushing the .308 Winchester to its limits and beyond. This is why the Lapua Palma brass is very popular with the F-TR folks. However, this does not mean that the Lapua LRP brass for .308 is in anyway inferior. I did many seasons with that brass and won championships with it. I switched to the Palma brass when the team selected to standardize on the heavy bullets. I ordered two new barrels from Krieger with a faster twist for the long heavies and decided on the Palma brass with my beloved Remington 7 1/2 primers. I also had to order new decapping pins for my Redding S-type die to properly fit the smaller flashole. Redding sent me a half dozen in the mail, free of charge.

Finally, I noticed that I have a surfeit of 180gr JLKLBTs. If you're interested, I can bring you 100 of those with me next month, free of charge, for you to try and see how they work out. They spin really nice in a 1:11 twist. That's the bullet that I used to win the state championship a few years back. Yeah, Swampy's production is inconsistent, so when I order, I order in large quantities.

Very kind offer. Yes, please!
They're pretty spendy so I would like to buy them or trade you something, if you have a need.
If they shoot well, I will just put my order in for 1000 and wait for production to catch up.

Thank you!

Bruce

One of the things I truly hate about growing older is the effect this process is having on my memory.

Thankfully there are many aids I employ to help me forget less, and one of them is reading voraciously.

I was going through an article recently that was discussing handloading for the .308 Winchester. It even talked about bushing dies, just what we were discussing.

Then it shook me when it started discussing the diameters used and it caused me to run to my loading area and pull out the little box that contains all my bushings.

When I explained that I was using a .354 bushing; well, I was wrong. I am using a .334 bushing. In fact, I have .331, .333, .334 and .335 bushings. I was using a .335 for the longest time but went to a .334 recently and I'm even playing with going to a .333.

Of course, you didn't help when you came up with measurements right where I incorrectly expected them to be. Your measuring skills are suspect, my friend. Or you read the wrong number.

I will say that I had to use a loupe to read the exact number on the bushings; these numbers are VERY small.

This also explains the dearth of bushing from .347 to .355 or so. There is no need for them.

Naturally, you're right. I had ".35-something" in my head as an expectation and I didn't look closely at that section of the caliper and instead fixated on the big round dial. Something about studying things to prove an expected outcome instead of taking what the data gives you comes to mind.

On second look, it is in fact .335-.337 on a loaded cartridge just below the case mouth.

Glad I didn't order any bushings, yet

Bruce

quote:

Originally posted by RNshooter:
Naturally, you're right. I had ".35-something" in my head as an expectation and I didn't look closely at that section of the caliper and instead fixated on the big round dial. Something about studying things to prove an expected outcome instead of taking what the data gives you comes to mind.

On second look, it is in fact .335-.337 on a loaded cartridge just below the case mouth.

Glad I didn't order any bushings, yet

Bruce

See? It's all your fault.

It does prove three (3) things:

1- Never believe anything you read on the Internet.
2- Verify everything you read and make your own measurements and check them twice, thrice or more.

1) I see what you did there.
B) I'm still waiting for the third thing.

Bruce

quote:

Originally posted by RNshooter:
1) I see what you did there.
B) I'm still waiting for the third thing.

Bruce

What third thing?

Tomorrow is the last day of SHOT 2019 and I will be returning home. It's been a fun week and it started off with a very pleasant meeting with RNshooter who collected me from the hotel to go to a restaurant where we spent hours talking. I think I bent his ear a little too much as we discussed all manners of shooting, competition, loading, equipment, and so on and so forth.

The food was great and RNshooter is one heck of a gentleman, of whom I am pleased to have made the acquaintance.

Bruce, thanks again for the meal and the transportation; I had a great time and I hope I didn't disappoint you too much.

The team is already talking about next year, so perhaps we'll get to do this again. I wish you all the success in your endeavors and you have a lot of fun un store in your shooting journey.

Keep the questions coming and soon we'll get to read your stories also.

After that discussion on magnetic scales in the main thread, I am posting the same message as I just posted on the active thread:

I found this video on Youtube that shows the difference between Strain Guage and Magnetic Force Restoration scales.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...bj0&feature=youtu.be

WARNING, shocker ahead.

At the club we have been discussing the perceived merits of annealing and several of us have discontinued the practice. That includes yours truly in the last few cycles.

We just have not noticed any difference and since we retire cases after a set number of loads, we just don't believe annealing adds something and we know it can damage cases done improperly, and yes, that can happen eve with an fancy device.

So, I'm not ready to sell my Giraud annealer just yet, but it has been sitting quietly in a corner for a few months now.

Other shocker; bullet pointing is now being revisited. I was trying to close the meplat, but not completely for fear of deforming the jacket, and some of the guys have been doing some research on the amount of pressure it takes to actually deform the jacket and it's shockingly low. I have backed off the bullet pointing die adjustment to minimize the force used in pointing and for now, I'm only pointing to make sure I do not have any outliers in meplat size, not looking to try to regain a few BC point by forcing all meplats to be smaller.

Always checking, always testing...

Interesting. I was just looking at a Giraud or an AnnealEeZ as an addition to my
shop. I think I will hold.

I guess it truly depends upon you desire for longevity of brass and budget. I anneal every time (your fault) and have some Hornady brass on their 10th+ loadings above book level charges.

What is your planned loading count for your brass?

RMD

Let me make one thing very clear here; this thread is about loading for precision/competition, not how to make brass last forever.

The goal is to find a world-class load and then replicate it in large quantities over a long period of time for competition purposes.

As such, we are always fine tuning the various steps in the loading regimen, hoping for the best, most consistent precision, and then making it so it's no overly complicated.

I have several friends who have invested in a Prometheus for power dispensing, that's a high priced item and others who use brass forever. The results are there to show it.

For the last several months, I have been having trouble getting any type of decent score and I was blaming many things; foremost me. I thought I was just losing my touch and I was resigning myself to being at the bottom al the time Funny thing is I keep winning team matches as wind coach, but I get creamed in the individuals.

Well, this past week, I decided to drop my barrel and roll on its twin. My Hawkeye was showing some stuff past the throat, but I was not able to identify it properly. I put on the new barrel on Thursday and today I went to a 600 yard match. I had 38 rounds left over from the last state match, where I fared very poorly, except in team match.

These rounds were actually the tail end of 3000 rounds through the barrel. My regimen has been 500 cases, loaded 8 time each, drop the barrel and start over. This batch was the last of the 6 times loaded ammo, box #5 of 5 X 100 rounds, So essentially round 2962 to 3000. I have not been annealing for the last 3-4 cycles.

My very first shot from this brand new barrel was a 6 in the black at 600 yards. I used up 15 rounds to get properly zeroed and to do the initial break-in I took my time shooting those rounds.

About an hour later, it was my turn once again to shoot. I took my 2 sighters, an X and a 10, then proceeded to shot my 20 rounds for record I dropped one single solitary point early on and finished with a 199-8X from a barrel that had had 15 rounds through it and ammo that have been loaded a few months back and had not been tuned for this barrel. It also had not been annealed in 3-4 cycles, but all the other steps had been observed religiously. That ammo was a good as all the past 2960 rounds with that load.

I won the match, BTW. By several points. That load was holding under one MOA of vertical but the errant shot was a 9 at 11 o'clock. However, it is my belief that I pulled it, it was not the ammo or the conditions.

I usually drop the cases after 8 loadings along with the barrel. The barrel died much earlier than before, but the cases are still excellent. I intend to continue with the brass as the small rifle primer seems to hold well, compared to the large rifle primer and I may or may not anneal. The issue is that the throat is very tight and I use a bushing die without the expander ball, so there's very little work being done on the neck.

Many of my competitor friends who shoot the .308 Winchester are eschewing the annealing step and I have not found that it's hurting me in any way to do the same.

Now, I am not even considering selling by Giraud, so don't ask.

So Nikon, not to rain on your parade, but you introduced a second variable into this experiment and that complicates the situation. Above you talk about non-annealed brass AND a new barrel. No one can fault your outcome, but this says little that we can discern about the variable of not annealing the brass.

I can appreciate you methodology of minimal work on the neck of the brass and the comments on accuracy versus brass life. I wonder what the lack of annealing is doing to neck tension? Sadly, that is a very difficult variable to measure for the average reloader.

Is it impossible to have both accuracy and brass life at the same time?

Thanks for the post.

RMD