RCarmuglia,
It's interesting that your friend cited a SD of 8 for a 30 shot string. A long time ago, Bob Jensen who loaded the ammo for the 92 Palma matches cited a sigma 7 as the holy grail for 600 yard loads in my sport (Highpower Rifle). (I'd have to check what N was attached to that). What's interesting is he dumped powder for the 92 Palma Ammo. He shared that he got his sigma 7 through means other than granule accurate powder charging. I think he attributed testing primer lots by shooting primer powered bb's out of a special rig over a chrono to test their consistency and force (he said softer was better). Alan Warner feels otherwise on powder charges. He told me that kernel counting powder charges was the way to consistent elevations at 1K. I think he was trying to rationalize his purchase of his Prometheus. I have a Gen1 and it doesn't make me hold elevation like the Tompkins clan.
I'm pretty sure one consideration was the need to produce a quarter million units. That's the figure I recall from the article in Handloader magazine.
