Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters RL26 in .30-06 and 200 gr bullets?

I saw in another thread on another caliber, someone mentioned RL26 working well in .30-06 with 200 gr bullets. My Alliant manual does not show RL26 data in .30-06 with 200 gr bullets, but its burning rate might be a good fit.

Looking for other experience and data for this.

No experience w/ RLs 25 or 26 in that cartridge, but I'd think that 22 & 23 would be better bets.

That would be my guess as well. It's hard enough to get enough H4831 or RL-22 in a .30-06 case underneath a 200-grain spitzer.

Alliant does list RL-25 with the 200-grain Speer Hot-Cor, which in my experience produces very similar velocities as the 200 Partition with the same loads, but the maximum 60-grain charge doesn't get quite as much velocity as 58 grains of RL-22. RL-17 gets more velocity than both, and 4000-MR is around 100 fps faster.

RL26 seems more dense to me. Running it in my 338 and 35 Newton with excellent speeds. I couldnt get enough 25 in either of those to get the same speeds and accuracy so far.

A few of the fellas in my group decided to try it in their 30-06's with 200 grain Accubonds. I thought the same at first, they'll never get enough in there. Sure enough, I was schooled. They got good loads in them and also very good speeds.

For me, at least in the 338 Win and 35 Newton, 26 really didn't tighten up till I was towards the top end of the loads. Once I was there it has acted very consistent. YMMV.

What sort of velocities with 200's in the .30-06?

Alliant is showing just shy of 2,500 fps for both R22 & R25
58grs. for R22 and 60 for R25. I would bet you could go up to or near 60 grs. with R26 with maybe a little more velocity.

I'm all ears on this one. Glad this thread came up, because it's something I've been hearing a little about as well. We now know RL26 is the magic powder in the 270 Winchester with 150gr. pills. Now the next best thing: 30-06 and 200gr. Nosler partitions....

I'm waiting for their load data and chronoed speeds but one is using a suppressed 20" barrel and getting just over 2700 and the other is a 22" tube and getting near or just over 2800. Don't wanna talk out of turn but both have shot multiple groups out to 300 that have been hovering around 1/2 MOA pretty consistently to 300 yards.

I was pretty impressed since the 200 AB is a pretty longish bullet. No real compression issues either. It is compressed but not so much you need a 3ft drop tube to get it in the case.

Both are M700's so they do have some length to seat the bullets out pretty decent.

WOW. Those wouldn't be a couple of those pesky +P loads would they???

Not sure to be totally honest.

We worked the loads using QL, adjusted the observed H20 capacity and Burn rate in the program and ran alongside the chrono under the estimated PSIs given in the program. I don't believe any are higher than about 62-63K PSI but with so little data available it is really just a guess to be totally honest. Just wanted to report what we are seeing. We are using Lapua cases and Fed 210Ms.

I think MD has seen fairly similar speeds with oldies like H4831 so maybe we aren't too far outta line.

Just texted me and said the 22" was 2740 with 63 grains. Right at 2700 with the 20" barrel.

Sorry, thought it was a touch higher for the 22" but still, 2740 is a whopper of a 200 grain load in my opinion. A lot of performance from a 30-06.

Well, that's the real question. Alliant's .270 data doesn't list any load over 60.8 grains for 150-grain bullets, but in my experiments 62.0 grains didn't show any "pressure signs". Despite that I'm not going to use more than 60.5 grains.

The .30-06 has a little more wiggle room than the .270, because the SAAMI maximum average pressure is only 60,000, compared to 65,000 in the .270. But even with Hodgdon's maximum load of 59.0 grains of H4831 (which is within SAAMI pressure specs) my New Ultra Light Arms .30-06 gets right around 2700 fps with 200-grain bullets from a 24" barrel. With H4831SC there's room for another couple of grains, which would bring the velocity to around 2775, and according to a basic ballistic rule from Homer Powley, pressure would still be under 65,000.

Makes sense to me John. I wasn't trying to say it was a miracle powder at all, but it does seem to work well in a fairly broad range of cartridges I would have never thought it would have in the past.

I've used it in the 243, 25-06, 6.5 Swede, 270 and 7mm WSM, 7 Mashburn Super, 338 Win and 35 Newton and with most of them it has performed pretty well.

Gains over normal powders isn't huge by any stretch but there is a little gain in most of the ones I've tried.

beretz,

Yep, I knew you weren't claiming 26 was a miracle! Just wanted to hear the details.

Would hope that Alliant will do some testing of .30-06 loads.

Amen, sounds great..

54.5 grains of rl17 used to do a shade over 2700 with a 200 accubond from my m70 fw's 22" barrel and seemed to not be pushing it too hard. Once again, wish I had quickload...

I've been working on 200 gr partitions in my 06' for a few months.
The "winner" load I settled on is RL17 at 53.0 grains. This is not a compressed load, but nicely fills the case, and is giving me an average of 2,650 fps (chono)

I won't be trying other powder now.

Cheers.

What are you guys shooting with the 30/06 that you need 200 gr bullets?

My rifles like 200gr. partitions. I figure I'll be shooting at a nice bull this season, if the stars align for me this year.... . My question is, what animal can you not shoot with a 200gr. partition????? Hell, I might even shoot a buck with one this year..

Bob,

I started using 200 Partitions back when they were semi-spitzers, mostly because I was then doing most of my elk hunting in the steep, thick Montana country near the Idaho Panhandle. Shots were NEVER over 100 yards, and the 200 Partition was the deepest-penetrating bullet I could load at the time. (I soon found out it also killed deer well, and didn't shoot up much meat while doing it.)

A few years later Nosler turned it into a real spitzer. I found it worked the same on elk (and deer, and even one pronghorn), but shot just about as flat as any 180. The muzzle velocity in the two .30-06's I've mostly used with the bullet has been 2675-2700 fps. (Recently Bryan Litz's range-tests found the BC is just about exactly what Nosler lists, very close to .500.)

Have killed more elk with the .30-caliber 200 Partition than any other bullet, not just from the .30-06 but a couple of .300 magnums.
It penetrates to well I wouldn't hesitate to use it on brown bear.