Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Firing a .270 with two powders

Are you nuts?

You just had to have the last word, didn't you.

Yeah, the first clue should have been excessive velocity, but hey......

Last weekend a guy in a gun shop told me that a certain cartridge achieved its high velocity because the factory mixed two powders in the case. I was sorta wondering if I would see the same claim here, when I read the title of this thread

mixing powders is an abominable idea, to be clear - don't do it!

Ringman reminds me of a couple of my customers. They email me about problems, and I look over the info, and write a lengthy reply explaining what's going on, and what needs to be done to fix the problem. They reply with a thought process that wanders off on exponential tangents, and again ask me again what I should do. I reply with a shorter version of the first email. They again wander off in space somewhere, sometimes email me again a few weeks later asking about the same problem. I usually give them a terse reply to read my first email and quit wasting my time.

Dude, you're loading silly hot, on the ragged edge of safety. I sometimes load pretty warm as well, but even in a very strong action I'm looking at fired cases to be sure that the heads are not expanding after several loadings - a sure warning sign that things are too hot

T_O_M suggested I try 63.0 and 63.5 grains. I did that today. Here are the results. The velocity averaged 3,450 feet per second. That is about 60 or 70 feet per second BELOW what Barnes told me they were getting with 65.7 grains. Do you want to apologize now or later?

You need to try a compressed load.

Get a jackhammer and really pack it in there!

As handloaders today, we are so blessed to have personal chronographs, as cheap as $100.

If a beginning centerfire shooter starts to get serious and curious about shooting and starts to think about handloading, the very first thing he should buy is a chronograph.

Even before he buys his first loading manual, or any other piece of gear, he can start learning a lot about ammo in general, and his rifle, by testing factory ammo with a chronograph. If he was wondering if he really wanted to commit to handloading, the chronograph will almost surely convince him to go ahead.

Compared to the old days when many of us started loading in the 1950s and '60s, having a chronograph is such an advance that it is almost like having a "personal ballistics laboratory".

A knowledgeable handloader DOES NOT check several sources, then pick the highest grain load of them all, and load up some ammo, and then brag that his wonderful rifle shoots 200 fps faster than everyone else's.

You can't help yourself.

You need to try a compressed load.

Get a jackhammer and really pack it in there!

Maybe you could give us instructions on what happens when one does this. Lots of loading manuals mention compressed loads. Or did you know that?