Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles 1 in 8" sako .223

I have a new Sako Varmint Stainless Laminate .223 with a 1 in 8" twist.Is anyone finding good accuracy with bullets as light as 50gr,or are you having to go to 68 or 69gr to obtain good accuracy?

i have shot a lot of 55 Vmax and NBT bullets in twists as fast as 1-7" with very good accuracy. (fireforming .223 AI brass) haven't tried the 50 grain bullets though.

when i was using up some old bullets for fire forming .223 AI cases, the 1-7" barrel diddn't work with one batch of 52s (don't remember what particular bullet). the bullets that made it to the target made an ok group, but about every third or fourth bullet would impact ten feet or more away from the target. the 1-8" twist barrel shot them fine though.

I got my butt beat in an informal AR bench competition against a 1:8 twist rifle with 40gr bullets. I was shooting 52-55gr bullets and 1:9 twist.

1:8 should be very happy with 50-80gr bullets, but each rifle is different. If I were looking for best accuracy from 1:8 under 300 yards, I'd go with 69gr SMK.

I just tested the rifle with the 50gr v-max,the 68gr Hornady match,and the 69gr Matchking.The rifle hated the 68gr match,but it put 4 of 5 69gr Matchkings in under 1/4",with the 5th round 3/4" away using Benchmark.I will do more testing with that combination to see if the flier was a fluke.Varget did not group well with the 69gr matchkings.The surprise was the 50gr v-max,which is averaging around .400" for three groups using vv n-133.It would have done better if I had not tried to use the set trigger for the first group,as I found that it doesn't work well for me.

I finalized one load for the rifle,that being the 50gr v-max in front of 25gr of n-133.Shooting at 5 degrees C,in rain and sleet,and with the wind varying from 15kph to 30kph,my five shot groups went from .400" to .460".Given the conditions this morning,the load has the potential to do much better.

I tested the 69gr load again yesterday afternoon,and it is averaging five shots into about 5/8" under good shooting conditions.

I have some 55gr ballistic tips to test,but so far the 50gr max/n-133 load looks like a winner.