Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles New load for 223

Went out yesterday to try something out. I keep reading about concentricity gauges, neck sizing before loading, measuring seating depth to ogive and 3 shot groups. Wanted to see if there was any truth to all this.

Tooks some brand spanking new Norma brass, right out of the box added a 7 1/2BR rem primer, 24 grains LT32, and seated a 50 grain Nosler BT to a arbitrary seating depth (20 thou shorter than recommended). Have never run this combo.

Typical 3 shot groups measured outside to outside as I am not good enough to do Center to Center.





So what did I learn?
One my typical 3 shot groups with un- prepped rounds shot no better/or worse than fully prepped rounds.
2nd is that 3 shot groups don't tell me squat.
3rd is that sometimes all the BS prep don't gain you a damn thing depending on the rifle and the shooter as I am convinced after 3000 rounds down the tube that the rifle has always been more capable than I am.

What?? Everybody knows you gotta' uniform primer pockets, deburr flashholes, trim every case to the same length, weight sort..........to get good accuracy. Any meticulous reloader will tell you that, 'cause it's what they do.

Agree, shock to the senses is always hard. Just wish I could keep 5 shots that tight.

Swifty,

It only takes the first shot to slay a varmint. So don't worry about the next 4 shots!

Must be the brass and the LT32 that caused these tight groups?

Swifty,

It just so happens I have all those exact same components down stairs, with the exception of the the Norma brass, but I do have a thousand pieces of Remington all prepped and ready to go.

I think I will have to find out what happens when I drop your new super load into some Rem brass.

Thanks for sharing!!

A.S enjoy.
Still its funny that a post gets put up that goes against everything people say you must have/ must do to get accurate loads, and not 1 comes in to tell me I am Full of Chit. It don't work like that.

Sometimes ya just luck out.
What kind of rifle anyway?

Not going to tell you you are wrong but if you don't properly prep brass what else will you have to do on cold winter nights.

Well done Scott, got me to laugh on that. Think there might be a bit of truth there.

Any excuse to be in the Gun Room is a good one.

Swifty, I take preparing cases in a different perspective. The more the cases are alike, the less likely a flier. Thus, the overall set of groups will be smaller than when shot with non prepared cases. I do not believe that weighing and preparing cases will allow us to shoot smaller groups. Only specific loads will allow us to shoot tiny groups.

I have an envelope full of targets in the .100 and .200 range. Could I repeat each of those groups with random choices of brass, I doubt it?

Yes Sir, do agree. BTDT
Basically the whole thing was to prove something to my self. The rifle and my loads are more capable than I am.
The groups were shot with 2 different rifles 1a12 , 1a14. Tightest was the 14. Got some five shot groups from that same brass not much larger.

Plus we need more discussion in here.

The snow is starting to melt. Mud is drying up on the ranges. The discussion should begin to pick up here shortly.

Swifty is right on. Here is a 100 yard 10 shot group from my Savage .223 Remington I built on a Precision Target Action. I used a Pac-Nor 24" Savage Varmint Contour barrel, 1:9" twist polygonal rifling. Winchester cases right out of the bag, F.L. sized, Winchester primers, Nosler 40 grain BT Lead Free bullet. I gave up all that rigamarole for varmint hunting, maybe at the most I'll deburr the flash holes, but even that is a waste of time. However, when I switched to Federal 205 Match primers, the group opened up considerably - primers do make a difference.

Nice group.

A.S snows already melted here.

Neck sized the 1X ran the same load, fired the 50 lot again. Took and pulled out my fancy head space gauge and out of 50, every one was within +/- .0005.
OAL of each case was within the same margin @ 1.752 for 49 cases, the other the neck blew out long on the first firing as it was hard to chamber and measured 1.761 before sizing X2 .
X2 reload will be shot this weekend.