Jim, I agree, and I was the same as you when I was first loading for my Whelen AI back when the rifle was new in the early 90's. I mostly used AA2520 and got poor case life, just treading on the edge (or beyond?) of too much. BUT, I am taking very careful case head expansion measurements and carefully tracking the results of this PP 2000-MR work up and I can tell you the two loads above are actually quite mild even though they match or exceed the results I used to get with AA2520 - it's kind of hard to believe. The 225 NAB at 2800+ FPS gave an initial CHE of .0004" in a new case, and then no additional CHE after 4 more firings of the same cases; the primer pockets are still as tight as new. The 250 Partition at 2650 FPS gave a CHE of only .0002" - barely even measurable. (most proponents of this method figure .0005 to .0006 initial CHE is approaching a max load)
For any reading this, again note my rifle is a 35 Whelen Ackley Improved, not the standard. But that said, the actual published 2000-MR maximums (by Speer and Sierra) for their 250 and 225 respectively in the STANDARD .35 Whelen are 66.2 (I'm using 65) for the 250 Speer at 2709 FPS and 71.6 (I'm using 69) for the 225 SGK at 2900 FPS. So the loads I showed above are not even at max for the standard Whelen. I do note the 225 NAB is getting more pressure out of a given load than indicated for the 225 SGK (it also generated more pressure than the 225 TSX, with the same charge - so be aware of this). I have found at least in my rifle that the 250 Speer HotCor and the 250 Partition behave almost identically pressure and velocity-wise, so I use the 250 Speer for basic work-up and then switch to the much more expensive 250 partition to fine tune.
Soooo, back to the OP - AZtwins, now that I have invested so much typing in this you have to get a 35 Whelen!
P.S. I drew the "Early-Any" rifle elk tag this year in AZ after 8 bonus points. I'll be using this rifle during the rut!
Cheers,
Rex
Last edited by TRexF16; 08/14/19.
