I shot some RL17 today in my 338-06. I did not have any book numbers to work with so I looked at loads for other cartridges and compared to known loads for the 338-06. For today, I loaded one bullet each starting at 53 grains and went up to 59 (.5 gn increments from 55-59). Bullet was a 225 Accubond set to an OAL of 3.37, and primers were BR-2s and the barrel is 22". 53 and 54 seemed too low. 55 is my guess for a very conservative starting point (2426). It started to compress very slightly at 58. Velocity started going over 2600 at 58 grains. Interestingly the velocity was the same at 59 grains. There were no pressure signs at all. Now that I have an idea of where to work, next time I'll do groups from 58 to 60, or so. As a comparison, I get the same velocity with 61-61.5 grains of H4350 as I did with 58 grains of RL-17. Mind you, this is determined with single data points for the RL-17 so it's not exactly robust analysis.
