Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 3000 FPS with 180 g. 30-06

How can I get 180 grain Accubonds and Partitions up to 3000 fps in my '06 with 26 in barrel? Another shooter tells me that he does it regularly with his 30-06, but he doen't give his load data.

This is higher velocity than the factory 300 Win Mag or WSM.

Anyone have any ideas or opinions?

Jim

I would stay away from him, especially whe he's shooting.

You can get 2900 from a 26" barreled .30-06, but 3000 is leaning on the pedal.

John Barsness

I have a 26 3/4' Krieger barreled 30-06 that has gotten 3000 fps with the 180 grain Partion in the Federal High Energy load. My rifle will not get over 2900 fps with the Hornady Light Magnum 180 grain load

Maybe this is how he does it. I know of NO HANDLOAD that will do this at safe pressure. I am not even sure that every lot of Federal High Energy loads will do this or not
Edited to add:
I have only seen this speed in the aforementioned gun and I do not know if this speed is possiable in a 26" barrel or not..........

Here some hard data 30.06 data

How? Easy. 300 WSM or 300 Winnie.

Easy........75K-80K PSI oughta do it.

Sorry, we don't have 300 WSM 30-06s in our part of the country.

Here is the rest of the story:

"...My 30-06, on the other hand, drives a 180 grain bullet at a chronographed (and witnessed ) 3000 fps from a 26 inch barrel. "

Sam Fadala, Rifleshooter Mag. Sept/Oct 2006 page 51


I have several 06s with 24 inch barrel and one with a 26 inch barrel and I have never been able to do better than about 2800 fps with any of them. What am I doing wrong? Other than reading the wrong gun rag?

Grins,
Jim



.

I wondered about that article as well. He did a comparision the 7mm rem mag, the 3006 and the 270 a few years ago and showed similarly high velocities for all calibres, I kind of stopped reading it when it got to 3000 fps for 175 gr out of the 7m mag and the same for 150's from the 270.

Note that he did not mention checking the pressures for that load. I too saw some very impressive fps in various rifles. That all changed when I started measuring pressure. Some loads were north of 70,000 psi and showing no excessive pressure signs. Now, the best that I have seen from my 30-06 is around 2800fps with 180 gr bullets and a 24 inch barrel.

Any 30-06 should be able to get 3,000 fps with a 180 grain bullet--once. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

If you're getting 2850 (allowing an extra 50 fps for the extra 2" of barrel), at 58,000 PSI, and increase the charge 3 grains, you'll be at ROUGHLY 65,000 PSI, still 5 KPSI short of the point where normal pressure signs show up.

As Dutch once succinctly observed: Muzzle velocity is a pressure sign.

There are no magic "fast" or "slow" barrels. Acceleration = Force/mass. Speed is Vinitial + the integral of force over time. Force is pressure times the area of the base of the bullet - friction. Getting bullet speed without pressure violates the Law of Conservation of Energy.

sounds like a very tall order. I've chrono'd 180 gr NP's out of my 26" .300 wby at no better than 2950-ish with fed factory loads. Never worked up a load for the long .30 because I don't handload. I should be able to push a 180 @ 3000 with a 26" tube in that .300 wby but I'd never hope to do it out of one of my 30-06's.

Just sounds like crazy talk to me.

You are correct, Logger, no pressure is mentioned but with that kind of velocity the pressure must be close to 75,000 psi. You can run that kind of pressure but one day............ Anyway I'll stay with the 2700s and if I need more speed I have a 300 Win Mag that takes care of that need very well. However, the 30-06 seems to handle anything that I want to hunt. And besides, I don't hunt anything that will bite me if I miss! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />


Jim

Not arguing with anybody else's results or data in the .30-06. I really haven't had that many, so my data sample is small.

One of the (gun looney) reasons I had a .30-06 Ackley built was to finally reach 2800 fps with a 180 in a .30-06. Hadn't been able to do it before.

I now get 2850-ish out of the Ackley, comfortably, and I'm happy there.

3100-plus with a 180 (or 2950 with a 200) is what the .300 Winchester is for. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Rick

When Stan Watson was more active,he mentioned he didn't think thee were any fast barrels,but did think there might slow ones. A study of the effect of barrel rifling on pressure would be interesting. I don't think I have seen one.

You're right Denton, there are no magic barrels--but there are fast and slow barrels. The benchrest guys, whose methods and equipment are far more "precise" than our sporter rifles, demonstrate it often.

Rough bores seem to create different friction than a tight, smooth bore--in both cases it's friction, but can produce different pressures, or at least different results. Constrictions in the bore--dependent of where the constriction occurs, can produce different velocity.

By changing the shape of the pressure curve--but not changing the pressure peak--we can often increase/decrease velocity

Maybe more pertinently, although we can land a man on the moon, we do not understand all the factors taking place inside a chamber/bore of a rifle. Much of what we do have some knowldge of is through indirect measurements/observation.

You are right--pressure equals velocity, but there are factors that qualify that.

I have two 30-06AI's with 22in barrels--both have had fair number of loads ran through Oehler Ballictics Labs. I ran 180gr X's a little over 2900fps and 180gr Partitions right at 2900fps. The loads are warmish, the occasional shot bumps up against the SAAMI max in warm weather, but the average of the shot to shot pressures is under max enough to keep me comfortable.

Casey

downwindtracker2 mentioned Stan Watson. Mr. Watson wrote a data manual/book on the 30:06: A HANDLOADER'S ODYSSEY THE 30-06 DATA MANUAL. A excellent, very through look at the 30-06 for the handloader. Of the many things I learned from reading and re-reading the book, none are more important than the statement he makes regarding pressure signs. Absent pressure testing equipment the practice of looking at the brass case is flawed. He utilized the Oehler equipment and says that brass in general shows NO pressure signs until the pressure is very excessive.
The last time I heard from Mr. Watson he was doing a similar project with the 280. I know he had some health issues, but I have not seen his signature (OKShooter) recently.

Do a search under 30/06. The fadala article mentions a custom barrel chambered for speed. I would imagine its basically oversized and he's able to fireform,getting more volume hence more velocity.

_____________________

Sam was shooting a 26 inch barreled rifle and he was pulling 180 NPs from Fed High Energy cartridges and replacing them with 180 TSXs and Accubonds.

Expat

I documented the same thing observed by Stan Watson (that traditional pressure signs do not usually show up until pressure is too high already) in an article for HANDLOADER several years ago. I even found measuring case heads an iffy proposition.

In that case I worked up loads for the .22 Hornet, .270 Winchester and .30-06 using both traditional signs (bolt lift, primer appearance, case head marks, primer pocket tightness) as well as measuring case heads. Then I had them pressure-tested on piezo equipment. Some turned out OK, but some turned out way off. The .270 loads, for instance, averaged around 68,000 psi.

Since then I have continued testing along the same lines and decided that measuring case heads is just as erratic as traditional pressure signs. Have measured new belted brass from two different major manufacturers that expanded .004 and .02 inch with THE SAME LOAD, and the brass in each case weighed just about the same from both makers. Now, how can we tell what pressure we're getting from an arbitrary case-head measurement if you consider that?

Have found that you can come reasonably close to the same pressure as factory loads if:
1) You shoot some factory loads, and average the case-head expansion.
2) Pull the bullets from the rest of the factory loads, then work up handloads to the same amount of expansion.

Most of us don't do it that way, though.

Also, keep in mind that when the 7mm STW was turned into a factory load, Remington tested several "standard" handloads that had not created traditional pressure signs in custom rifles, and found that almost all were above 70,000 psi.

JB