Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles 26 Nosler loads- 140 AB vs 142 ABLR?

Finally got a chance yesterday to work up some loads for my 26 Nosler and I'm a bit stumped by my results so thought I would check to see what results others are having...

Started low with my loads- Max is 88 grains of WC872 from info I've found on several sites and I started at 86 and worked up with 140 AB's and 142 ABLR..
The 140's weren't impressive until I got to 87.5 grains and suddenly, they were in one hole for a 3 shot group. Went up a half grain to 88 and the group went to heck again- about 1 1/2" or so. The 142's never did come around all the way up to max at 88 grains. About the best group I got all day with the 142's were in the 1 1/2" range.

Since the ABLR's have a different ogive shape and need to be seated out a bit further, have any of you gone beyond max settings to get to decent accuracy with the ABLR? I'm perfectly happy with the AB's to hunt with but would like to know what I'm doing wrong with the ABLR's or if this is the accuracy I should expect from them?

Barreled action was put together by Shaen and his work looks great, as usual. Not concerned about the smithing, just how much can I push this with the powder charge? Not showing any signs of excessive pressure yet, but recoil is stout to say the least...

TIA,
Bob

I use 869 and 140 Ballistic tips. I load a grain under max, sub inch groups. I haven’t tried the Accubonds.

Best accuracy I have seen has been with RL33

After having this discussion on a couple different sites, the consensus seemed to be that the pull down powder WC872 is identical in performance to the 869 so I bought 8 lbs of it. So far it seems to be working fine. The sweet spot I found with the 140 Accubonds is at 1/2 grain below max. Groups were in the 1 1/2" size or so until I hit that level and suddenly, the group shrank to about .3-.4.. Next load was max and went back up to around 1 1/2" so I think I'm there. Loaded up a few more of those to finish sighting in the rifle and ready to go hunting. Now, if Nosler would just get a few more in stock for a change....

On a couple sites they mention that loading for this round can be finicky due to the extreme overbore of this round and they seem to have understated that.

Thanks for the help guys...

Bob