Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles 223/556 loads using LeverEvolution Powder

In my little brothers same exact rifle 25.5 grains of LVR with a 77 Sierra is a hammer.

No accounting for what different guns like. It was the first round but I figured I’d post up what I’d gotten for the initial shots.

After a lot more experimenting, you might conclude that those 75gr BTHP don't shoot well when pushed to max. I gave up about 150 fps and settled on 23.5gr of Benchmark in my 16" with that bullet in LC brass and S&B or WSR primers; it shoots much better that way.

That same rifle hasn't had any luck at all with the TMK bullets. The noses are so long, there's very little room to test different seating lengths, and even at max mag length they have a loooong jump to the lands. I didn't get them to shoot any better than your pics above; roughly 4" patterns @ 100 yds. Same goes for the 70gr RDF, and so far the 73gr ELD as well.

After digging I did have some luck with lever and 75 hornady I was loading them at 2.295. Also suggest trying 2.260 as for an OAL as well.

But at the end of the day 3 powders to use far as I’m concerned for the 77’s and up #1 Varget #2 RL15 #3 AR-Comp, if we round out the top 5 then #4 8208 #5 Imr 4064

Thanks for the info fellas. I loaded them out to 2.260 and will give them a shot this week. Also loaded some 77 TMKs as well using the same charges. I’ll post up what I get.

I’m about to head to the range loaded up some 75 hornady with 25.8gr Lever to give a whirl.

So I tried the same exact 75 HPBT loads with LVR through my AR today. Mines an 18" upper, 1-7, 1x8.5 Bushnell with a Geiselle G2SE in it. Otherwise it is dead stock. This barrel is pretty much brand new other than the two test fires I did at the house.









So I had about the same exact dismal results as my buddie's AR from a couple days ago..

Next up were the 77 grain Sierra TMK's.. Right out of the gate I knew these were more inline with what I expect from a decent AR..







Then at 26.5 it fell on it's face...



So, right outta the gate, the gun shot real well. I believe I will go back and load up a few 100 of the 26 grain load and do some shooting at distance and see what happens out there, but I suspect it'll be decent.

The kicker for the day was I loaded the same string of charges for my buddies rifle to hopefully have a load in common that I can mass produce. It seemed to work..









His rifle did the same as mine. Shot decent to good up to 26 and fell on it's face at 26.5.. No issues, we have an easily loadable round in common...

His rifle




Mine





Pretty nice day to try them out side by side. I'll get a pile loaded and get a good zero and take them out. I can't get a reading from the Magnetospeed, so I may have to bite the bullet for a cheap ProCrono or something just to check speeds, but I'd guess were somewhere around the 2750 mark, give or take..

I love leverevolution for my 30-30. i have a savage 340b.For those unfamiliar with this model, it is not tube fed but box magazine fed. i grabbed this powder because i had read, and listened to all the hub bub.I wanted to see what kind of reloads i could make. i started off using 150gr spire points, over 36.5g lvr i was loving the accuracy i was getting for a bolt action rife built in 1947. i was getting 1 moa average. perfectly acceptable for hunting. I Changed from the 150's to 125 gr to 130 gr sp from speer and sierra. I tried hornadys 130s, they gave ok accuracy but the 130s from sierra were the cat meow. My buddy was hunting with a 308 and my 150 gr handloads for the wifes 308 that she no longer has. I was punching through 7/8s thick steel at 100 yards. So out of curiosity i got some federal fusions in 170 gr. Good accuracy for what it is. but it would not go through the steel. my 130s will. i am using a 22 inch barrel. I am a firm believer of LVR. I am excited to try it with 223/556 loads for my diamond back db15.

With all the other good powders available for 223/5.56, some of the proponents of Lever, please tell me why it's "better" & how it's "better" & why I should switch or even try it, other than for the sake of just saying I tried it.

MM

I wouldn't bother with it MM if you already have a good powder that works for you. I decided to try it cause I had 10 lbs of the stuff, maybe more, a ginormous pile of empty 5.56 brass and love to shoot the 75/77 grain bullets in my 5.56's. So, I figured it was worth a little experimentation to see if it would shoot, it doesn't do too badly. It meters really darned well through my Dillon and I can load a pile of rounds and I am only out the cost of the Sierra 77's.

I just shot along side my buddy with the two above mentioned rifles at 300 yards, just to see if our scopes were tracking. I haven't gotten these across the chrono yet, but we used 2750 and 1.2 Mils and were hammering the steel pretty decently.

I am sure there are better and more accurate powders, but we just hammered about 200 rounds through each gun during a 100 yard zero and messing around at 300 and I am satisfied with it. I use LVR for some leverguns like the 30-30 and 35 Remington as well, so it'll all get used up. It'll just get used up much faster in the AR's

Ok, thanks..........an honest answer that makes sense. I've got a ton of 8208, AR-Comp & VV-133/134 so I really don't need or want to mess with other powders w/o some really big benefit to be gained.

MM

Yup, I hear you there. It is nice to know it works decent. I haven't tried AR Comp but heard it is great as well. I forgot the other reason is I use it in my AR 6.5 Grendel and the 224 Valkyrie, so there is another reason. Maybe after I burn through my stash I'll try something else, but it is nice that even when stuff gets tight on supplies, no one seems to use much LVR so I can stay relatively stocked up on the stuff.

AR-Comp is good............it's more or less a temp stable version of RL-15 with a slightly faster burn rate; works well with pretty much all bullet weights, maybe a little biased to the heavy's, & meters very well.

Actually Alliant 2000-MR is also a really good powder with heavy's too, but I really prefer to do as much as possible with as few different powders as possible. If I was only shooting heavy's it would be really hard to discount, except that it takes a lot of grains per round, relatively speaking because of it's slower burn rate.

All those mentioned above work better for me, accuracy wise, than CFE-223, which gets a lot if ink too.

Varget is always good, just a bit to the slow side on velocity & relatively poor metering compared to all the others discussed.

MM

If one is just wanting to hammer steel at extended ranges and does not care about scores like they do in a high power match. Lever is great, it gets phenomenal velocities. I get well over 2750 with 77 with 18 inch barrel.

Thanks for the run down MM. I appreciate it. I may grab a pound of each and give them a shot in something.

79S, agreed, I am not shooting matches with my rifles, I do want some decent accuracy, but I am not demanding 1 ragged hole 10 shots groups like BSA hammers for. I know I can't hold those sorta groups with my body on the deck shooting over my ruck or barriers. So far, if I have 1.5" for 10 shots that gets me to 600 yards or better and keeps me happy.

Plus, I am a little cheap, all of the brass is mil stuff that needs to be deprimed and primer crimp removed before I can do much too it. I am sure better brass like Lapua I use in the bolt guns would be a hair better, but I refuse chasing Lapua in the grass and dirt

I haven't had the success some claim in 5.56 with Lever. However, in several other AR15 cartridges I've had excellent results, meaning better accuracy and higher velocity than anything else. I'm not interested in high velocity without accuracy, but when you can have both, that's the best of both worlds.

For example, in a recent load workup with the 105gr BTHP in my 24" 243 LBC, I did a seating depth test with charges at each seating depth ranging between 30.1gr and 31.4gr (max). At 2.235" OAL, it shot a very acceptable group of 5, even though the charge weights varied by 1.3gr. Going back to test further at 30.8-31.0gr, that load gives better velocity than I can get with any other powder I've tried, accuracy is as good as anything else I've used, and the load isn't sensitive to velocity variations from different charge weights. Hard to beat that.

In my short barrel 6.5 Grendel, Lever and the 129gr ABLR bullet seem like they're made for each other. Every other powder is either too bulky for good velocity, or too fast burn rate. With the 123gr ELD in the same rifle, Lever adds 100-110 fps over my 8208 XBR load with equal accuracy. That rifle is not a tiny bughole shooter, but is one of those that shoots acceptably well with just about everything.

The 40gr V-max in my 23.5" 20 Tactical is another example; most of the common powder recommendations do 3600-3750 fps with varied accuracy results, some good some bad. But with a near max charge of Lever, it shoots as well or better than anything else, and does an honest 3900 fps.

However in the 5.56 I've mostly tried it with the 75gr BTHP, and had similar accuracy results as other powders like TAC - pushing it up to it's potential made accuracy fall apart. Maybe it's the particular rifle I tried it in, but my load of 23.5gr Benchmark shoots a lot better, even though it gives up ~150 fps. I also found that with the rifle tuned well for the Benchmark load, the Lever loads were pretty overgassed, to the point of being intolerable when the suppressor was added on (lots of gas and tearing up brass). Tuning the rifle for Lever meant that it didn't cycle the Benchmark load or some of the other 223 factory ammo I had on hand (although it was OK with M193).

So, I like Lever for some cartridges, but it's not magic for everything, and it's not for me in the 5.56 ARs. It's probably better in bolt guns, but I no longer have one in that cartridge.

Hope that helps.

I think I got close to 80 fps faster with Lever than I did with TAC and 55 grain bullets. But I don't have my notes with me.

I did get a real boost in my 223AI and 55 grain bullets. In my 22" Montana barrel it was getting 35 something with no pressure signs. I sold the gun and gave the guy all the Lever I had (package deal) and just haven't had good reason to pick anymore up. But I might get another pound to try in my 204 Ruger and see if it does any better than TAC there. TAC has been real good there too with both accuracy and speed.