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Originally Posted by boatanchor
Originally Posted by keith
Originally Posted by gunswizard
Been handloading for nearly 50 yrs. now and have always been able to find an accurate load by means of powder charge. I have never fooled with seating depth, I have always seated bullets to loading manual COAL specs.



= clueless and proud of it!


WOW, have to agree with keith on this one, I don't have even one single rifle that the bullets are seated to loading manual COAL specs !!!!!!!

I've got to disagree with the "clueless" comment (on a factual basis - obviously it's a mean thing to say but I'll ignore that for now). There may actually be some significant insight to be gleaned from gunswizard's experience. More and more target shooters are starting to back way off the lands, and plenty of factory loads that are WAY off the lands shoot lights out (180 Remington CL in the 30-06 in my buddy's Mauser for instance).
I just backed off the 140 ABs in my 270 WSM to about .060 off the lands and it is now much more accurate than my "normal" starting point of .025".
It might just be that a big old factory jump is going to work fine most of the time, but what do I know? I've been doing this for 40+ years myself and am recently discovering things about seating depth I never knew.

Cheers to all,
Rex

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Rex,

One more thing I would add, which may or may not be relevant to any specific handloader, is that I still encounter those who think any scoped, modern rifle that averages 1.5 inches for a 3-shot group at 100 yards is "very" accurate.

I don't necessarily disagree for big game hunting, depending on the big game involved. In fact have killed big game out to 400+ yards neatly that wouldn't average much better than that. In fact I bought a rifle from a well-known Campfire member a while back, which he described as "very accurate," and it wouldn't do any better than that, even with the loads he suggested shot very well. I asked him about that, and he said that was very accurate to him.

Which is one of the reasons why the very first chapter in Gun Gack III is "Modern Hunting Rifle Accuracy."


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Several of the competition Bench Rest shooters say chasing the lands is a practice in futility. In my experience, chasing lands can render your bolt gun a single shot.

All of my Weatherby’s prefer deeper seated bullets.


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Originally Posted by 300Winnie
Thank you everyone. Looks like I’ll stick to the way I’ve been doing it for 30+ years...pick a bullet and powder (or two or three) and work through charge weights first.

Glad to see I’m not alone in that camp, and for the most part it has worked well.
------------------------------------------

I know this is on P 1 so....





[quote=flintlocke]
in the last 20 years or so, there are so many factory loads that shoot lights out in modern guns, using factory deep seated OAL dimensions....it makes me wonder if chasing the lands isn't secondary to barrel harmonics?


I'm CLOSE to you on this. My position is Factory OAL is not a bad place to start.

Jerry


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I changed this year to first doing COAL after years the other way. So far, so good.


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To me, accurate is being able to hit what I need or want to. Beyond that, the pursuit of precision is really a separate quest, worth doing for its own sake and our enjoyment, but not essential to the job at hand. Might be rationalizing a bit, but I tend to think that my ability to hold is more significant in the field than the rifle's ability to cluster bullets together. Never missed even a squirrel because the rifle or load weren't up to the shot. My notions about all this apply to how, where, and what I hunt; others, of course, face different scenarios that are more demanding and might allow shooting from positions or at ranges that take more advantage of a really accurate setup, pdog shooting for example.


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I start with powder, fine tune with seating depth.

I start with 0.020 - 0.050 off the lands for all of my hunting rifles. Target rifle start at 0.005 - 0.010.


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So if we load a 300 Win to perform like a 308 in order to achieve accuracy, whats the point to the 300 Win?
I think most of us have been led to believe that we obtain best accuracy by playing with charge weights of different powders, and also trying different brand bullets.
But what about optimum performance?
We dont get the BC results without having velocity.
There are actually few powders that will give that in the larger capacity cases.
And the larger the capacity, the fewer there are.
So if we want to use the highst BC bullet, which is always the longer heavy ones, along with the highest velocity, how many choices are there as for accuracy testing?
The first thing to look for is (Max) velocity, and we do that first by loading one round at the lower end of the max charge range, and one more round one grain heavier, and another one grain heavier than the last and so on.
We then shoot those into something safe like a dirt pile at any distance with no target.
When we reach the point we notice even a slight amount of bolt sticky STOP,
We now know the max load in that gun with that powder/ bullet combination.
All this needs to be done over a chronagraph in order to record the velocity.
We might have used five rounds to find the max load in total for that powder.
We now load three rounds with the max load and fire them for group at 400 yds preferably or as far as we can.
Then use different seating depths in order to fine tune for accuracy, BEFORE reducing the powder charge.
And that my friends is the best way to get MAX performance from wildcat and magnum cartridges without spending days and countless rounds looking for it.
First find MAX velocity, then attempt to make it work by changing seating depth before moving on by lowering the charge of powder.

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Originally Posted by yobuck
So if we load a 300 Win to perform like a 308 in order to achieve accuracy, whats the point to the 300 Win?
I think most of us have been led to believe that we obtain best accuracy by playing with charge weights of different powders, and also trying different brand bullets.
But what about optimum performance?
We dont get the BC results without having velocity.
There are actually few powders that will give that in the larger capacity cases.
And the larger the capacity, the fewer there are.
So if we want to use the highst BC bullet, which is always the longer heavy ones, along with the highest velocity, how many choices are there as for accuracy testing?
The first thing to look for is (Max) velocity, and we do that first by loading one round at the lower end of the max charge range, and one more round one grain heavier, and another one grain heavier than the last and so on.
We then shoot those into something safe like a dirt pile at any distance with no target.
When we reach the point we notice even a slight amount of bolt sticky STOP,
We now know the max load in that gun with that powder/ bullet combination.
All this needs to be done over a chronagraph in order to record the velocity.
We might have used five rounds to find the max load in total for that powder.
We now load three rounds with the max load and fire them for group at 400 yds preferably or as far as we can.
Then use different seating depths in order to fine tune for accuracy, BEFORE reducing the powder charge.
And that my friends is the best way to get MAX performance from wildcat and magnum cartridges without spending days and countless rounds looking for it.
First find MAX velocity, then attempt to make it work by changing seating depth before moving on by lowering the charge of powder.


THIS is how I have always done it...


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Originally Posted by Pappy348
To me, accurate is being able to hit what I need or want to. Beyond that...




Yah mahn.


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Originally Posted by Pappy348
To me, accurate is being able to hit what I need or want to. Beyond that, the pursuit of precision is really a separate quest, worth doing for its own sake and our enjoyment, but not essential to the job at hand...


I totally agree that there are two separate quests here...I keep telling my fellow loonies that we need to start a “Handloaders Anonymous group”....”Hello, my name is Jay and I have an addiction”😂😂

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You're right!

I need to get more guns, more gear, more powder, more bullets, more primers and cases!



Don't ask me about my military service or heroic acts...most of it is untrue.

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😂😂😂

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Yesterday, I tested some loads for an old FN custom .270 I picked up recently. Picked a bullet many seem to consider pretty accurate, a Hornady Spire Point (150gr in this case) and a powder I already had that would give me my target velocity of 2700 or so without bending anything ( 55gr of H4831). Seating depth was determined by the Sharpie method. Two 3-shot groups went 9/16" and 7/8", followed after adjusting the elevation a tad on the M8 4X with a 4-shot group just under 1 1/4". I'll check the POI again before going hunting, but I'm done with this one. Loaded up the rest of my prepped cases, which should suffice for a while. Don't see how futzing around trying to squeeze out another fraction of an inch from this 50 or 60-something rifle will accomplish anything of importance.

OTOH, my new range toy, one of the $250 Brownells Howas, will be futzed with a good bit once enough innocent forest creatures have been converted into tasty comestibles. Here, that starts next Satuday.


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