Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles 257 roberts and staball 6.5

Looking at the successes with similar sized rounds I am curious if anyone has any comments or load suggestions regarding this.
100-117 soft points.

I'm wrapping up the 110 gr. ELD-X with H4350 this week.

The following 2 weeks it's the same bullet with StaBALL 6.5.

Love to hear the results.

Sure. I've tagged this so I can find it again in a couple weeks.

From looking at load data I'm guesstimating the load will eventually land around 44.5gr - 45.5 gr.
This is out of a custom rifle that basically shoots everything well.

So I got around to finishing (almost) my load development of the 110 grain ELD-X and StaBALL 6.5.

The rifle is a custom, built around a M77 tang safety LA. The barrel is 24", with standard twist and grooves.

I started by using the Hodgdon load data for a 100-grain bullet. I loaded from 45.0 grains to 45.8 grains in 0.2 grain increments.
Each time a load crept past 3,100 fps MV, both the data and groups would grow. The most consistent load from the barrel ended up being 45.6 grains at 3,090 MV.

I mentioned almost finished with this load. I generally do load development with a bullet seated 0.040" back from the rifling, tweaking the seating depth as the last step.
Fortunately, the 110 gr. ELD-X / H4350 load settled at 0.030" back from the rifling, so I'll load a few more groups at that seating depth and compare.

In any case, this load will more than do for Pronghorn hunting.

Staball 6.5 in my experiences tends to not be as accurate as some stick powders, but it will get you some of the best velocities in that burn range. I got 3350 fps with a 100 gr barnes xlc in the 25 wssm with staball, but I had to back down to 3100 for accuracy.

So, I finally, finally, wrapped up load development for the 110 grain ELD-X using both H4350 & StaBALL 6.5

After 40 rounds each I settled on -0.060" from the rifling as the most consistent, though anywhere's from -0.050 and deeper will do.
As you might expect, H4350 was the most consistent with MV average at 3,035 fps and StaBALL 6.5 less so at just almost touching 3,100 MV, but both turned in stellar 4 5-round groups regardless @ 100 yards.

So with that done I'm movin' on to other H4350 loads that are needing a backup plan

Pud