Thanks for the tip - I'll look up his articles.
First results yesterday and today are
very promising. I loaded up four round batches at 48, 49 and 50 grains under Hornady 150 SP and all three .30-06's found at least one charge they really liked, putting all 4 shots well under an inch.
Don't usually seat bullets to touch lands with my loads but with these lower power loads I figured to give it a try. So today I seated one set touching the lands and got three out of four into .203"! Then in my happiness and joy I threw the fourth one 1.3" out of the group.
Oh, well...
Only chronographed the stainless M70 yesterday and the velocities were right where I wanted, from 2786 fps on the low end to 2870 on the upper.
Kind of interesting how the rifles reacted. Two liked the starting load the best and as charges went up the groups opened, while the blued M70 LT was the opposite. As the charge got higher the groups shrank.
Going to dink around with maybe another grain or so higher for the LT and try all of them with bullets touching the lands to see what happens.
But overall I think this is going to be just what I'm looking for.