[hounddawg]

part 2

After doing the initial research to determine a safe load range I decided to start with a low of 43.0 and a maximum of 44.5 which I thought would give me plenty of velocity at 800 yards. If I had a opportunity to shoot at 1000 I might see if I could find another good node that would give me 3100 or 3200 FPS but why waste powder and barrel life with more than what is needed to get the job done.

edit - cases were Lapua on 2nd reloading, primer pockets were uniformed before first firing and cases were trimmed, chamfered and deburred. No annealing. Charges were weighed thrown on a Johnson Quick Measure then hand trickled to the milligram on the $20 Smartweigh scale. When I say hand trickled I mean hand trickled, I use a empty yogurt cup of powder and my thumb and forefinger. I have done a previous primer test with six different primers using H4350 at 90% plus case fill with a different bullet and knew the H4350 seemed to like the Remington primers best so no further primer testing needed

I am attaching 3 files. The first is a spreadsheet showing velocities followed by the rough depth of seating test and finally a rough charge workup. As you can see the H4350 give great consistency across a wide range with low SD's and ES's. The minimum charge gives me a speed of 2975 when seated on the lands which is plenty for 800 yard shooting. Notice the increase in velocities with the various seating depths.

I first fired 4 rounds as sighters and to foul the barrel. I also increased each by .5 gns to a maximum of 44.5 to check for pressure signs. If I had decided to push the charge to the maximum load I would have started decreasing the increments to .3 and .1 as I neared maximum. That was followed by 20 rounds with a charge of 43.5 gns seated at .073 from lands, .050, .035, then on the lands. The ones on the lands had great velocity numbers and grouped well so the 20 that I had loaded at home with various charge weights and left seated at .000 from lands were not reseated. I did have my seating die in a Lee hand press along with calipers in the event the bullet wanted a "jump"

At the end the 43.0 charge and the 43.5 charge had a average velocity only 8 FPS apart and the groups are fairly tight. Next week I will fine tune the depth working away from the lands in .005 increments using a 43.3 charge weight to see if I can get grouping below .5 and hopefully into the .3 to .4 range

Anyway this is how I start a load test, I would be interested in how others do it and any critiques on my methods. Please use detail and pics of groups are always of interest