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Old March 7, 2010, 10:37 PM   #1
Mike / Tx
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Remington CL 120gr 3350fps....

While in the country this weekend I was playing with some CL's in my 25-06 AI. The load runs them out at 3350fps from the 28" barrel.

I managed to catch a feral hog before he got to cover and ruined his weekend, only to make mine a bit better. Nothing like fresh off the farm pork ribs on the BBQ.

What was great was the performance of the bullet after boring through some really heavy stuff. The shields were almost 2" thick on this thing. The shot impacted a bit high due to the sight in, and went through the onside shoulder, part of the back bone, and stopped just under the muscle on the offside shoulder after breaking a 1" diameter hole through it. More or less the damage was very acceptable and much less that what I expected from the bullet hitting him at only 150yds or so. I figured it would be more like I just set a grenade off.

How do you all think it went? Here are some pic's,
Hunting Pics
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Old March 8, 2010, 04:10 PM   #2
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I think you got him. Veral Smith argues that a 1" hole is close to optimal for blood letting and reasonable damage, and that's what you got. Congrats!
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Old March 8, 2010, 06:29 PM   #3
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Unclenick I think you got him. Veral Smith argues that a 1" hole is close to optimal for blood letting and reasonable damage, and that's what you got. Congrats!
Thanks, all I know it bowled him over so fast I actually thought I missed. So I would have to say that regardless of the hole, he didn't require tracking or a follow up. Also having used most of the latest types or new school bullets, I have to give it up for the old school technology, just like the add claims, "The deadliest mushroom in the forest".
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Old March 8, 2010, 06:39 PM   #4
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Core Lokts have always been good performing bullets. Due to handloading, I usually use something a little more "premium", but I never feel overly handicapped with CoreLokts in the pipe...(and very economical, too).
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Old March 8, 2010, 09:10 PM   #5
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Very Impressive Performance

Would you mind sharing your load? Every 25-06 I ever heard of went about 3000 from 24". Heck, I can barely hit 3200 with my 6.5-06 with 120s in 24".
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Old March 8, 2010, 10:17 PM   #6
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120 CL

I'd say you've got those loads cranked pretty high. You have to push a 257 Wby to get 3350 with 120's.
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Old March 8, 2010, 10:28 PM   #7
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They may be a little on the warm side, but he is launching with a 28" tube.....that'll help some.
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Old March 9, 2010, 06:08 PM   #8
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And he's shooting a .25-06 Ackley Improved, with more powder capacity than the .25-06.
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Old March 9, 2010, 06:47 PM   #9
Mike / Tx
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Would you mind sharing your load? Every 25-06 I ever heard of went about 3000 from 24". Heck, I can barely hit 3200 with my 6.5-06 with 120s in 24".
To be completely honest so far I haven't actually weighed the charge. The load is using Remashot Magnum, fire formed Winchester and Lapua cases, CCI-BR2 primers, and the Remington is one of several 120's I have tested. The powder comes up right to the bottom of the neck. Maybe this week I will get around to weighing it out. But for now It is just as easy to set the Uniflow tot he desired turns and throw the charges.

As also pointed out the barrel is a 28" Broughton 5C 1-9 twist. The throat was lengthened a bit longer than standard. While this may or may not be up to snuff with common practices, it is working very well with this rifle. When the initial loads were worked up, the powders were selected and all weighed out by throwing the minimum and maximum loads from a Uniflow measure.

These were all for the standard case capacity. I worked up in slow increments until these were reached. At this point I resorted to watching case heads, and looking carefully at each one, at each load increment for added signs of pressure. The primers on the fired rounds are still nice and rounded, and I am seeing no signs of extractor or case head rubs form the bolt face on any of the cases. Granted there are WAY more scientific means of checking pressure but on the average person's take home these are pretty much out of the question.

I built this rig to get the most velocity out of the round, and also to shoot some custom made bullets. The bullet weights initially were to be 120, 125, 130, and 142grs. Everything so far has shown promise except the 142's which are just too long for what I can get form this rifle. They simply need more velocity and a faster twist than I can offer, or care to creep up on.

Being as it is, I have an awesome rifle that with a bit of tweaking will reach out and hit anything I am able to hold steady on. It's a bit unique, but it's the way I wanted it to be. And to the folks who feel I could have accomplished similar things using a Weatherby, well your probably right. But then I could have just as easily done with out it all together.

As mentioned by another poster, the economy of these bullets is what initially goaded me into getting them. Since I load for both the standard and now the AI version, I figured they would be be good hog fodder if nothing else. I do have plenty of bullet costing way more to purchase, but I hate to shoot them up just to say hey I am shooting such and such. The CL's have generally shot very well in most of my rifles, and up until the big component buy up, they were priced very reasonably. Even now they are still a bargain for the performance. Even if they only shoot a 2" group at 100yds that is still close enough to hit any feral hog or deer I am likely to shoot at.

Last edited by Mike / Tx; March 9, 2010 at 06:54 PM.
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Old March 10, 2010, 08:36 AM   #10
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Filling up to the neck without measuring. Ouch.
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Old March 10, 2010, 11:12 AM   #11
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To be completely honest so far I haven't actually weighed the charge. The load is using Remashot Magnum, fire formed Winchester and Lapua cases, CCI-BR2 primers, and the Remington is one of several 120's I have tested. The powder comes up right to the bottom of the neck. Maybe this week I will get around to weighing it out. But for now It is just as easy to set the Uniflow tot he desired turns and throw the charges.


You don't know your charge weight?
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Old March 10, 2010, 11:50 AM   #12
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That's kinda scary dude
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Old March 10, 2010, 12:57 PM   #13
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To the folks who are flipping out about the charge weight. Did you bother reading the entire post or just get to the part about not knowing the weight and loose it?

If you had read the post, first of all you would have seen that I initially DID weigh out all the powder charges for the standard cases. The powder was loaded into the Uniflow, then weighed for start and top end by the book. However this is an AI version which has no universal load book data, even with that each wildcat chamber is a creature of it's own depending on how tight the chamber is, the throat length and so on.

Also mentioned was that this barrel has been throated which also further reduces pressures to an extent. Also mentioned was the fact that I have already worked up to this level from the afore mentioned measured charges.

So I am not sure just what all the hub bub is all about. It's not like I simply dumped the case full of which ever powder I had sitting there, then decided to see if it would shoot. I have been at this going on 40 years and this isn't my first attempt at loading a wildcat.
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Old March 10, 2010, 02:47 PM   #14
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If you had read the post, first of all you would have seen that I initially DID weigh out all the powder charges for the standard cases. The powder was loaded into the Uniflow, then weighed for start and top end by the book. However this is an AI version which has no universal load book data, even with that each wildcat chamber is a creature of it's own depending on how tight the chamber is, the throat length and so on.
I got that part. The way you're expaining this, is that you worked up intial charge weights for the standard 25-06 loads via the scale, and then worked up your AI loadings by increasing the charge by way of the powder measure, not the scale. More power to ya, and maybe in 15 years and I have as much loading experience as you, I'll be ballsy enough to do that. Obviously with only 25 years of experience I have alot to learn.

Either that, or I need to work on my reading comprehension skills.
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Old March 10, 2010, 06:30 PM   #15
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I got that part. The way you're expaining this, is that you worked up intial charge weights for the standard 25-06 loads via the scale, and then worked up your AI loadings by increasing the charge by way of the powder measure, not the scale. More power to ya, and maybe in 15 years and I have as much loading experience as you, I'll be ballsy enough to do that. Obviously with only 25 years of experience I have alot to learn.

Either that, or I need to work on my reading comprehension skills.
Ok so how would YOU suggest I go about working up loads to reach the full potential of this rifle?

I have a scale, so when I get to the top end of the standard load data what then?

The following info is only in the firearm it was used in no attempt should be made to use it with out working up slowly.

Also for the inquiring mind, and this might come as a shock, I did just now weigh the charge being thrown by the Uniflow and it was 63.5grs.

Last edited by Mike / Tx; March 10, 2010 at 06:45 PM.
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Old March 10, 2010, 07:07 PM   #16
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I would work up loads in the typical .3 - .5 grain increments, keeping records for accuracy, velocity, and the typical pressure signs. I would also weigh each charge, which I do for all my rifle loads anyway, so I have an idea of where I'm at charge weight-wise.

Generally, the typical AI "improvement" in case volume for that class of cartridge is about a 10% increase in volume. You could determine your exact volume increase by weighing the water out of a standard case vs. one of your fireformed cases. You would then at least have a general idea of where your max charges are going to end up.

You do have other things to consider, as you said, with a little longer throat and a 28" barrel, both conducive to a little more velocity with the increase in powder capacity. That, IMHO, was a very wise move indeed.

Hey partner, if it works for you, more power to you. I'm not trying to blast you. I had just never heard of anyone working up loads like this. I wanna know where I am on the scale when i'm working up loads, and thought that was generally how it was done.
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Old March 11, 2010, 02:33 PM   #17
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Actually, a lot of benchresters work that way because they're working up loads at the range where the air movement can make their scales unreliable. They just calibrate their measure settings so they know, with the bulk density of the particular powder they have, that there are roughly so many clicks on the measure per grain of powder. Any kind of powder cavity scale on a measure will let you do the same, be it an arbitrary micrometer scale, like the one on my Redding 30BR, or like the one on the Lee Perfect measure, which is in CC's. But these guys do have to wait to get home from the range to weigh what they wound up throwing when the groups were best?

Understand that as long as you are watching for pressure signs, whether you increment your loads by weight or by volume is really six of one or half-dozen of the other. You just need to know that your volume increments are small enough to be roughly in the .3 to .5 grain ballpark.

That said, there is one other method available that will ballpark the pressure to a match, usually within 5% or so. You take the water capacity of a .25-06 case and the water capacity of a .25-06 AI case. The difference is about 12%, so the AI is about 1.12 times bigger. Take the square root of that water capacity difference, which in this case is 1.058, and multiply the smaller case loads by it for the larger case. That will get you in roughly the same pressure ballpark a. It's an approximation that doesn't work well as the % difference gets bigger than around 10% or so, or if the case shapes are too radically different. In this case, 12%, give or take brand differences, is not too far over that 10% line.

In QuickLOAD that approximation with IMR 4350 and a 75 grain Hornady bullet gave a load with 58,200 psi in the software in the .25-06. After multiplying it by 1.058, it gave a load that predicted 56,500 psi in the .25-06 AI. That's with the bullet bearing surface seated 0.257" into each case mouth. So, as I said, it's not exact but will give you a ballpark idea of what the load differences are for a given powder and bullet. But you do need capacities for the case the original load was developed in and that of your cases.
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Old March 11, 2010, 03:06 PM   #18
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I don't understand the problem with this. He said he worked it up incrementally. He checked for pressure signs. If he's measuring by volumn, why does he care what it weighs?
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Old March 11, 2010, 03:53 PM   #19
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I don't understand the problem with this. He said he worked it up incrementally. He checked for pressure signs.
Didn't say it was a problem. Said I had never heard of anyone work up loads like this.

Quote:
why does he care what it weighs?
Obvioulsly he doesn't. I said if works for him, cool.

Quote:
Actually, a lot of benchresters work that way because they're working up loads at the range where the air movement can make their scales unreliable.
This makes perfect sense. I am not a benchrester, and I don't work up loads at the range.
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Old March 11, 2010, 06:45 PM   #20
Mike / Tx
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Hey uncyboo,

I didn't mean to come off sounding like a smart a$$, in the above comment. It did however get a bit under my skin where the comments made, made it seem like I was simply dumping powder in a case at random, which is far from actuality.

I am working the loads similar to what the BR shooters do, that is where I picked up doing it. Not actually shooting competition, but hanging out at the range where several of them shot every Sunday, and tweaked up their loads for this or that caliber. some had actaul data, and some like me were using the paretn case loads and working up in slow increments.

Yes there are a ton of variables involved, yes there are pressures that sometimes do and sometimes do not reveal themselves until late in the game. The load I am shooting is the max load for this powder with this weight bullet. Not because I can't go higher, but because I choose it to be there.

After working up slowly last year to an actual max load where I DID see flattened primers, shiny spots on the case heads and in some cases extractor marks, I noted the setting for all of these loads with the respective powders they were worked up to in. Then I backed down a full turn or more, depending on the powder, to where I got nice case life, nothing showing on any of the cases and the life of the cases has been around 9 loads so far with no issues. So I might be up there in pressure and velocity, but using standards used by many other loaders, the case life and ease of sizing and loading says for this rifle things are OK.

Your right I had put the added length in the throat for shooting longer bullets, and being able to seat them out further. However, with the 120's I am seating them for the most part flush with the base of the neck. There is considerable jump, but the groups are good so far, and they will still fit easily in the magazine. The velocity is about in the neighborhood of where it should be with regard to the added length, and powder capacity, so I am now going to tweak the seating depth a bit longer to see if it helps shrink the groups. I am also going to look into the other bullets tested last year as well.

Hopefully this will result in a tack driver that I will be able to reach out quite a ways on coyotes and feral hogs. The velocity is very consistent now if the groups will shrink into somewhere near 1/2" at 200 I will be in business.

I hope I didn't upset you over the comment made. I wasn't trying to stir up anything. Just was one of those days and I apologize for anything insinuated.
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Old March 11, 2010, 07:52 PM   #21
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No problem partner, and I wasn't trying to be a pill either. Once your method was explained, it made some sense to me. I don't trust my own judgement to work up loads without a scale, that's all.

Sounds like you got yourself a screamer.
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