Testing three .308's with the same load

[thaHooligan]

Went out to do some testing and see if any of my .308's like this load. The Ruger American Predator did pretty good. Makes me wonder how much better this rifle could be in a different stock and with better glass. All of the Ruger American rifles just seem to shoot so damn good. I just have a cheap Nikon Buckmasters scope on the predator. The load is 47.2 gr CFE223, Hornady Amax 168 gr bullets, Federal brass and cci primers.

 

[Neanderthal]

Good video! Thanks for sharing.

 

[swampratt]

Nice ..Fast shootin there.

 

[thaHooligan]

Nice ..Fast shootin there.

That was uncut/unedited footage. I like to shoot as fast as I can to simulate real world action.

 

[Steve Taylor]

Nice video. Before you rule out the bullet, you might play around with the powder charge. It is a good point that some guns don't like the same load.

 

[swampratt]

Seating depth makes huge gains also.
I had a great load for 6.5 CM and decided to chase the lands and moved the bullet from 2.802 to 2.840 which put me .005" off the lands No touching of the lands.
The 2.802 5 shot group was in the .770" area and the 2.840 was a shotgun pattern making me think what is wrong with this rifle.

Took the same handloaded batch of bullets I had seated long and seated them deeper into the case and shot them and 2 went into the same hole and a third creased the edge of those first 2 shots.
Hornady 140 A-Max bullets.

 

[thaHooligan]

Seating depth makes huge gains also.

I will give this a try. I had them at 2.805 I believe and a few felt a little tight on the lock up for the bolt guns. I'm not to concerned with the CZ550, since I don't really shoot it much anymore, but the Armalite I will try seating the bullet a little deeper and see what happens.

 

[diggler1833]

I will give this a try. I had them at 2.805 I believe and a few felt a little tight on the lock up for the bolt guns. I'm not to concerned with the CZ550, since I don't really shoot it much anymore, but the Armalite I will try seating the bullet a little deeper and see what happens.

Man, if you were closer I'd say to bring your rifles over. My shooting bench is about 25' from my reloading bench, so it isn't difficult to tweak stuff.

Good bullet choice, good brass choice, good primer choice. The CFE-223 is pretty temp sensitive, so you may see fluctuations in group size with those rifles again if you did this in August. Still, the Ruger did well with it...probably as accurate as I've seen with CFE-223. The A-Max is also a little more seating depth sensitive (generally) due to its secant ogive.

Good video man. Keep them coming!

 

[thaHooligan]

The CFE-223 is pretty temp sensitive, so you may see fluctuations in group size with those rifles again if you did this in August. The A-Max is also a little more seating depth sensitive (generally) due to its secant ogive.

Ahh, good to know. I'll try the same load with different seating depth in the Armalite and I'll probably also try that bullet with Varget and see how that does.

 

[diggler1833]

Ahh, good to know. I'll try the same load with different seating depth in the Armalite and I'll probably also try that bullet with Varget and see how that does.

My bet is Varget, all day every day. Not only is it resistant to temp swings (anywhere from only .16 - .4 FPS/degree), but it doesn't take a stroke of luck to reach low ES and SD.

For comparison, the charts that I have show CFE-223 being about 1.7 FPS/degree...that's an 85 FPS swing from shooting in 35 and 85 degree weather.

On your CZ test it looks like you had an ES of 94, and an SD of 32.41. AR was ES = 38, SD =13.83, and Ruger was ES = 66, SD = 22.84. Ball powders are pretty hard to get low ES/SD. Often you have to run it up to the ragged edge of pressure to get those numbers as low as they'll go.

Sorry...I nerd out on this stuff a bit.