Played a lot with my 7mm RM yesterday.
Loaded 20 rounds of various powder charges under a known "good" bullet seating depth for my old bullet (150gr ELD-X).
Two charges gave me fantastic groups of 3/8 MOA...outside of a wild flier. First time I thought it had a chance of being me, but the next group did it too and in the exact same spot, so that was rather disappointing. I did make my velocity goal (3K FPS), but that group was almost exactly 3/4". Charge weight was 65.5gr of IMR-4955.
^ Loaded 5 more at 65.5gr to shoot that last group at a little bit of distance to see if it would hold, settle down, or get worse...it got worse. Made about a 3" group at 262 yards.
Went back and loaded just a few rounds in the middle of those 3/8 groups (65.0gr and 2,957 FPS). This time I went + and - .005" in my seating depth to see if it made a difference. Shot those at 297 yards just to see how close in elevation it is to my current hunting load of 150gr ABLR.
^ In hind sight, I should have loaded more. Both 3 round groups are back to around 3/8 MOA...but the sample size is too small to tell if I got rid of my problem.
I had a 2-7MPH wind that was inconsistent from 7 - 11 o'clock...but that waterline is making me happy. I didn't hold for the wind. Just aimed at the dot.
I'm going to prep and load 10 more today (2 groups of 5) to shoot at 385 yards. That ought to tell me a bit better if I cured my flier potential.
*You'll see a shot to the left of the left dot. That was me, checking my cold bore capabilities with my second 6.5x47 that I'm usually posting about. Although, I did cheat and shoot that last...so I had a pretty good guess on the wind hold.
My ES and SD the whole time with the IMR-4955 hasn't been great. Basically ~35 and ~12 FPS respectively. I did a few H2O capacity checks on a few cases that gave me the worst spreads...and surprisingly, those weights are as close as one could ever hope for...less than a half grain ES.
Loaded 20 rounds of various powder charges under a known "good" bullet seating depth for my old bullet (150gr ELD-X).
Two charges gave me fantastic groups of 3/8 MOA...outside of a wild flier. First time I thought it had a chance of being me, but the next group did it too and in the exact same spot, so that was rather disappointing. I did make my velocity goal (3K FPS), but that group was almost exactly 3/4". Charge weight was 65.5gr of IMR-4955.
^ Loaded 5 more at 65.5gr to shoot that last group at a little bit of distance to see if it would hold, settle down, or get worse...it got worse. Made about a 3" group at 262 yards.
Went back and loaded just a few rounds in the middle of those 3/8 groups (65.0gr and 2,957 FPS). This time I went + and - .005" in my seating depth to see if it made a difference. Shot those at 297 yards just to see how close in elevation it is to my current hunting load of 150gr ABLR.
^ In hind sight, I should have loaded more. Both 3 round groups are back to around 3/8 MOA...but the sample size is too small to tell if I got rid of my problem.
I had a 2-7MPH wind that was inconsistent from 7 - 11 o'clock...but that waterline is making me happy. I didn't hold for the wind. Just aimed at the dot.
I'm going to prep and load 10 more today (2 groups of 5) to shoot at 385 yards. That ought to tell me a bit better if I cured my flier potential.
*You'll see a shot to the left of the left dot. That was me, checking my cold bore capabilities with my second 6.5x47 that I'm usually posting about. Although, I did cheat and shoot that last...so I had a pretty good guess on the wind hold.
My ES and SD the whole time with the IMR-4955 hasn't been great. Basically ~35 and ~12 FPS respectively. I did a few H2O capacity checks on a few cases that gave me the worst spreads...and surprisingly, those weights are as close as one could ever hope for...less than a half grain ES.
