Re: What did you reload today?

983
Getting closer to reloading 6.5 Creedmoor ...

Instead of cleaning off the workbench and finding a space to mount a single stage press I made a portable reloading bench from an old Harbor Freight fold-up workbench and some scrap wood. Picking up powder and primers tomorrow and waiting for bullets to arrive. Mocking it up

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Re: What did you reload today?

985
Today I thought a bunch about a load that might work in a rifle I haven't given a lot of development time yet; my .40-65. I was thinking all sorts of interesting stuff about dual-diameter paper patched lead bullets and how they would fit the chamber and throat. I stopped in the LGS to say hi, and walked out with a box of old Speer half-jacketed 200 grain swchp bullets intended for the .41 Magnum. Despite their advertised diameter of .410, they are only .410 at the bottom edge of the jacket and taper to .4085 at the forward edge of the cylindrical jacketed section. They're like they were designed to fit the short section of freebore the chamber has, with a little pressure ring at the bottom edge of the base, like fancy benchrest bullets have.

So, today I loaded 20 rounds of 200 grain hollowpoints over 23 grains of H4198 in new Starline .40-65 cases. This is definitely a "because it was there" endeavor.
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Re: What did you reload today?

988
Marlene wrote: Tue Feb 05, 2019 9:28 pm Today I thought a bunch about a load that might work in a rifle I haven't given a lot of development time yet; my .40-65. I was thinking all sorts of interesting stuff about dual-diameter paper patched lead bullets and how they would fit the chamber and throat. I stopped in the LGS to say hi, and walked out with a box of old Speer half-jacketed 200 grain swchp bullets intended for the .41 Magnum. Despite their advertised diameter of .410, they are only .410 at the bottom edge of the jacket and taper to .4085 at the forward edge of the cylindrical jacketed section. They're like they were designed to fit the short section of freebore the chamber has, with a little pressure ring at the bottom edge of the base, like fancy benchrest bullets have.

So, today I loaded 20 rounds of 200 grain hollowpoints over 23 grains of H4198 in new Starline .40-65 cases. This is definitely a "because it was there" endeavor.
some potential with this load, but needs more work, grouped about 4" but several shots hanging together in a much smaller cluster

loaded another 20 with more powder to see if more pressure gets more consistent burn and brings the group all in to the cluster it looks like it could be
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Re: What did you reload today?

989
I did a test series of loads with different amounts of powder today. .45 auto Hornady case and FMJ bullet, Federal 150 primer, and Longshot powder in 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.7, and 6.8 grains.

The 6.3 and 6.5 performed especially well as I was able to keep all shots in the 10 ring at 7 yards. Those are my best groups ever with my 1911, so I'm calling those successful loads.

I also picked up some CCI primers today just to see what, if any, difference that makes. I just can't imagine it being that important, but I'll find out by trial and error.
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Re: What did you reload today?

990
~1200 rnds 9mm (over 3 evenings), case gauged and plunk tested (I'm kinda anal about FTF).

4.7 grns WST
125 RN Blue Bullets
Winchester small pistol primers
Remington range brass only (testing if sorting brass helps with consistency)
old school, same old, same old

Did buy a 1lb of Shooter's World Clean Shot (Lovex) to try out. It's similar to Titegroup; bought it from a guy for $15 who was cleaning out his loading room.

Re: What did you reload today?

994
Eris wrote:
offensivename wrote: Wed Mar 06, 2019 11:18 am Ladder of 6.5x55 for my new tikka. VihtaVuori N165 44-50gr with 140gr ELD-M bullets.
What do you mean by "ladder"? I haven't encountered this term before.
You already have already done one by loading different amounts of powder and holding all other factors constant to find the load that meets your selection criteria I.e. accuracy, recoil, etc


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Re: What did you reload today?

995
Eris wrote: Wed Mar 06, 2019 12:18 pm
offensivename wrote: Wed Mar 06, 2019 11:18 am Ladder of 6.5x55 for my new tikka. VihtaVuori N165 44-50gr with 140gr ELD-M bullets.
What do you mean by "ladder"? I haven't encountered this term before.
I'm trying to narrow down the load for this particular rifle that shoots the best. Looking at the VihtaVuori load data for N165 and 140gr bullets in a modern 6.5x55 rifle, they give a starting load of 44.2gr and a max load of 50.2 gr. Somewhere between the two will be a load this rifle likes the best. So I load up 7 different sets of 5 cartridges with the only difference being the amount of powder. In this case I did 44,45,46,47,48,49 and 50 grains. I'll take them to the range and try and shoot each as consistently as possible and look for the tightest group. Then I'll do it again with another ladder centered around that charge, so if 47gr is the best from the first ladder I'll do a second with 46.5, 46.7, 47, 47.2, 47.5, the best shooting out of that will be the load I'll use for that rifle with that bullet and that powder.

Re: What did you reload today?

997
Ladder of 35 rounds of 6.5x55. 48.4gr-49.6gr of VV N165 over 140gr Nosler RDF bullets.

Question. Do people notice a change in the accuracy nodes when they move from one bullet of a given weight to a differently shaped bullet of the same weight? The Nosler RDFs are something like .02" longer than the Hornady 140gr bullets but still weight the same.

Re: What did you reload today?

999
Sure, the RDF bullets have a much better ballistic coefficient so less drop/windage. I was mostly wondering about the barrel harmonics and all the other internal ballistics considerations of a longer bullet of the same weight vs a shorter bullet of the same weight and hoping I can be lazy and not have to find some completely different load for a 140gr RDF vs the 140gr ELD

Re: What did you reload today?

1000
FInally got out to the range to chrono 9mm loads with a new powder, Clean Shot (Lovex), and plated bullets, Rocky Mountain Reloading. Nice powder, very soft shooting compared to the WST I've been using for practice loads. I'm going to load a 1000 and see how it goes.

Also decapped 5000 cases this week. Stupid me, I've never thought about using case lube for pistol cartridges but I had made a batch for rifle reloads so I gave a batch a couple of spritzes and what a difference! I was decapping at least 3x as fast. Thinking about switching to steel pins and wet tumbling - anyone here use the Harbor Freight tumbler? Being cheap, I've been thinking about getting a plastic container with a lid for a tumbler, building a frame to hold the container and plopping that on to the treadmill I sporadically use.

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