338 Lapua Pet loads?

[Weston]

Hey guys,

I'm fairly new to reloading, but I have been loading as much as I can for practice, mostly .223 and some .45ACP I have a Savage 110 with the HS stock I bought on here a few months ago, I have been shooting the berger 300 grain hybrids and have about 100 left, I dont have any other bullets to try but will definitly try somthing else if need be. I do have a couple pounds of retumbo and a pound of h1000 to try. so far I just worked up to my max load I stopped at 93.5grains of retumbo after I got a sticky bolt on one of my 5 rounds.

I have been loading to 3.761 OAL which still fits in my magazine fine, and have been getting decent 1ish MOA groups although I havnt been shooting off a bench just a bi-pod and pack so I'm not really sure how well these shot, mostly just breaking in the bbl.

Was wondering what people were having luck with so I can try some of their loads and hopefully tweak from there, I am pretty limited budget wise being a full time student and working in an archery shop part time I dont have much time to be testing a bunch of loads all the time (or money). hopefully someone can give me an idea of what to start with, not super concerened with hitting a certain velocity although I do have a chronograph.

Thanks for your time,
Weston

[Weston]

by the way my bullet is .053" off the lands

[marioq]

I am interested in this too. About to start reloading for 338 lapua and 300 win mag.
Would like to find a starting place with primers and powder.

Thanks

[Weston]

Well I loaded up some retumbo and h1000 to try, I only got to shoot the 90 and 90.5 grain retumbo loads before it got way to windy to shoot, the 90.0 grain had 3 great shots 1.75" at 300 yards which I would be estatic with, however I had one flyer that was quite a bit low and right, (3 inches probably) the 90.5 didnt shoot too well, probably a 5" group I'm not sure if maybe the wind had somthing to do with it? Also, I'm concerned that my bullet needs to jump to far to reach the lands .053" any insight?

[green 788]

The Hornady brass is a little thinner, and has less case capacity than the Lapua.

If you're shooting Retumbo and 300's with Hornady brass, work up to 91 grains.

With Lapua brass, use 89 grains...

[green 788]

here is a test target I shot with my 110BA, using Hornady brass...



You can see that I got a flyer at 100 yards with 92 grains of Retumbo and the Sierra 300 Matchkings.

Lapua has about 97.5% the capacity of the Hornady, and so if you find an OCW node with Hornady, you'd expect to see that same node, using Lapua brass, with about 97.5% of the powder charge you used in the Hornady...

If you're using Lapua brass (which it looks like you may well be), then you'd have a node at around 89 grains... and you'd have an unstable node at around 90 to 91 grains, which is what you're reporting (flyers being common)...

Back the powder charge down to 89 grains of Retumbo and see how they do at 300 yards...

Dan

[Weston]

Thank you very much for your reply, I really do appreciate it, I will work up some loads at 89 89.2 89.4 89.6 89.8 and more at 90. Again your response was great, I really do thank you, This is my first attempt at precision reloading and I have always just had buddies reload for me so I'm trying to get this all figured out, my forster competition dies and co-ax has been giving me awesome concentricity so far, out of the 50 I loaded last night I only had 1 greater than two thousanths off run out wise, I will try to run out in the morning if the wind dies down and do some testing!