.308 Long Range Build

[Ohio06]

Just got my new rifle build in earlier this week, I was tornon what to build but ended up going with a .308 Win throated for .208 AMAX or210 Berger VLD's. Short Action Customs of Wellington, Ohio did the build.

Here are the specs:

Action- Bighorn LA
Base- MurphyTitanium
Trigger- Jewell@ 2lb
Mag Kit- BadgerM4 BDL
Barrel- Bartlein1:10 #3 Contour 26"
Brake- Vais
Stock- McMillanHunter Glass & Pillar Bedded
Scope- VortexHS-T (For now, I'm just doing some load development)



I ran some 208 AMAX's through it last night with RL15 and2000-MR as that was all I had. I'm goingto load some up tonight with Rl17 and see where it gets me. So far so good though, rifle shoots like adream.

So far velocities are right where I was estimating them to be, so I'm very happy with that, I'm leaving for a hunt in two weeks so worst case I'll just use the RL15, even though RL17 seems to be the go to powder.

The data is as follows, all bullets were seated to 3.020"

RL15 42.0G
AVG 2450
RL15 42.5G
AVG 2485
RL15 43G
AVG 2520

2000-MR 45G
AVG 2520
2000-MR 45.5G
AVG 2560

 

[Bigeclipse]

Just got my new rifle build in earlier this week, I was tornon what to build but ended up going with a .308 Win throated for .208 AMAX or210 Berger VLD's. Short Action Customs of Wellington, Ohio did the build.

Here are the specs:

Action- Bighorn LA
Base- MurphyTitanium
Trigger- Jewell@ 2lb
Mag Kit- BadgerM4 BDL
Barrel- Bartlein1:10 #3 Contour 26"
Brake- Vais
Stock- McMillanHunter Glass & Pillar Bedded
Scope- VortexHS-T (For now, I'm just doing some load development)



I ran some 208 AMAX's through it last night with RL15 and2000-MR as that was all I had. I'm goingto load some up tonight with Rl17 and see where it gets me. So far so good though, rifle shoots like adream.

So far velocities are right where I was estimating them to be, so I'm very happy with that, I'm leaving for a hunt in two weeks so worst case I'll just use the RL15, even though RL17 seems to be the go to powder.

The data is as follows, all bullets were seated to 3.020"

RL15 42.0G
AVG 2450
RL15 42.5G
AVG 2485
RL15 43G
AVG 2520

2000-MR 45G
AVG 2520
2000-MR 45.5G
AVG 2560

that is one fine looking rifle! Hope it shoots as well as it looks!

 

[liltank]

I have the MR powder also. What is your velocity sd and ES with the PP2000mr? I've been using it in my short barrel because it gets good velocity out of an 18" barrel. Also gives good accuracy. What primer are you using? What are your pressure signs look like at that load? Flat primer, ejection marks of any kind?

 

[Canadian Bushman]

Nice rifle.
Youre gonna **** your pants when your work up a load with RL 17

 

[Ohio06]

I have the MR powder also. What is your velocity sd and ES with the PP2000mr? I've been using it in my short barrel because it gets good velocity out of an 18" barrel. Also gives good accuracy. What primer are you using? What are your pressure signs look like at that load? Flat primer, ejection marks of any kind?

The SD was around 8.9 I believe (Can't find the ES, know I wrote it down somewhere, but it was pretty low), keep in mind though I only fired 3 rounds of each over the chrono just to sanity check the loads. The 2000-MR load was derived from a 200 grain bullet suggested load out of Noslers reloading manual. There were zero pressure signs from these loads, even though they were the highest velocity.

That being said, I've been sitting here reviewing the brass tonight and on the 43g of RL15 I noticed that two of the pieces of fired brass have just the lightest ejector mark on them. You can barely even feel it with a fingernail, and sometimes it's hard to see even though I know it's there. Everything else checked out good, I think I'm going to go with the 42.5 grain load and get some more worked up for Sunday.

With the RL15 being slightly fast for this bullet I'm surprised I didn't see more pressure signs, but everything seemed good to go, minus the 43 grain loads.

I'm also going to pick up another 100 pieces of brass tomorrow and get the RL17 loads made up.

Anyone loaded these with RL17 behind them? Seems to be a lot of data around, so I'll gather that and see where I get.

 

[Ohio06]

Nice rifle.
Youre gonna **** your pants when your work up a load with RL 17

So I hear, good stuff sounds like.

 

[Ohio06]

I have the MR powder also. What is your velocity sd and ES with the PP2000mr? I've been using it in my short barrel because it gets good velocity out of an 18" barrel. Also gives good accuracy. What primer are you using? What are your pressure signs look like at that load? Flat primer, ejection marks of any kind?

Whoops, let me clarify my earlier post.

The 42.5g RL15 was the most accurate, and had the 8.9 SD.

The 45g of 2000 MR had an ES of 33.7 and an SD of 24.04.

The 45.5g of 2000 MR had an ES of 106.3 and an SD of 44.19, something weird happened on this one, had a flier at over 2600 fps.

So the 2000-MR was the least accurate running around 1 MOA.

The 42.5g of RL 15 shot a group at .400".

All that being said, I only fired three rounds of each, so an anomoly could easily be present in all of those findings. Like I said, I was just trying to correlate expected velocities with measured velocities to ensure I was where I thought I should be.

 

[liltank]

Another powder you may want to try is CFE223. I was able to get an avg of 2655 with the book max load for a 200grn bullet. A little tweaking and I can probably get the numbers to jive better. ES 26 SD 12. May want give that a try if you have access to it. This was with a 200SGK. This will put a hurting on some whitetails here in PA.

 

[Ohio06]

Another powder you may want to try is CFE223. I was able to get an avg of 2655 with the book max load for a 200grn bullet. A little tweaking and I can probably get the numbers to jive better. ES 26 SD 12. May want give that a try if you have access to it. This was with a 200SGK. This will put a hurting on some whitetails here in PA.

Cool, thanks for the info. I'm waiting on the local shop to open so I can grab more AMAX's and brass. I believe they have CFE223 there, if so I'll grab a pound.

I did load some RL17 up this morning, just two rounds from 45.5-47.5. So I'm going to try to launch them out of the barn today over my chrono to get some velocity data.

 

[MontanaMarine]

I'm shooting moly'd 208s over 49.0 gr RL17, Win brass, CCI 200s, OAL 3.08".

This load produced 2680 fps in a factory Rem varmint 26" bbl.

50.0 gr yielded 2725 fps, but with a little bolt stiffness, and light ejector marks.

I've since cut the barrel to 22", and the 49.0 gr load produces 2620 fps.

Without moly, and depending on other variables like chamber dimensions and brass volume, you may be able to go a little higher than 47.5 gr with RL-17 and 208s.

I found with RL17 in the 308 with the heavies, that ES really tightens up when the load gets close to the top end.

 

[Ohio06]

I'm shooting moly'd 208s over 49.0 gr RL17, Win brass, CCI 200s, OAL 3.08".

This load produced 2680 fps in a factory Rem varmint 26" bbl.

50.0 gr yielded 2725 fps, but with a little bolt stiffness, and light ejector marks.

I've since cut the barrel to 22", and the 49.0 gr load produces 2620 fps.

Without moly, and depending on other variables like chamber dimensions and brass volume, you may be able to go a little higher than 47.5 gr with RL-17 and 208s.

I found with RL17 in the 308 with the heavies, that ES really tightens up when the load gets close to the top end.

Thanks, I will look into the moly.

Just fired the 208's over RL17, here's the results. As you can see I only fired two of each, so nowhere near a good sample, but again I'm just trying to verify safe loads.


RL17 45.5
ES 2.65
SD 2.23
2533
2530

RL17 46
ES 4.85
SD 2.82
2555
2551

RL17 46.5
ES 20.56
SD 14.14
2583
2603

RL17 47
ES 6.16
SD 5
2600
2607

RL17 47.5 Very light ejector marks, stopped at this charge
ES 29.12
SD 20.51
2614
2643

 

[MontanaMarine]

Moly is kind of old school nowadays, I'm just kind of used to it.

Ultra Bore Coat (UBC) seems to be the more modern bore treatment that provides the same benefits as moly, but it's a one-time bore treatment so a lot less messy than tumbling bullets and then handling them.

Anyways, either one might buy you an extra 30-50 fps. At the end of the day, the 208 shoots well and far at 2600 fps. Looks like you made that without any signs of excess pressure.

Shane