Speaking of archeology, I recently worked up a load for a Ruger M77 in .243 that I bought for my youngest son when he was 11, he's almost 39. My oldest son got a 6mm when he was 11, a year earlier. The store didn't have a .243 when or he would have gotten that. Such a big difference (nope, well, some I guess) between the two calibers lol. Anyway the oldest has his 6mm and the youngest, left his in my gun case. I got on a cleaning and inspection kick a couple of weeks ago and I finally took my .308 VTR (Remington's triangle barrel abomination) and my sons M77 out of the gun case, borescoped them, cleaned them up, and put them back in the gun case..
The M77 has been in the gun case since he was 11. To you youngsters that have never heard of such a thing, a gun case is a shooters version of a "china cabinet". Um... china cabinet... for dishes... never mind. The rifle has been in the case for almost 28 years. It had less than 20 rounds through it (factory ammo, still 3 in the box) when it was put away. I borescoped it and saw that it wasn't cleaned before he (or his brother) put it away. (is it too late to ground them?). It looked like it had some areas of what looked like light rust in a few places. It took some time but I finally got it cleaned up. The areas that looked like rust were much much smaller when I finished. So I put some Break Free Collector (long term storage stuff) in it and put it away right?
Yeah... nah... I saw it as an opportunity to test...
I looked for and didn't have .243 dies so I ordered what I needed. No bullets, so I ordered those. I had some triple nickel and primers so I was good to load when the dies and bullets came in.
I'm going to put my foot down right now and say this... Under no circumstances will I sell the Tasco 4x9 scope that is mounted on the rifle in the photo below. I know the Long range hunters, F Class, PRS, and one mile guys and gals are drooling over it right now but that's just too bad. Precision optics of that caliber arehard easy to find and I can't part with it. Side note: I couldn't get the elevation cap off so I had to live with it shooting 2.5" high at the lowest charge. I had to hold low to keep it on the target at higher velocities. Here's a photo of the rifle at the range.
Note the precision taper of the 22" barrel to 0.57". Clearly designed for 1 or 2 shots because that's all a real hunter should ever need. The trigger pull was abysmal. At least 10 pounds. I guess I could check it but shooting it is bad enough.
Up to now this has been somewhat tongue in cheek, but true.
I actually worked up a load with Viht 555 and a 95gr Berger Classic Hunter. It took 4 hours to shoot it due to barrel heat. It was 90 degree and 61%RH at the range the day that I tested it.
Rather than make this a book, I'll just post the data. The bullets were seated .020 off of jam. I like the ES of load 8 and the group of load 4. Sighter data is on the bottom line. It's the same charge as load 5 but it doesn't look like load 5. 0.831 group vs 1.814. I think I can tweak seating depth and improve the groups (definition of optimism).
Fact is, I just loaded the seating depth test this afternoon. I went with 41.9gr of 555. I used the same test sheet below but replaced powder charge with seating depth. 2.197 in group 9 and subtracted 0.003 back to group 1. The actual sheet that I may remember to post will also have velocity. I'm curious about how well the triple nickle charges do. I'll let the Garmin calculate ES and SD with all 30 rounds. The sheet will take care of the individual loads.
It was too windy to test it today. Some will think I'm wasting my time on that short skinny barreled thing. Maybe, but that little rifle shot a sob moa 100 yard group, with a crappy, I mean precision, scope and the barrel probably isn't even broken in. I test everything like it's a precision rifle. For reloading muscle memory and all that jazz.
The M77 has been in the gun case since he was 11. To you youngsters that have never heard of such a thing, a gun case is a shooters version of a "china cabinet". Um... china cabinet... for dishes... never mind. The rifle has been in the case for almost 28 years. It had less than 20 rounds through it (factory ammo, still 3 in the box) when it was put away. I borescoped it and saw that it wasn't cleaned before he (or his brother) put it away. (is it too late to ground them?). It looked like it had some areas of what looked like light rust in a few places. It took some time but I finally got it cleaned up. The areas that looked like rust were much much smaller when I finished. So I put some Break Free Collector (long term storage stuff) in it and put it away right?
Yeah... nah... I saw it as an opportunity to test...
I looked for and didn't have .243 dies so I ordered what I needed. No bullets, so I ordered those. I had some triple nickel and primers so I was good to load when the dies and bullets came in.
I'm going to put my foot down right now and say this... Under no circumstances will I sell the Tasco 4x9 scope that is mounted on the rifle in the photo below. I know the Long range hunters, F Class, PRS, and one mile guys and gals are drooling over it right now but that's just too bad. Precision optics of that caliber are
Note the precision taper of the 22" barrel to 0.57". Clearly designed for 1 or 2 shots because that's all a real hunter should ever need. The trigger pull was abysmal. At least 10 pounds. I guess I could check it but shooting it is bad enough.
Up to now this has been somewhat tongue in cheek, but true.
I actually worked up a load with Viht 555 and a 95gr Berger Classic Hunter. It took 4 hours to shoot it due to barrel heat. It was 90 degree and 61%RH at the range the day that I tested it.
Rather than make this a book, I'll just post the data. The bullets were seated .020 off of jam. I like the ES of load 8 and the group of load 4. Sighter data is on the bottom line. It's the same charge as load 5 but it doesn't look like load 5. 0.831 group vs 1.814. I think I can tweak seating depth and improve the groups (definition of optimism).
Fact is, I just loaded the seating depth test this afternoon. I went with 41.9gr of 555. I used the same test sheet below but replaced powder charge with seating depth. 2.197 in group 9 and subtracted 0.003 back to group 1. The actual sheet that I may remember to post will also have velocity. I'm curious about how well the triple nickle charges do. I'll let the Garmin calculate ES and SD with all 30 rounds. The sheet will take care of the individual loads.
It was too windy to test it today. Some will think I'm wasting my time on that short skinny barreled thing. Maybe, but that little rifle shot a sob moa 100 yard group, with a crappy, I mean precision, scope and the barrel probably isn't even broken in. I test everything like it's a precision rifle. For reloading muscle memory and all that jazz.
. Just kidding I still remember seeing gun racks in the back of trucks in the 70's . Started out hunting with either my dad's Springfield or savage 99 both had old red field 4 x power wide views on them. Still has them 40 yrs later but he don't hunt anymore. Still like seeing the old gun cabinets a lot better than a hunk of black box.
