Blowing out shoulders for 30-06 AI

dave_halsey

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I'm going to be having a local gun smith ackley improve a 30-06, and due to there being no factory ammo on the shelf I'm going to be hand loading to blow the shoulders out on some brass. My question is do I need to load them on the hot side to make sure that they fire form properly or can I run loads more on the mild end and still get a proper fire forming?
 
load a mid range charge of fast burning powder and seat bullet into the lands this is how I fireform and it works out very well play with your powder charge and you will find good accuracy for your fireforming
Ive got some imr 4955 and i think ive still got a few pounds of imr 4350. Should work I hope.
 
I've been using H4895 and 150 grain bullets, Have a bunch of the powder and it is the oldest powder I have. Works good, I load it to around 2900 fps.
 
I typically use a near max charge of a fast to medium burn rate powder for caliber/bullet weight for the parent cartridge. If jamming the bullet into the lands, I would back off a bit and work up to find an acceptable FF load.
 
I'm going to be having a local gun smith ackley improve a 30-06, and due to there being no factory ammo on the shelf I'm going to be hand loading to blow the shoulders out on some brass. My question is do I need to load them on the hot side to make sure that they fire form properly or can I run loads more on the mild end and still get a proper fire forming?
Shoot your regular .06 load and have fun with it; that's what AI's are designed for. In my .270 AI, I a .270 Win and AI accuracy load, I do not FF.
 
When ever I have formed an AI case, I have found that there is approx a 10% loss in fps using the same load as when I was not forming no matter what caliber. One gun I have in particular shot it's best while I was forming the brass, so I did just that kept forming brass. You want it formed right the first shot or else it is just a waste, due to it not being a standard case and it not being a formed case, so you can not use the load data due to that it can't be repeated. Me I want to see the tooling marks on the brass LOL so no need to guess how I load. I have found that loading HOT is more forgiving when forming than when not, it's like the forming is absorbing a lot of the pressure and harmonics.

Dean
 
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Annealing your brass first helps the AI process. .004-.005 neck tension also helps keep the bullet into the lands better.
 
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