Horizontal string problem.

[upacreek]

So it seems I have hit another snag. Performed ladder test, prepped and loaded shells as close to perfectly the same as I could. So proud of my efforts. Go to shoot my 400 yard target and the first two shots were 1" apart. That was great! 3rd shot was 4" right. Bummer!
I had 6 loads in 3 shot groups. After a LOT of walking its ****ed me off. My verticle strings were never more than 1 1/4", but horizontal was as much as 12 inches. The only difference was I forgot to bring my blanket to lay on. I shoot off bipods with support under the butt of the gun. I know my shoulder has had a yellow bruise for 3 weeks, but I dont think it is making the difference. What is frustrating me is with the ladder test my horizontal was never more than 6" at 400yrds. After reading all i can find through the search feature it COULD be how I was holding the gun and trigger control due to discompfort missing my big blanket and having to lay on the dirt.
You guys have any thoughts? I just wasted 18 bullets. But the cool part is that if I only looked at verticle grouping I was averaging 3/4" to 1" with 5 of 6 loads. If I could bring the horizontal into 2" or less, than life would be perfect!
As a side note my chronograph showed between 8 and 12 fps spread with my h1000 loads and 25-35fps spread with magpro. Velocities with magpro were not as good as expected and the h1000 did good.

 

[Deleted member 46119]

IMHO a good vertical is on the right track for the load. Horizontal problems are usually traced to external influences.

If it were me:

Go with your best vertical dispersion loads and make another set.
Give the barrel a long time to cool between shots. 10 minutes even.
Get a temperature sticker for the barrel and log the temperature at which POI changes.
Get the shooting matt situation straightened out, bring it?
Make sure the bipod + rifle cant is under control. It just has to be the same each shot.
Drink less coffee, tea or soda with caffeine or garana. No Redbull or Monster during tests.
Shoot when the wind is as neutral as it can be at the site. Quit if the wind changes.
Press the trigger between heart beats.
Do the best to make sure the rifle is in the same condition as it would be for a hunting shot.
Meditate.
Make a sacrifice to the powder gods.

Good luck.

P.S. For me, the "rifle in the same condition" means: After I shoot 1 shot, I snake the bore as this is the most likely condition of the barrel for the first shot on game. When I am most serious, I will wait as long as 1/2 hour for the next shot.

When it gets down to final load, I will take the rifle to the range. Set it up the same as it should be for a hunting shot. Pick some target at range from 300 to 700 yards. Compensate for wind either with hold or with the dials. Take 1 shot, snake the bore and put the rifle in the rack to cool, then put it away.

If that one shot is not consistent in horizontal each time, I have to figure out what is wrong. If my wind read is off, well shame on me and figure it out.

 

[Deleted member 46119]

Oh yeah, If I could just find that 6-8 year old buck that disappeared on opening day or his son with atypical antler growth 2 years in a row......

Sure, find 6 does and a few fawns 30 feet away and the fawns go back to playing with me standing there. No problem.

Spike buck from last year, no problem.

My old buck or one I want to cull. Grrrrrrrr.gun)

 

[upacreek]

IMHO a good vertical is on the right track for the load. Horizontal problems are usually traced to external influences.

If it were me:

Go with your best vertical dispersion loads and make another set.
Give the barrel a long time to cool between shots. 10 minutes even.
Get a temperature sticker for the barrel and log the temperature at which POI changes.
Get the shooting matt situation straightened out, bring it?
Make sure the bipod + rifle cant is under control. It just has to be the same each shot.
Drink less coffee, tea or soda with caffeine or garana. No Redbull or Monster during tests.
Shoot when the wind is as neutral as it can be at the site. Quit if the wind changes.
Press the trigger between heart beats.
Do the best to make sure the rifle is in the same condition as it would be for a hunting shot.
Meditate.
Make a sacrifice to the powder gods.

Good luck.

P.S. For me, the "rifle in the same condition" means: After I shoot 1 shot, I snake the bore as this is the most likely condition of the barrel for the first shot on game. When I am most serious, I will wait as long as 1/2 hour for the next shot.

When it gets down to final load, I will take the rifle to the range. Set it up the same as it should be for a hunting shot. Pick some target at range from 300 to 700 yards. Compensate for wind either with hold or with the dials. Take 1 shot, snake the bore and put the rifle in the rack to cool, then put it away.

If that one shot is not consistent in horizontal each time, I have to figure out what is wrong. If my wind read is off, well shame on me and figure it out.

These were 6 good loads except for horizontal. I am thinking me or mechanical problem.
I walk the 400 yrds so the barrel gets 10-15 minutes btween groups. Being a hunting rifle I was sending 3 in about 1 or 2 minutes depending on note taking time. Always wait for barrel to cool between groups.
I will bring my IR temp gun and my blanket next time.
The bipod and rear support have beeen the same.
I dont drink any of those and dont have any nerve problems. I walk the 400 yrds and am very calm and collected to shoot. I am in pretty good shape, so its not the issue. If I cant hold the rifle steady enough to keep the crosshairs within the 1" bullseye, I dont shoot.
My trigger is set at 2.5lb and has a little creep. It ****ed me off till I learned how to use the creep to stage the trigger. It creeps a little, I pause, re aim and i bet its a 1lb trigger at that point. ****ed me off at first, but i kind of like it now.

Well unless anyone has some other ideas I am gonna make the same loads uap and go back to shooting one and cool 10 minutes then shoot again. These were the first back to back shots I really expected good accuracy with.

 

[upacreek]

First 2 shots. Cold clean barrel. 400 yrds

 

[upacreek]

So after more examination, it would be also important to note that out of 6 diffent loads shot in 3 shot groups, 3 of those loads placed 2 bullets wihin 1" of another but a 3rd was between 4 and 6 inches away. If that makes sense. I have no idea what order these landed. It was also between 2 bullets. I was shooting 180 bergers which did this once in 3 groups. And 162SST's which did this 2 of 3 groups. Bergers were shooting magpro, and SST's were shooting H1000.

Vertically the 180's were 3/4" verticle and 5" horizontal. The SST's were
1) 1 1/2" verticle and 5" horizontal
2) 1 1/4" verticle and 4 1/2" horizontal

These 3 produced two holes an inch apart,......and a flier.

 

[CBS]

Id guess it's you.

This is an exercise I read about either on here or you tube that has helped me with horizontal stringing.

Get behind your rifle and hold on your target (make sure you have a good rear bag). Close your eyes, take two shallow breaths, open your eyes. I would expect your cross hairs to have moved one direction or another in the direction of the flyer that your getting. If the cross hair moved right then move your hips a couple inches right and repeat until you find where your body allows the cross hairs to stay static while taking the two breaths. (Usually your hips will line up directly behind your stock. )

also, does your neck get sore while shooting prone?

 

[Hondo64d]

Most seem to blame horizontal on external factors, but I disagree with that premise. Barrels do not oscillate in just he vertical plane. Harmonics also affect the horizontal plane. That being said, with you getting up to 3MOA horizontal, I'd be looking at something mechanical. All the usual suspects, bedding, magazine box binding, scope mounts or scope itself. Rule out all of those first before looking at anything else. With the magnitude of the horizontal spread, if I were shooting, I would have a hard time attributing that to my shooting abilities. Make sure you are calling your shots i.e. know where the crosshairs are when the trigger breaks. A 3 MOA wind drift would be some horrendous wind calls. I doubt that's the case either. Rule out the mechanical stuff first.

John

 

[royinidaho]

upacreek,

I'm kinda with Hondo on this one but…..would like more information.

What are the powder charge weighs on each of the groups you shot. Knowing that will assist in diagnosing/guessing what is going on.

More often than not when I get stringing, either vertical or horizontal with very little dispersion in the other plane the problem seems to be barrel harmonics.

When I get a '|' group I change powder charge either up or down 2 grains. If I get a '--' group I then drop the charge weight to the middle of the two charge weights. I usually end up with a '.' shaped group.

This has occurred more often than not with more than just a few rigs.

Just sayin'

 

[upacreek]

To answer your question the 180 bergers had 65.7, 66.0, 66.3 grains of magpro. Average velocity was 2790, 2855, and 2795 accordingly. Yes, this didnt make sense to me either, but that is what I recorded.
The 162 SST's had 69.2, 69.5, and 69.8 grains of H1000. Velocities averaged 3007, 2985, and 2999 accordingly. Again, doesnt make sense.
The SST's. Were .002" off the lands, and the bergers were .042" off so they would fit in the magazine.
The 65.7 magpro load and the 69.2, and 69.8 H1000 loads made the above mentioned 1" plus flyer groups. The others were strung horizontally enough to prove they only shared a verticle consistency.
The best I know to do is make all these again and shoot them again. This time I am gonna wait 10 minutes between each shot and mark where each one lands in order.

Who knows, it could be me, or it could be poor loads. All I was hoping for was 2" groups at 400 yrds.

Gonna go back and try H1000 under the 180's. Velocity was better and actually made 3" groups shooting 1 every 10 minutes. Was hoping magpro would work, but maybe it won't.

 

[el matador]

I had a terrible amount of horizontal stringing show up in my muzzleloader when I switched to the T7 primers. They are much lighter than a standard 209 primer. I believe what was happening was a very slight hang fire, or just erratic ignition. Because of that it magnified any of my poor mechanics many times. Since I assume you're shooting a 7 mag here, are you using magnum primers? If you're using light benchrest primers you could be having the same problem I had. If using magnum primers you can pretend you didn't read this post.

 

[upacreek]

I have a brick of cci 250's, but have been experimenting with remington 9 1/2 magnums. That is what i used in the rest of load development. I will know n more when i can reload those. Rounds and see if it is duplicated.

 

[brentc]

I found a load in a 300 Win Mag with 215 Bergers and H1000 with CCI250s that strung horizontally at 200 yards while running a seating depth test. The group was under .5 MOA, but as was described, there were two impacts almost right on top of each other, but one was .75 - 1 inch right of the first two. I couldn't attribute the group to environmentals or shooting form because it only manifested itself with this particular seating depth while developng the load under the same conditions.

I treated it the same as I treat any load with a flyer. I knew something wasn't quite right with the combo, so I ran a primer test switching to the Fed 215M from the CCI 250 keeping the same seating depth, but dropped the powder charge a half grain and worked back up firing 3 shot groups. At .3 grains less than the original CCI 250 load, the horizontal stringing was gone and I was left with a nice .25 MOA clover leaf shaped group at 200 yards. I have since verified the load at several distances with positive results.

The point here is that flyers can happen on the horizontal axis and just like any flyer, they can an indicate of an out of tune load.

 

[BrentM]

My buddies 260 was doing the same thing. I put some 210m's in his case and the problem was gone. Shoots 3s all day everyday.

I know a lot is discussed about shooting form on here. You can always try a bench for load development. I shoot bench to develop and prone to practice for hunting or competition. As long as you are consistent it doesn't matter what you shoot from. I like the bench for this simply as it lets me be in a more comfortable position for longer periods of time. If you notice a lot of top gun LR rifle builders do this too. 1 think to concentrate on is scope alignment. I don't think it is your issue though.