How start working up load?

[RemingtonShooter]

Hello all,

I have been reloading for about one year and have had some success and some frustrations. Generally, I load 270, 300WSM, 7MM Mag and now 7mm-08.

I have generally started with factory seating depth and two powders with different bullets. I think that my method is not effective. I am now thinking pick the bullet I want, start low at .5 grain increments until I find the best shooter. Then play with depth. My range is 45 minutes away so I need to find a better use my time.

How do some start from scratch with a round development.

N

 

[MontanaRifleman]

Hello all,

I have been reloading for about one year and have had some success and some frustrations. Generally, I load 270, 300WSM, 7MM Mag and now 7mm-08.

I have generally started with factory seating depth and two powders with different bullets. I think that my method is not effective. I am now thinking pick the bullet I want, start low at .5 grain increments until I find the best shooter. Then play with depth. My range is 45 minutes away so I need to find a better use my time.

How do some start from scratch with a round development.

N

My range is also 40 min away so I know how that goes. Do you have a basement.... are you married? I have thought about about building a steel shooting trap filled with sand and doing the pressure testing shooting in it.

Yup, pick your bullet and work up. I start with bullet seated close to the lands, that way if I play with seating depth away from the lands, pressure will not spike on me.

There's a lot of ways to skin a cat and I like playing with seating depth first starting at max load and working down to get the max accurate performance I can.

For .06 variant cartridges and larger, i usually work up 1 gr at a time. For smaller cartridges, I usually work up .5 gr at a time.

Just my techniques

 

[Canadian Bushman]

Montana Rifleman

Why do you experiment with seating depth first?

 

[MontanaRifleman]

Montana Rifleman

Why do you experiment with seating depth first?

If for example, my max load was 98 gr of XX powder and accuracy wasn't quite what I was looking for, I would experiment with seating depth at the max load to maintain the max velocity if possible. then i would drop a gr at a time and experiment with depth at each of those increments.

The most common way to do it is to find the velocity accuracy node first, but I figure if I can find accuracy at max by seating depth, that's a better way to get the most velocity with accuracy.

 

[Canadian Bushman]

Thats interesting. It sounds like it could cost a few more bullets, but a perspective i never considered.

 

[Mikecr]

I do seating first, during fire forming of new cases, with an upper load(not max).
If well enough at 200yds to tell, I adjust my firing pin to be sure I'm getting best striking, with second fire-forming. I also determine MyMax load here with cases I intend to cull anyway.
When fully fireformed(stable in capacity), I incremental load develop up to MyMax with seating that seemed best(a 300yd ladder). Then a fine/final tweak of seating and neck tension with best node for group shaping.

Then I go back to 200yds and begin cold bore testing/tweaking, which seems a forever endeavor.
For some reason, 200yds is my nemesis. When I get true 1/2moa cold bore accuracy there, I got every range covered.

 

[Canadian Bushman]

Mike

That sounds like a pretty sound procedure.
I think ill copy youre process when i change loads.

 

[g0rd0]

everyone has their own system. Mine is to pick a bullet & powder start at sugested start with the bullet touching the rifleing. Increase by .5 grn.
To save driveing time, (I also have a 45 minite drive to the range) I load 3 of each and mark them. At the range I put up the required amount of targets right to left use min power on my scope and 3 rnds per target.
Each of the targets is marked with the load data I do not use a spotting scope and I do not approch the targets untill I have fired all of the rounds. Of course I always check for preasure problems before going to the next set of 3.
The tightest group wins. After that I use the best group load and load 3 at 10 off the lands, 3 at 20 thou off, and 3 at 25 thou. When I go back to the range I use the same system.
Doing this I have found that for 150 grn sp I use IMR7828 (67.0grn), cci mag primer set at 10 thou off the lands. For 175 grn sp I use RL22 (60.0grn), cci mag primer set 25thou off the lands. For varments I use 150 grn RN IMR3031 (48.6 grn) win std primer and the bullet is over length so that it seats on the lands.
I use these in a Savage 111 7mm R.M.