Keeping it simple with reloading

The markup of those groups appear to be highly encrypted. What is the secret
Y= Yellow
G= Green
R= Red

This is a common trick used by those who shoot ladders. They color the bullet's ogive with sharpies in various colors and shoot white paper. The bullet holes will appear with the color of the sharpie instead of a black hole. Makes it easy to see where different loads impact without driving to the target or needing a camera on the target etc.
 
Good dies are important but that doesn't mean expensive. I use a 75 dollar Harrell's sizing die and a factory Wilson dasher seater from when I shot the dasher, dont even own the correct seater for the 6BRA
 
I tried out this "method" on my 25 creedmoor. Skipped a couple of my usual steps including tumbling, primer pocket cleaning, and using a mandrel after my bushing die.

Lo and behold my groups are the same and it cut my time in the bench nearly in half!

Thanks for the great thread 👍🏻👍🏻
 
And how are you able to distinguish group y from n ? Amazing spotting scope?
I use the color system also, works fine. Q-Tip and a little bit of water and you can lift color off of holes if you really can't tell which one is which (like with black targets sometimes) But when I'm lazy and don't want to walk to change targets frequently I either use my phone's camera on my spotting scope, or a target camera. Not that it's necessary at all, but some days I'm lazier than others. Hit record and the little holes show up one at a time.


One guy at my range that shoots service rifle bought a Shot Marker from the guy that makes the Auto Trickler, he said it was worth the cost because he wants to track the order of shots over his string of fire to see if his position is changing shot to shot. Not worth it to me though.

 
For the top target the ES for 31-31.2 was 20 fps for the bottom target the ES for all 4 powder charges was 36, for the 3 charges that went into 2.098" of vertical the es was 23.

View attachment 343773uView attachment 343774

Alex,

Out of the different powder charges especially to .1 of a grain, what do you look for in the triangles at 1k that are overlapping? or what are you wanting to see? Curious as to what makes you go with a certain node compared to another at .1 grain with more or less vertical. Thanks
 
Yes I like to see at least two groups overlap, 3 is even better. This is where the harmonics are giving you some positive compensation. The higher you go in powder the smaller it will get until it blows up big. So you keep going up until you find where the tune blows up then you know what to stay away from. If 31.2 gets big 31.1 will be tiny but your on the edge of the tune so I back off a half tenth to stay a bit away from the edge. If you were trying to break a small group record you would want to flirt with the edge but accept that you might shoot a big one too. You can scale this stuff up percentage wise for the case your working with. I will do .3-.5 in bigger cases like a Norma Imp or Lapua imp for example.
 
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I've heard of that but wow! I've never seen it in action. What a good idea
Color the bullet from the ogive forward with sharpie. I can see the blue, yellow, green, and red best. I have a big roll of butcher paper I tear sheets from for target paper, not the waxed stuff. But most targets will transfer the color from the bullet. This is why I always try to miss that black dot, otherwise you cant see the colors. A dab of alcohol on the hole will cause the color to bleed into the paper if your having a hard time seeing it. Its worked for me for about 15 years.
 
My point is guys will get on a ballistics calculator and say you need x es to shoot x vertical based on bullet drop. They ignore barrel harmonics. Theres 12 shots in 3.6 inches of vertical at 1k with 36 fps of es. 9 shots in 2 inches with 23. They will tell you that's not possible. It's very common to see if you shoot groups a lot. I try to help guys improve their accuracy and so many are focused on single digit es when they are shooting .5 moa or bigger. I dont want to hear about single digit es unless your shooting under an inch at 1k or your shooting past a mile.

Alex, how much of that 36fps es could be chronograph (or labradar) error. I'm sure they have a tolerance. A 1% error is 30fps with a 3000fps velocity.

I know my labradar gives me info sometimes that doesn't line up with what I'm seeing on the target…
 
Hard to say exactly how much error it has. He have lined up multiple labs and shoot throughs and they are surprisingly close. We are always doubting the chronys. But have never been able to prove it. I dont think they are lying. One thing for sure, if there is much error it never seems to go the other direction. Literally hundreds if not 1000s of 1000yd groups and what I posted is just what I expect to see. Its very rare to shoot the little groups with small es. The small es groups usually have too much vertical. The single digit group thats tiny at 1k is kind of rare. Dont ask me exactly why it works out this way but it does. I dont think theres anyone out there that posts as many 1000yd groups as I do. And I only post a fraction of what I shoot. Theres guys that shoot more of them then me that do not post online. We all share this stuff with each other. The data base is huge spanning well over 10 years. Its just that not many guys are doing this stuff so it seems to go against the grain of theory.
 
Have you ever tried using a tuner to see if there was an effective node similar to the powder node. Not sure if I'm asking the right question
 
Guess I'm asking because I use one for 600 competition and I have to adjust slightly sometimes for different environments
 

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