quigley257
Well-Known Member
I noticed something that got my attention while loading yesterday. I was loading up some rounds for my 308 Win using once fired Federal Gold Medal Match casings, Hornady 208 ELD-Ms and two types of powder. I used the new StaBall Match powder in 20 rounds and CFE223 in the other group of 20. All brass was prepped in the same manner at the same time. It was FL sized, trimmed to length, and chamfered and deburred with the 3 way cutter on the RCBS power trimmer. I tumbled in corncob media for an hour and a half to remove any residual One-Shot case lube after sizing and trimming. What really got my attention was the amount of force needed to seat the bullets in the first set versus the second set of charged cases. The StaBall Match charged cases required a much higher seating force compared to the cases charged with CFE223. I have no way of measuring seating force required, but the bullets seated in the CFE223 loadings like they were greased up. The only difference in components was the powder used. Everything else was as identical as can be expected. I used an X-treme gear aluminum funnel to drop all powder charges as they were all hand weighed on a beam scale for testing. I'd be curious to see how big of a difference it is between powder types when seating with a unit that can measure the force. The bullets seated in the CFE223 also yielded more consistent seating depths, rarely deviating more than a thousandth. Thoughts on this?
