RL16 and 30-06 165gr speer btsp.

[LuckyGunner]

Hey y'all, I have a ruger American that I want to reload for and I need opinions. I tried some Rl17 and did an ocw test at 200yds. Found a charge and it shot 1.39" at 200 and that was without tuning. Accidentally had the bullet at .0355 jump instead of .010.

I have since installed it into a boyds at-one stock and gotten a pound of rl16 I want to try it with.

Have any of you had experience with the speer 2034 165gr btsp? Does it like a jump? .010? Less? Touching?

Any help is appreciated, trying to find a consistent load for this thing that will put it well under 1/2 moa.

Also. Do you prefer ladder or ocw test? Local range is 200 and I do all load development at 200. Thanks for any help!

 

[LuckyGunner]

Guess no one wants to help

 

[Engineering101]

Lucky

You may have picked a bullet powder combination that nobody has used. I haven't used Speer bullets it forever and I don't own RL-16 though I do have it's big brother RL-23. As you may know those are two of Alliant's newer powders and are supposed to be very temp stable. RL-17 will outperform RL-16 in terms of raw power (based on my experience with RL-23 versus RL-26). So why did you go away from RL-17 as it seemed like it was working pretty good for you? Not that RL-16 is a bad idea. Temp stability is pretty useful. I'm using RL-26 in my 30-06 running a 178 ELD-X at 2,900 fps with accuracy but I do expect to have to be mindful of ambient temps with that powder.

As to load development methods, I've gotten lazy in my old age so I tend to shoot 3 shot groups with several different powder increments to find out what groups then fine tune from there. Doesn't take too much to find something good enough to hunt with if your rifle is put together right, bedded and such. Bottom line you may have to do the spade work to figure out a good load with the combo you picked and tell all of us what worked for you?