Shot two 3 shot groups with 63.2grs of N570 again this evening 755 yards. This time at +.005" jump and +.010" wind was 3-5mph @ 9-11cl
With +.010" group the first 2 shots were 2.5" vertical then the last shot was my usual flyer now and opened the group up horizontally to 8" just over 1 moa.
With +.005" group the first 2 shots were 1.5" vertical then the last shot did the same and opened the group up horizontally to 8" also.
Really all I wanted to do today was see how many firings I could get on a single piece of brass with 63.2grs to get a better idea of what pressures that load was running at. Then I couldn't help but try a few groups just to see if I could get rid of that last shot flyer. But it replicates the pattern ive been seeing with H-1000. That with the velocity loss just tells me the barrel is slowly going south or is already there depending when an individual calls it quits on a barrel.
A few things I noticed was the n570 load had quite a bit more recoil than my h-1000 load. Another was that since I had raised the velocity with N570 it made bigger craters on my 3/4" mild steel plate than my old 338 EDGE IMP did sending 300gr bergers at 2800fps! And they were much bigger than the craters made by my 6.5ss sending 140 Berger H-VLDs at 3250fps.
highdrum, sorry to hear you had a bad proof it's seems to be getting more common since they have increased production. When I was still in business with my old partner I did load development on around 50 proof rifles or rifles with proof barrels in all cartridges and had maybe 1 or 2 issues where a 6.5 PRC chamber was to short and would just barely chamber virgin brass or factory ammo and some rounds it wouldn't chamber. We sent one back and they reamed out it a little more. The other one they said was still in spec but right on edge. It still might have been a problem if that guy had been using factory ammo but reloading we could push virgin shoulders back another .002" to make it work but you shouldn't have to do that on a $6000 rifle. My partner has done load development on maybe 250-300 proof rifles or rifles with proof barrels and he to only had 1 or 2 issues where he had to send the rifle or barrel back to them. We may have just been lucky because for a while it seemed to be a more common occurrence than it should have with other smiths. He got with proof a few months ago to have a conference call to let them know these issues were starting to occur more. They seemed to take it serious and I hoped they have fixed this. And I'm not knocking proof at all, my personal 6.5ss had a proof cf barrel and it was exceptionally accurate as well as was most of the rifles we worked on. Even my new 30Sherman Mag that should be here any day now has an proof cf on it. And whether it's barrels, high end scopes, or other rifle components when you start mass producing your going to have a bad one every now and then it's just part of it but that company needs to make it right and back up their product which proof does.
As far as my velocity drop I took a hard look just now back through all my notes and it looks like it's been shooting 3170fps the whole time for the most part until just recently when I noticed it hitting low and today I recorded it at 3133fps. Where I mentioned earlier about it dropping from 3220fps to 3170 around 950 rounds actually just looks like the temperature had dropped quite a bit from summer to fall. I shoot a lot in the summer and temps well over 100* are the norm then in hunting season you may be shooting in single digits. Another reason I really like the stability of H-1000 and N570.
As far as barrel life when I had this built I expected to get 800 rounds out of it before I started losing velocity and seeing fliers. So it exceeded my expectations. Although I don't doubt some guys getter better life out of their barrels every barrel is different to some extent it seems. I have some milder target cartridges that I just hammer rounds through, no F***S given, 50-70 rounds strings in 100*+ temps in 5min and one of them still looks in great condition even with a few thousands rounds through it. That being said I run mild loads in my target guns. Guys always want to know what their exact Bbl life will be with a given caliber which is an impossible answer to give accurately. I keep precise counts on my barrels to learn from it not because I care how fast or slow they burn out. There's better things to worry about but I am a little more conscious about it with my more powerful hunting cartridges. And I'm not directing that at you just speaking in general.
A while back when one of my friends got into LR shooting he shot out his 28 nos in 350-400rounds and was pretty upset about it at first and even claimed the barrel manufacture was using bad steel. I told him I was surprised he didn't shoot it out sooner shooting 5-10 strings out of a Sendero contour barrel running hot loads in 100* temps. By shot out I mean 3-4in groups at 100 yards.
