Handloads - Load Data

1 231 That WorkThat WorkBarsnessreevaluateshis right powder won t helpunless bullets are seated reason-ably straight. Right, bullets havegotten better since the original Loads That Work appearedeight years ago, thanks primarilyto Vern Juenke s bullet BarsnessAfew weeks ago, a reader notedthat it had been eight yearssince an article entitled Handloads That Work ap-peared in these pages a list of hand-loads that had shot pretty darn well ina variety of rifles chambered for thesame cartridge. A major point of theoriginal piece was that a reasonablywell-tuned rifle should shoot such ahandload at least acceptably. If therifle doesn t shoot with a handloadthat s worked in several other rifleschambered for, say, the.

2 30-06, thenthere s probably something wrongwith the rifle. This saves us time andmoney. Instead of blowing expensivepowder and bullets downrange in animperfect rifle, hoping for a load thathums, we fix the rifle until it shootsThe Handload reasonably well. Thenwe can experiment further, knowingour rifle s tuned. This reader noted a bunch of new stuff (mostly pow-ders) that had appeared since 1996. At the momentover 150 canister powders are available to the hand-loader. How s a poor basement experimenter toOctober-November 231to any sane range. Most new rifleschambered for varmint cartridgeswill group five shots of factory am-munition into one inch or less at100 yards, a phenomenon thatwould have astounded your , his grandson wantsmore.

3 This is the human you really, really want to shootitty-bitty groups, you should startby reading a pair of my articlesabout Factors in Accuracy in theJuly 2002 Rifle (No. 202) and theamazed at how well off-the-racksporting rifles shoot with almostany sort of ammunition. Yeah, weall encounter dogs now and then,and some rifles hate some ammu-nition. But in my experience aboutany off-the-rack bolt gun andmany based on other actions willgroup three shots of almost any biggame ammunition into inchesat 100 yards. Despite what manyrifle loonies (or, for the more polit-ically correct, rifle enthusiasts)apparently believe these days, thisdoes fine for big game hunting so many powders available today, how s a handloader to choose?

4 One powder brand that John s found works very well in almost any riflecartridge is Western Powder s Ramshot. TAC is perhaps the most flexibleRamshot powder with a burning rate about like traditional IMR-4350 and Accurate s similar XMR-4350 still work fine, but John s found that temperature-stable Hodgdon H-4350 works just a little better inmany s H-4831 has changed three times since itappeared as a military surplus powder after World WarII. A new version appeared about 30 years ago,when the military powder ran out, and now we haveH-4831sc This is an excellent point,because it also applies to supposedprofessionals, such as your we simply can t reproduceKen Waters Pet Loads, becausethere are too many powders andbullets. The shooting alone couldtake a year all for one Publishing is reasonablygenerous to its staff writers, but inmy experience National Geo-graphicis the only magazine thatpays a staffer enough to produceone piece a year.

5 The followingsuggestions aren t the absolutecream of every component possi-bility, just loads that be honest, I m constantlyOctober-November 2004with the tougher Partition for bearand elk. When originally chrono-graphed, muzzle velocity ran 3,114fps for the 130s and 2,911 for the150s. Both loads grouped under .6inch for three shots at 100 six-shot group three shots ofboth loads went into .75 seemed shot both loads again in Janu-ary, using the same rifle and 150-grain load still shot dead-center and 3 inches high at 100yards. Even though muzzle veloc-ity had dropped to 2,784 fps, thesingle group fired measured .56,center to center. But the 130-grainload now printed one inch high and 3 inches to the right!

6 Muzzlevelocity dropped to 2,963 fps, andthe single group fired opened up inches. Thereafter I aban-doned the 130-grain load andhunted everything with the 150s,which worked H-4831 used was what mightbe termed middle generation. Original H-4831 was repackagedsurplus powder from World War supply ran out in the early1970s, and Hodgdon developed anewly manufactured substituteobtaining some startling were originally worked up intemperatures varying between 60and 75 degrees, in a tuned Reming-ton Model 78. (Anybody rememberthe 78, a cheap version of theModel 700?) The essentials were a130-grain Nosler Solid Base and 62grains of Hodgdon H-4831, and a150-grain Nosler Partition and of Alliant Reloder 22.

7 (I dprobably consider the first load alittle warm these days, but backthen I had much more faith in tra-ditional pressure signs. )Both loads shot to exactly thesame point of impact at 100 yards,the point of the exercise. I wanteda reasonably economical 130-grainload for deer, pronghorn andsighting-in, plus a 150-grain loadAugust 2002 handloader ( ). The first tells how to tuneand test a rifle for maximum accu-racy; the second describes con-structing precise Handloads chosen by homehandloaders are based on insuffi-cient data, often only a couple ofgroups. To find if a certain combi-nation truly works in your rifle,you should fire groups in varyingweather conditions. You may dis-cover that your magic load,worked up on a warm July after-noon, may not group into a coffeecup on a cold January morning.

8 Itmight even shift point of impactconsiderably, probably because ve-locity dropped 100 fps or ago I retested a pair of pet Handloads for the .270 WCF, used to use relatively affordable Sierra or Hornady bullets to doinitial load work-up, knowing they were highly accurate, but these daysmany premium bullets are just as a traditional black-powder load in the .45-70, try70 grains of Swiss 11 2Fg and a 405-grain cast bullet likethese, cast from a Lee is still a good powder in the .270 Weatherby,but Reloder 25 is more accurate in most m constantly amazedat how well off-the-racksporting rifles shootwith almost any sortof 231In the meantime I ve also testedReloder 22 in a bunch more car-tridges. It normally loses around100 fps, or even more, from 70 to 0F.

9 In some rifles, RL-22 loads havealso changed point of impact whenshot at varying temperatures,sometimes as much as 2 to 3inches at 100 yards. Sometimesaccuracy deteriorated too, andsometimes it didn t. It depends onthe load and my experiments, temperature-insensitive powders have neverproduced noticeable impact shiftsin cold weather. This doesn t meansuch can t happen, just that so farthey haven t. Temperature-insen-sitive powders include the Ex-tremes, Ramshot s line of riflepowders and Alliant Reloder also claims temperatureinsensitivity with many of its pow-ders, but I haven t tested themenough to say for doesn t mean that handloadsusing traditional powders suchas the IMRs and most of Alliant sReloder line always result in a no-ticeable change in point of impactin cold weather.

10 Often such hand-loads shoot to the same place, andjust as accurately, even if the bul-lets lose some muzzle example is my Ruger 77 MarkII Mauser. Its primary loadfeatures the 120-grain Barnes X-Bullet and grains of Reloder19. This loses about 80 fps be-tween 70 and zero F., but point ofimpact stays the same, and accu-racy remains well under an inch at100 yards. But the point here isthat we won t know if our load re-ally is the Perfect Solution unlesswe shoot it more than a few cartridges work very wellwith a variety of powders. Most efficient cartridges tend to load worked up in relatively warm weather may not work so well incold. Any load that might be used in cold weather should be tested incold was pretty much is what I used in my years later Hodgdon intro-duced its temperature-tolerant Ex-treme line of powders.