What Rifle Reloading Did You Do Today?

[Ranch Dog]

I'd take it too. That is great shooting for a 303 British.

[RBHarter]

Monday evening I ran out the last of the finished 225-55s in about 60 223 s.
Last night I did lube, size and check on about 20% of the fresh 225-55s I cast up Sunday . 100-120 .

I've been thinking about a mold for the .223, any powders that you would recommend. or that I should avoid.
Thanks

I'm running H322 for both 222 and 223 . It is working well in a 6.8 and a 7x6.8 mildcat. If it weren't for the gas guns I'd probably have stayed with H4198 . The NOE Bullet is 63 gr ready to load , I'm told that both the RCBS and Lee sisters run 54-57 gr in WW. The 4198 pushes longer and reached a great load window in the AR for consistency but the action function got weird . It would cycle fine but jumped over the bolt hold open reach to only hold on the mag follower. The pressures were low and the AR gurus concluded that the pressures were still high enough when the bullet passed the gas port that the brass hadn't released and was causing late extraction without being over gassed. .........I hope that made sense .

That is just about the peak of my experience at this point . I'm starting ,whether wise or not , at .5 to 1.0 under jacketed start loads for the same or next heavier bullets and ending up with a good load around the bottom 1/3 of the book load window.
Harder bullets may shoot faster but I have been shooting 75/25 WW -1-20 water dropped with the idea that they would be hunted with eventually.
My push through Lee sizer is 2257 for the 2235-224 grooves in 3 rifles . The anvil is small and I'm between machinists at the moment so I'm sizing and crimping gas checks base 1st for this run until my new guy gets set up in his new digs .

Just as a geewiz note . I ran my VLD Lyman chamfer tool into the seating post so that it would push against the ogive rather than into it and avoiding the nose ring .

[jdl447]

Thanks for the write up RB , you are a gentleman and a scholar.
I'm going to try the Lee mold in the 700 Remy, see how that goes before moving into semi autos.

[62chevy]

Annealed 50 case of 308. Some were clean some not clean but no notes so started over with all of them. That should teach me to leave myself notes from now on.

[Ranch Dog]

Annealed 50 case of 308. Some were clean some not clean but no notes so started over with all of them. That should teach me to leave myself notes from now on.

I keep an index card in the bag with clean brass that details what I've done on each "life" cycle. Saved me a lot of guessing![hr]
More Savage 170 35 Rem this afternoon during the heat of the day. Found out a little something about my .359 bullet yesterday at dark just as I had three hogs lined up for a "three-fer". The COAL that I had to use to keep my TLC359-190-RF while sized .359" .005" off the rifling does not lend itself to magazine tube function. The cartridge is too short for the timing of the lifter, with the action closed they all feed aft under the magazine spring tension. So when I loaded up last night to find hogs my act of cycling the slide did not load a cartridge but it did set up a malfunction that would lock the action when opened (as hogs run off).

So today, I looked at the cartridge OAL with both .357" and .358" bullets. As it ends up there is not difference in the two but the new COAL is satisfactory for 100% function. Luckily I don't make a lot of ammo at any given time so it didn't long to pull it all and go back with the bullet sized at .358" vs. the .359. Oh, that .001" reduction in bullet diameter gained me .050" and that made the Savage real happy!



If I ever run into a nice 30-30 Win in the Sav, I'm going to buy it. Most are real beaters but sooner or later I might find one.

[akuser47]

Yes, if I come across one I'll share they are great dependable guns.

[Ranch Dog]

Yes, if I come across one I'll share they are great dependable guns.

Thanks!

[klr]

A "three-fer"? I don't know if that is ambitious or greedy. Either way, I'd like to see you pull it off.

Glad you got it sorted. It always amazes me how some little detail bites me.

Like yesterday's reloading/shooting. I loaded three different charges of powder with everything else the same. The group on right was the same as my .75" group the night before. The one in the middle was .5 grain more, and the one on the left was 1 grain more (which was a max charge.)

Odd thing was that my velocities were all over the place. The identical charge from the night before was 100fps faster on avg, and the deviation shot to shot was nearly 100 fps.

The group with another .5gr of powder was about 20 fps slower avg with again nearly 100fps of deviation.

Last group was only 10 fps avg faster than the first group and deviation was again extreme.

No pressure signs - all fired rounds had sooty necks, first two has primers slightly backed out.

All rounds loaded at the same time, all shot from the same position. Rifle and ammo were put outside for hours to temp stabilize. Rifle cooled over an hour between groups. Powder charges weighed. All shooting done between 85-90 degrees in the shade.

Looking back at my records I had some big velocity deviations with IMR3031 powder too. Maybe I need to find something slower burning to get a better case fill.




Hey RD, how many of these could you get with one shot? BTW, back when I raised hogs I had one that gave birth to litter of 15.

[Ranch Dog]

Mossberg 500 with Express BBS, kill them all.

I'm working a sounder that appeared about two months ago, 3 sows and 13 piglets. We shot two sows, one dropping on a piglet and killing it. After that, they left.

They returned a week ago. I would like to kill the sow and from there the young pigs would be easy but a three-fer would be hard to resist.

I've killed three for one a number of times.

[Ranch Dog]

Marlin 375 with my TLC379-235-RF. Haven't shot this rifle since 2008! That is awful but what happens when you have a bunch of them I guess. Dressed it up with an XS Scout Mount and Ghost Ring and making some changes to my load. More info with pictures soon in a stand alone topic.