243 Win and Staball 6.5

thatmikeguy

thatmikeguy

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Steinbach, Manitoba
Has anyone here tried this combo?
I have some 100 grain speer bullets to load and Staball seems like a good choice as its similar in burn rate to 4350 but cheaper to buy. BUT my hornady manual only lists a load for the 90 grain gmx. In theory it should work fine....
 
Hodgdon's site lists loads from 70 to 108gr bullets in a 243 / StaBALL 6.5

42.0grs under a Speer 100gr boat tail did 3085 fps from a 24" test barrel
 
I use StaBALL 6.5 in my 6mm Creedmoor, which is very similar to the 243. 43 grains under a 105gr Nosler RDF works really well (3030 fps 24" brl)
 
todbartell said:
I use StaBALL 6.5 in my 6mm Creedmoor, which is very similar to the 243. 43 grains under a 105gr Nosler RDF works really well (3030 fps 24" brl)
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That sounds good. I've tried H4831sc with my 100 grain Speer bullets. Accuracy is not amazing but it is acceptable (about 1 moa) and my speed is a little low. About 2850 fps. I'm hoping to improve the speed and accuracy. I'm using a Tikka T3x.
 
thatmikeguy said:
Do you have a faster twist barrel? Can a 1:10 twist stabilize the 103?
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Its a 1:9.125 twist (older Rem 700, the new ones are all 1:8 twist), and the 103 is listed as needing a 1:9 twist hence why it's a test - hopefully they'll stabilize but if not, I'm only burning up a half dozen bullets to find out. I ordered some for an old timer who isn't comfortable with online ordering and wanted to try them in a 1:9 6mm Remington, it's my "service fee" :)
 
I just loaded up some trial rounds with staball 6.5. Not sure when I'll get to try them out. Maybe next weekend. Even with 42 grains there seems to be a fair amount of case space left. I'm surprised that max load is only 42 grains. The max load for the 90 grain GMX is 45.5 grains.
 
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I tried my staball 6.5 loads today. I started at 40.5 grains and worked up in half grain increments up to 43 grains. Today was 35 celcius so the barrel wasn't cooling very well even though I waited between the 3 shot groups. The groups today weren't very exciting. 40.5 grain gave an average velocity 2845 fps and a 1 inch group. Everything else was in the 1.2 to 1.6 inch range except for the 42.5 grain load which printed a half inch group and an average velocity of 3080 fps, the best by far. I will have to try that one again. That sure is a smoking fast load for a 100 grain bullet. ES for those 3 shots was 58 fps. I tested my 87 vmax loads with imr4350 over the chrono first and the velocities were much higher than expected so I'm not totally sure how accurate the chrono is but it did seem to working okay aside from that.
 
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