Lapua 6BR factory ammo

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Shawn_338

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Any one shooting the 6BR Lapua 105gr factory rounds?? I have been reloading a long time and have a lot of good reloading equipment. I am very diligent, load all my rounds on an arbor press with hand dies, weigh every charge. Check concentricity, sort brass. I use lapua bullets, brass, and Vhitt powder.

In all honesty I have a really hard time trying to find any difference in accuracy between the factory lapua ammo and my hand loads, when testing in a few different rifles.

Obviously people load there own amunition so that it can be custom tailored to there particular rifle, and to make a more precise, perfect, uniform round then what you can usually buy.

But can most people realistically put components together as accuratly as Lapua can? There scales are better then ours, they can use blended powders, all the equipment they use to assemble ammunition is worth a lot more money that what we are all using.

Only difference i can find is price. And if I can find ammo that shoots as good as my hand loads I'm all for not spending hours at the reloading bench.

Thoughts?

http://www.6mmbr.com/factoryammo.html
 
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I began my 6BR shooting using Norma Diamond rounds. They were of exceptional quality, however, using the 1F Norma brass, I was able to decrease my group size notably (0.25 MOA or better in 1 of 5 groups on average) by loading for throat length and to a much lesser extent - neck tension. I have no doubt Lapua is equal or even 1/10 step above the Norma.

If you want acceptable+ results for many(most?) shooters, Factory Lapua/Norma is great. Should you wish to pursue the ultimate in accuracy, there is no substitute for hand loads custom tuned to your rifle. Spend the effort on your multiples of ladder loads, and you will be very impressed with the results of your diligent efforts.
 
Oftentimes factory loaded match ammunition is impressively accurate, and can make a dedicated handloader cringe and even despair - if your really good handloaded ammo is only just barely as good as factory match ammo, and you are tailoring your ammo to your rifle while the factory ammo is shooting really well in everybody's rifle, well that's pretty humiliating isn't it? A little relief can be had considering the cost, since factory match ammo is terrifyingly expensive; even moreso since most handloaders don't really know how much their handloaded ammo costs and/or we lie to ourselves a bit... ;-)

There's no magic to this stuff. Here's what factory match ammo is:
- where important, very high quality components (e.g. bullets by Sierra Lapua etc; reliably versatile powders)
- where not so important, good-enough components (e.g. the Federal brass used in Federal match ammo is pretty middling, but it is "good enough" for the purpose)
- loading dimensions made to fit all factory rifles, e.g. magazine-length ammo and full-length-sized new brass
- carefully engineered charge selection (safe under all reasonable use cases; sometimes chosen to give maximum safe velocity, because that is oftentimes a very consistent operating point; at other times, loaded to a standard reference velocity)

Factory ammo is mass produced. Quality control is very good, but it is not handmade ammo. They will probably do a better job than almost any handloader in ensuring that there are no backward or missing primers, and no missing or short-charged cases. But the powder charges are going to be thrown (*not* individually weighed), and will not be any more uniform than any halfways-conscientious handloader is able to obtain with a decent quality bench-mounted powder measure.

Factory match ammo is usually capable of winning matches at 100y, 300y and 600y. In a good rifle, good factory ammo can often shoot an honest half-MOA.

But most factory match ammo has middling or worse velocity spreads (SD and ES). When shooting at long range (900y and 1000y) there is no way around this - the bullets are going to string vertically, in proportion to the load's SD and ES. This is where carefully made (and carefully tested/verified) handloads can pull away and show a definite accuracy advantage.
 
What kind of accuracy are you getting with the
Lapua factory ammo?

I shoot a few 6 br's and they are both crazy accurate,
My newest 6 br is built on one of my barrels and I have shot some
Groups 5 shots in less than .100" @ 100.

6br's are capable of Being super accurate .
 
Powderfinger61 said:
I tried factory Lapua 105s, patterned like a .410
Handloaded 90g Scenars, paterned like a bug hole @ .214....still have a ways to go

Factory Savage 6mmBR
Click to expand...

My wife and I have matching factory Savage 6BRs. They both hate VLD (Secant ogive) 105s - Lapua, Berger and JLK (130gn), but love boat tail (Tangent ogive) 108 Bergers following many hundreds of test rounds. You may be interested to try a boat tail design with the factory Savages.
 
Does anyone know exactly what powder lapua uses in there factory ammo? Is it a blend of powders like lots of other companies use? Or is it something like N540? It must be something close to that in order to get there advertised velocity of 2790fps.
 
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