160 TSX for 7mm Rem Mag - Tikka T3 Lite - What load?
- Thread starter CourtenayBoy
- Start date
Thank you. That is one of my main concerns, and would like to hear from other Tikka owners who have loaded this bullet. Thank you for your input
The mag won't let you load to the lands unless something has changed recently. Also no other t3 owners recipe will work for you any better than a basic recipe from any manual. You're gun is unique and will not respond the same as someone else's. The beauty of reloading is finding what works of your gun.
I have a T3 in 308 Win. I'll only speak to the magazine though. I'm loading both Nosler Partition spitzer 180 grain bullets and Sierra MatchKing HPBT 168 grain bullets. I'm loading them both essentially to the same COAL mainly because of the magazine, however, even with the magazine being the limiting factor, I'm still able to load both bullets longer than the recommended COAL in the manuals and published load data. For the Partition, Nosler recommends 2.770", and for the MatchKing, Lyman recommends 2.775". I've managed to seat them both to 2.830" for my T3, which I believe is about 0.010" short of the edge of the magazine. I'm not sure how far this is off the lands, but I know I've tried seating a bullet to the lands of my barrel and the COAL ended up pretty much outside the outer wall of the magazine.
Since there is a good chance that you won't be able to seat to just off the lands, I would probably measure the magazine internal space and put your bullets to about 0.010" shorter. This will be the first step in making ammo for your rifle. I did this and found that the cartridges won't fit in an FAL magazine, so I have to do another set of 308 rounds for those mags (2.800" instead of 2.830").
The way around the magazine limitation of course is to just treat your rifle like a single loader and forego the magazine. In this case, you could seat to a few thou off your lands and be fine.
Since there is a good chance that you won't be able to seat to just off the lands, I would probably measure the magazine internal space and put your bullets to about 0.010" shorter. This will be the first step in making ammo for your rifle. I did this and found that the cartridges won't fit in an FAL magazine, so I have to do another set of 308 rounds for those mags (2.800" instead of 2.830").
The way around the magazine limitation of course is to just treat your rifle like a single loader and forego the magazine. In this case, you could seat to a few thou off your lands and be fine.
