I made a post a while back about the 212, but haven’t had a chance to get my hands on any. There was a fair bit of the 208 available so I figured I would give them a try. I did some searchers and did not find anything really posted about them so I thought I would give an update for anyone else considering them. Do not use my load data, this is for my rifle and you should start much lower and work up slowly. This just my journey for entertainment purposes only.
First off I’m running a Cadex R7 sporter, it has the 3.850” mags and a 26” barrel. I also have Lapua brass. This allows me to seat my bullets out a touch further. I reached out to Barnes on the topic of the 208 and the 212. The 208 needs 1700 fps impact to open to 1.7x and 100fps more to open 2x. The 212 needs 1600 fps for 1.7x.
First thing I did was find my lands, then set the bullet back .050” as a starting point. (Of note Barnes posted OAL is 3.691”). That gave me a length of 3.740. 0.100” of the rifling would be 3.690 or .001 shorter than Barnes recommends. In an email from Barnes I seen they load their factory 208’s in the 300 PRC at .167” of the sammi chamber length, likely so they will fit in all different magazines.
My seating depth does have one downside, it puts the boat tail about .200” below the shoulder, taking up some case capacity.
Next was powder, H1000 seemed to be the go to but unfortunately I sold all of mine and there didn’t seem to be much available at the time I was looking. I decided to try Staball HD, but there was zero data available for the 208 LRX. I looked at a couple of different loadings and made a guess. I started really low, @ 73.5gr. Using a chronograph it was obvious that my load was light. And I began to go up by 2gr at a time. As this set up is for hunting extended distance, velocity is important, but of note there was a really nice accuracy node at 75gr.
Unfortunately on my first trip to the range I only went up to 78gr but did not reach close to what the posted velocities were. On my second loading I made loads to 83gr, all in .5 increments. I had no pressure signs of any kind to 78gr. When loading the rounds I found that 80gr is likely 99.9% case capacity with my seating depth. At 80.5gr I could no longer hear the powder moving when I shook the case. 81gr I could hear/feel the powder compressing so definitely a compressed load.
Back to the range I went. 79.5 and 80 had identical velocity’s, 80 gr had the best group @ .593” @ 2904 FPS SD was 17.1 for 5 shots, 80.5 was .685” @2927 with a SD of 2.4 then the next best group was 81.5gr at .616” @2973 with a SD 13.1. I believe the 81.5 gr load is near max, if not max as one of the rounds had a slight shine on the head of the brass but no hard bolt lift or any other pressure signs.
I did keep shooting till 82gr but I started to see more signs of pressure and decided that was a good place to stop. As my purpose for this rifle is longer range elk hunting, I don’t mind running the rifle near 100% in warmer weather as I will loose velocity when the cold comes.
Based on my results an elk is not going to notice the difference in group size between .593-.685 but 70 fps will get me more yards before my bullet slows down. So I went with the 81.5 as my choice. I then loaded up more rounds to get a better result on group size and velocity. What I found was that it was consistent. I made a 15 shot group at 200 meters and it did open up a bit as expected but stayed in the 3/4 MOA range. I had an average of 2971.1 FPS with a SD of 14.2, so 2FPS slower than the 5 shot group and 1fps more SD over 23 rounds, not bad.
The day I was out with the 15 set I decided to shoot at a steel plate at 500M. It was windy as heck with 35km/h wind gusting to 60 ish. I was able to keep 6 of 6 on a 12” plate and my buddy had 3 of 3 on the plate. Vertical dispersion at 500M was around 6” but due to the wind the group was 12” wide with 2 rounds going off target when we were trying to read the wind.
While I’m sure there are better groups possible with other powders/bullet combos I am happy with the performance of this load. I still have intentions of trying the 212 as it has a better BC and with the results of the 208 I will likely get higher velocity with the 212 being a bore rider but will likely turn my rifle into a single shot due to seating length requirements.
More to come.
First off I’m running a Cadex R7 sporter, it has the 3.850” mags and a 26” barrel. I also have Lapua brass. This allows me to seat my bullets out a touch further. I reached out to Barnes on the topic of the 208 and the 212. The 208 needs 1700 fps impact to open to 1.7x and 100fps more to open 2x. The 212 needs 1600 fps for 1.7x.
First thing I did was find my lands, then set the bullet back .050” as a starting point. (Of note Barnes posted OAL is 3.691”). That gave me a length of 3.740. 0.100” of the rifling would be 3.690 or .001 shorter than Barnes recommends. In an email from Barnes I seen they load their factory 208’s in the 300 PRC at .167” of the sammi chamber length, likely so they will fit in all different magazines.
My seating depth does have one downside, it puts the boat tail about .200” below the shoulder, taking up some case capacity.
Next was powder, H1000 seemed to be the go to but unfortunately I sold all of mine and there didn’t seem to be much available at the time I was looking. I decided to try Staball HD, but there was zero data available for the 208 LRX. I looked at a couple of different loadings and made a guess. I started really low, @ 73.5gr. Using a chronograph it was obvious that my load was light. And I began to go up by 2gr at a time. As this set up is for hunting extended distance, velocity is important, but of note there was a really nice accuracy node at 75gr.
Unfortunately on my first trip to the range I only went up to 78gr but did not reach close to what the posted velocities were. On my second loading I made loads to 83gr, all in .5 increments. I had no pressure signs of any kind to 78gr. When loading the rounds I found that 80gr is likely 99.9% case capacity with my seating depth. At 80.5gr I could no longer hear the powder moving when I shook the case. 81gr I could hear/feel the powder compressing so definitely a compressed load.
Back to the range I went. 79.5 and 80 had identical velocity’s, 80 gr had the best group @ .593” @ 2904 FPS SD was 17.1 for 5 shots, 80.5 was .685” @2927 with a SD of 2.4 then the next best group was 81.5gr at .616” @2973 with a SD 13.1. I believe the 81.5 gr load is near max, if not max as one of the rounds had a slight shine on the head of the brass but no hard bolt lift or any other pressure signs.
I did keep shooting till 82gr but I started to see more signs of pressure and decided that was a good place to stop. As my purpose for this rifle is longer range elk hunting, I don’t mind running the rifle near 100% in warmer weather as I will loose velocity when the cold comes.
Based on my results an elk is not going to notice the difference in group size between .593-.685 but 70 fps will get me more yards before my bullet slows down. So I went with the 81.5 as my choice. I then loaded up more rounds to get a better result on group size and velocity. What I found was that it was consistent. I made a 15 shot group at 200 meters and it did open up a bit as expected but stayed in the 3/4 MOA range. I had an average of 2971.1 FPS with a SD of 14.2, so 2FPS slower than the 5 shot group and 1fps more SD over 23 rounds, not bad.
The day I was out with the 15 set I decided to shoot at a steel plate at 500M. It was windy as heck with 35km/h wind gusting to 60 ish. I was able to keep 6 of 6 on a 12” plate and my buddy had 3 of 3 on the plate. Vertical dispersion at 500M was around 6” but due to the wind the group was 12” wide with 2 rounds going off target when we were trying to read the wind.
While I’m sure there are better groups possible with other powders/bullet combos I am happy with the performance of this load. I still have intentions of trying the 212 as it has a better BC and with the results of the 208 I will likely get higher velocity with the 212 being a bore rider but will likely turn my rifle into a single shot due to seating length requirements.
More to come.
