Calling on all M14 and 7.62mm reloaders!

slushee

slushee

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I bought a stock Norinco M14, and have started reloading M852 rounds.

Winchester/Remington Case trimmed to 2.006-2.008"
CCI #200 Large Rifle Primer
41.5 grains of IMR 4895
168 graing SMK
OAL 2.800-2.810" (I seat the smaller bullets and the tolerances of the ragged tip bring some out the 0.010")

Now, the smallest 3 shot group I have gotten is about .750" at 100 yards .. the average grouping i get is about 1.500" at 100 yards.

My question is, how much accuracy will I loose if I start loading the 175 grain SMK to mimic the M118 LR military ammunition? I plan on only shooting out 300 meters. How much accuracy would I loose if I switched to Hornady 168 grain HPBT's?

I am trying to find a cheaper bullet as the 168 SMK's are so bloody pricey. Please let me know what you all think of other alternatives to help on price.
 
If you are getting that kind of accuracy,why would you want to change anything? I've shot all of the Hornady,Sierra,and Nosler 168gr extensively in a number of .30-06,7.62mms and .308s and find that specific rifles may have a slight preference for one or the other.Generally I consider them to be interchangable,but if pushed,would give a nod to the Sierra which has been the accuracy benchmark for many yrs. The only way to find out what you want to know is to work up loads for all of these in your own rifle and bench test them up to 300 yds.Ditto for the 175gr Sierra.One thing they all do have in common is a pretty steep price tag.BTW, if you are interested in economical shooting with satisfactory accuracy,try the Hornady 150gr FMJ.These are available in bulk lots and their accuracy may surprise you.
 
I fee your pain. My Lee Enfield #4 (Irish contract) shoots the Sierra match bullet much, much better than any other bullet I have tried. I hate guns with a champagne taste.

I have found some hunting bullets that shoot very well in my target rifles. Each rifle has its own tastes, but here are 4 cheap bullets that have worked very well for me.

Hornady 150 gr Spitzer flat base
Hornady 165 gr Spitzer flat base
Hornady 165 gr Spitzer boat tail
Sierrra 125 gr Spitzer

I have actually shot a 300 yard target rifle match with the 125s, just to prove it could be done.
 
I was shooting Hornady 168 gr match outta my Springfield Armory M1A with good groups 1.5 moa at 100 yards (good for me in a semi) I went to Federal Match primers and cut my groups in half.
 
You might want to try IMR 3031 a older friend of mine a bulletsmith... he also ran the winchester manufacturing plant here in ontario before it was shutdown in the early 80's

Said he used to reload precision ammo for the local police sniper team to practice with and the magic number for .308 powder is some where between 42 and 43 he recomended IMR 3031 and I have used it to test out and its no secrete the M14's love 168 grain bullets... there is night and day difference between 150 and 168 grains... I am guess that it might have to do with the velocity and stabilization.... that the M1a is a very old rifle and based off the m1 garand and that back in the day maybe 150's where flying slower out the barrel then hot loads today.... I am going to try and back of the load to see if I can get 150's flying at the same speed as the 168's and see if they produce better groups

Or the ballistics of the 168 are just far better at least on paper.
 
I'm with purple. I've had good results with the Hornady 150 FMJ at 200 and 300 meters service condition matchs. At 17.50$ for a box of 100, your ammo lot will go a long way. I usually switch over to the 168 HPBT for the 500m portion of the match. I use the 168 Speer match from Lebaron for my Norc M14. I do very well with Speer at 500 meters so the Hornady should be fine.
 
3 shot groups are fine for a precision bolt gun, but they will tell you nothing with that rifle. How do you know what load is the most accurate if the groups are changing by over 100% ? The rule of thumb I use is that you need to fire enough rounds for a given rifle so that the largest group is no more than 20% bigger than the smallest one. Then you have enough repeatability to compare things. I generally had to fire 10 shot groups with my un-accurized M1A in order to attain that consistency.

I used this load:

-RP brass
-168 gr. Nosler Custom Competition (was better than the Sierra bullet, and cheaper. Hornady was worse)
-41.5 gr. IMR4064 (IMR4895 was almost as good)
-WLR primers
-COAL= 2.800"

VEL= 2498 avg.
SD=18
ES=49

With that load, I would consistently get 10 shot groups between 1.25" and 1.5" at 100y. These were half the size of 10 shot groups from milsurp ammo. I still have have a nice 800 yard 1.36 MOA, 12 shot group from this load in my gun room.

Probably the best bullet I found for this rifle for long range is the Lapua 170 gr. Lockbase. Its short enough to load to magazine length, has a higher BC than the 175 gr. SMK and can be launched at a higher velocity. It isn't cheap, however. 168 grainers is all you need for 300, get the Noslers. They always have them at Shooter's Choice in Waterloo.
 
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Slushee, your exact load was once THE standard accuracy/match load for the .308 before the arrival of Varget and the 155-grain bullet in the mid 1990s.

It's pretty hard to improve upon that load inside 300 metres. The newer 155- and 175-grain bullets, pushed by the newer powders, work far better at longer ranges, but inside 300 you don't need to change a thing. If you want to try cheaper 168-grain bullets, you should experiment with Hornady and Nosler match bullets, both of which are cheaper than the Sierras.
 
To roll back time even a bit more,the US Army initially standardized the 7.62 match load using a 168gr Sierra over 39gr IMR3031 in the M14. I've used this a lot in a .308Win heavy barrel bolt rifle,and it is still a good performer.P.S. Before the bureaucrats decided it was too evil to shoot anymore,my stock H&R M14 averaged 1.65" 3 shot 100yd groups using 40gr IMR3031 with the 150gr Hornady FMJBT seated @2.790 with CCI 34 primers in DA military brass.That's pretty satisfying for a non-match bullet.
 
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I would (and have) switched from IMR to H4895 and have shot the Nosler J4s with good results. They are still not quite as good as the SMKs, but at the closer ranges you won't see much difference.
 
beltfed said:
I would (and have) switched from IMR to H4895 and have shot the Nosler J4s with good results. They are still not quite as good as the SMKs, but at the closer ranges you won't see much difference.
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Actually they are as good.

I performed a test, a number of years ago, and using the same load with Sierra's and Noslers, they shot to the same POI. You can't tell which is which as you can change the bullet willy nilly.

All shot from my Rem 700.
 
Varget is a wee bit slow for an M-14, and way too slow for an M1 in .308/7.62mm. I have used the standard load 41 grns of 4064 under a 168 gr BTHPM from both Hornady and more of late Nosler, for years with great success.You can always tell how consistent your load is by where the brass ends up when firing an M-14. I look at that before I even look at the target.

Scott
 
RePete said:
Actually they are as good.

I performed a test, a number of years ago, and using the same load with Sierra's and Noslers, they shot to the same POI. You can't tell which is which as you can change the bullet willy nilly.

All shot from my Rem 700.
Click to expand...

I should have added that they are not quite as consistent for me out of my M-14 as the SMKs...Still, I go though a pile of them as they are excellent quality for low cost.
 
m39a2 said:
Varget is a wee bit slow for an M-14, and way too slow for an M1 in .308/7.62mm. I have used the standard load 41 grns of 4064 under a 168 gr BTHPM from both Hornady and more of late Nosler, for years with great success.You can always tell how consistent your load is by where the brass ends up when firing an M-14. I look at that before I even look at the target.

Scott
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Funny I found this thread while searching for help as to why my groups from my m14 SUCK!! were talking 1.5 - 2 inch at 30 meters. With my handloads I've got it down to 1.5 inch, I was trying to work out how much H4895 to put under my 150gr hornady s.p. I tried from 43gr to 45 gr in 0.5 gr incriments. With 5 shot groups it was really hard to tell. I did notice that some of the spent casings were in better groups than the others, too bad I didn't note which load that was. This weekend I'll pickup some 168gr bullets and give them a try.

Are you guys getting these groups with open sights? I think 1/2 of my problem is my inability to use the open sights properly.

Nic
 
I personally think that your 1:12 twist Norc will not like the heavy, long 175gn SMK's.

I reloaded these for my Norc, as well as the Hornady 178's using IMR 4895, and Win748. Both bullets grouped poorly. The heaviest bullet I have had good results with is the Lapua 170gn RBBT (from Peter Dobson at Hirsch Precision). I easily got groups of 1-1.5 inches.

As for the 175, 178gn bullets I have only been able to get good groups using my 1:10 twist match bbl. Win748 seems to have a bit of an edge over IMR 4895 in my loads.
 
roberti11 said:
The heaviest bullet I have had good results with is the Lapua 170gn RBBT (from Peter Dobson at Hirsch Precision). I easily got groups of 1-1.5 inches.
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That's the Lockbase. Probably the best long range bullet going for the M14 (that can be loaded to mag length and still shoot).
 
The 175 SMK is perfect with the 1:12.

The M14 is capable of very good accuracy. I think it a good idea to have a M14 bedded before investing time and money on load development.

Peep sights can be very accurate. By changing the front sight from a post to a ring many aiming errors can be reduced.
 
it's not the barrel in the m14, it's the gas system that doesn't like the "heavy " bullets- from my chart, which says you need a 1/13.2 twist to establish a 180 grain bullet at m14 velocities- a similar caveat exists for the m1 garand
 
the bedding thing depends on how far you take your cleaning- and it may or may not help your groups- none of my m14s are bedded, as you don't do that in the field and you normally strip the action from the stock when cleaning( at least that's what i was told by some very vernable instructors) - clear rifle, mag out, and then do the thing to the trigger guard, that comes out, and then you strip the action from the stock for further cleaning- do this enough times and there goes your bedding job
 
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