I would like to try to do a ladder test with my rifle. It's a rem 700 vls in .308. I already reload for it but I bought some Varget powder, had some 155 gr AMAX and BR2 I would like to use for it. I know that to accomplish this the most accurate way I would need to have a match set of brass. Well I have a lot of brass that I was keeping through the years. My question from the expert is this. Is it possible to make a selection of let's say 50 casings in the bunch I already have or there is no way around it, I need to buy some of the same lot # from somebody. Tks
How to sort the brass for a ladder test
- Thread starter Black Jack
- Start date
captainmike
CGN Regular
- Location
- GVA- fraser valley BC
same brand same lot is the best
to much variation in case volume between brand
to much variation in case volume between brand
Chinbullco
Regular
- Location
- NW Alberta
Spring for Lapua brass. Its not much more than Winchester.
ultimate_monkey
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- victoria BC
^^^
Yup quality brass for consistency and precision shooting ..
All the saved brass for when your just putting holes in things
Yup quality brass for consistency and precision shooting ..
All the saved brass for when your just putting holes in things
For giggles sort through the clean deprimed once fired and get all the same brand stamp. Then weigh each case on an accurate scale. I sorted mine in whole grain increments. ie 100. all the way to 100.9 in one pile and then 101 up to 101.9 and so on. Mind you I had a bag of 1000 once fired Winchester brass. I got 250 brass that were all within a 5 grain weight. Then I trimmed, chamfered and reprimed and went to town. Wife won a medal shooting with that brass in a Savage 308 FTR.
Have fun.
Have fun.
My Remington 700 .308 SPS Varmint (which I have set up for shooting in Tactical Matches) likes the Federal cases. The downside of Federal cases is that they are soft and are basically useless after a few loading. On the other hand, they are cheap and plentiful.
My rifle also really likes Remington brass, too. In years past, Winchester actually had the best reputation for accuracy and consistency. In fact, I used the same lot of Winchester cases for six years and countless loadings, in my competition rifle, right through the World Long Range Championships.
The key is to separate the brass by headstamp and weight. Federal cases from 1991 will have a different-looking headstamp than Federal cases from 2011. Older Winchester cases will say W-W Super, etc. Segregate all of these by batch.
What I would do is prep all your brass: clean it, resize it, trim it, clean the pockets, etc. Once that is done (and it is segregated by batch), then weigh each case. In a .308, try to see if you can keep all of the brass you are using within a spread of about 1.5 grains. This means that the heaviest case should be no more than 1.5 grains heavier than the lightest case. This works out to a 1% weight variation in your brass, which is good enough for all but the most demanding shooting. It should be fine for an OCW test.
I've done this many times and it should be fine for your purposes.
Having said this, if you can spring for a box of Lapua cases, you would never complain!
To save time and components, why bother with a ladder test. A proven load with just about any 155 gr bullet and Varget powder in a .308 is 46.0 gr of Varget. The only testing that you really need to do is to test how much bullet jump your rifle likes with this load.
That being said, sort your brass by head stamp then into 1 gr batches.
That being said, sort your brass by head stamp then into 1 gr batches.
Chinbullco
Regular
- Location
- NW Alberta
My process, trim, chamfer, de-burr flash holes and then weigh, but that's too much work! Use Lapua now.
- Location
- West Quebec
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