long range reloading

Yup! x2... There is so much that you can do, the amount of stuff you need to do even with regards to brass prep will surprise you. Then again, it depends on what your goals and expectations are for those distances with respect to accuracy and precision. MOA is fairly easily obtainable. It's achieving sub MOA constantly at those distances that everything you do at the reloading bench and at the shooting bench that becomes down right scientific... Sniper's Hide Reloading section is LOADED with awesome info! That's where I started.

SL
 
I load my hunting ammo as if I was attempting to make accurate 1000 yard match ammo, except with a hunting bullet. However there is no actual reason to do so, I just enjoy my OCD while reloading.

Most people will tell you that there is very little similar between 1000 yard reloading practices and hunting load practices, and they would be correct. Hunting loads must fit the magazine, be seated in a way that bullets will not fall out or be pushed into the brass by handling or recoil, and be resistant to weather and the elements along with being very very reliable. Match ammo doesn't need to fit the mag, is handled and carried different so bullet seating has different requirements, etc... These are a few things that are different between the two, but it hardly scratches the surface, it's just a quick example.
 
Meticulous brass prep, extremely accurate powder charges and the best boattail bullets with the highest BDC, properly measured COL for your rifle, will get you on your way. Like the previous responces, lots of prep, which to some is manditory and to some its to anal, but to each there own. My only real change in my reloading is the bullet, as I try very hard to prep all my brass to be their best ( I guess I am one of the fussy types).
 
Well, stuf has been covered generally quite well, but I'll throw in my two cents' worth. To preface, I DO NOT CLAIM TO BE A LONG RANGE PRECISION SHOOTER.
The reasons for this is that I can make my hunting ammo sub MOA and I hunt. I don;t shoot 1000yd matches, etc ao I keep my OCD in check, I am pretty anal (as judged by some) in my hunting ammo prep, but I do not think I am willing to spend the extra time to make match ammo.
However, these would be the basic steps for match ammo from brand new materials (some steps would be eliminated when using fired brass)are:

First, make sure that the shooter is up to the task,

Now, make sure that your rifle is up to the task. Check bedding, barrel harmonics, rifling, looseness in the action, trigger pull, etc.

Now, make sure that Buy 1000 pieces of brass of the same lot #.
Inspect all the brass for defects.
Weigh all of the brass and separate into groups of same weights.
choose a group of brass you want to work with.
uniform primer pockets
uniform flash holes
uniform case length
check case concentricity
uniform case mouth inside and outside diameters

buy 1000 primers,
Weigh them and separate into groups
Prime the brass you are going to use.

Buy 1000 bullets
Weigh them and separate into similar groups.
Choose a group of bullets to use.
Mic each bullet for same diameter, length, and ogive configuration.
Check each bullet for concentricity with a dial indicator

Buy 20lbs of powder. Same brand, same lot.
work up rough loads using 1/2gn increments.
Once you have the best load to the 1/2gn, then work up a load within that range by 1/10th gn (some guys go even finer than that and play with the 5/100th level. I have only seen one guy do this, but I assume that others do as well)
Now you can play with the seating length and fine tune it there, working up each load to get better performance.

The rest is unloading those rounds.

My OCD method of reloading for hunting:
Buy brass (once fired brass or range pick-ups get the same treatment in addition to tumbling, inspection, and FL resize)
Run through neck sizer twice, turning each case 180 degrees to uniform case mouth concentricity
uniform primer pocket and flash hole
uniform case length
prime cases,
powder to the .5 gn increments
choose bullets to use and seat whatever bullet I pick up out of the box to whatever COL I am using.
Crimp using Lee Factory Crimper.
Unload the rounds

See, many fewer steps involved.

Hope this helps.
 
rookie wildcat said:
Well, stuf has been covered generally quite well, but I'll throw in my two cents' worth. To preface, I DO NOT CLAIM TO BE A LONG RANGE PRECISION SHOOTER.
The reasons for this is that I can make my hunting ammo sub MOA and I hunt. I don;t shoot 1000yd matches, etc ao I keep my OCD in check, I am pretty anal (as judged by some) in my hunting ammo prep, but I do not think I am willing to spend the extra time to make match ammo.
However, these would be the basic steps for match ammo from brand new materials (some steps would be eliminated when using fired brass)are:

First, make sure that the shooter is up to the task,

Now, make sure that your rifle is up to the task. Check bedding, barrel harmonics, rifling, looseness in the action, trigger pull, etc.

Now, make sure that Buy 1000 pieces of brass of the same lot #.
Inspect all the brass for defects.
Weigh all of the brass and separate into groups of same weights.
choose a group of brass you want to work with.
uniform primer pockets
uniform flash holes
uniform case length
check case concentricity
uniform case mouth inside and outside diameters

buy 1000 primers,
Weigh them and separate into groups
Prime the brass you are going to use.

Buy 1000 bullets
Weigh them and separate into similar groups.
Choose a group of bullets to use.
Mic each bullet for same diameter, length, and ogive configuration.
Check each bullet for concentricity with a dial indicator

Buy 20lbs of powder. Same brand, same lot.
work up rough loads using 1/2gn increments.
Once you have the best load to the 1/2gn, then work up a load within that range by 1/10th gn (some guys go even finer than that and play with the 5/100th level. I have only seen one guy do this, but I assume that others do as well)
Now you can play with the seating length and fine tune it there, working up each load to get better performance.

The rest is unloading those rounds.

My OCD method of reloading for hunting:
Buy brass (once fired brass or range pick-ups get the same treatment in addition to tumbling, inspection, and FL resize)
Run through neck sizer twice, turning each case 180 degrees to uniform case mouth concentricity
uniform primer pocket and flash hole
uniform case length
prime cases,
powder to the .5 gn increments
choose bullets to use and seat whatever bullet I pick up out of the box to whatever COL I am using.
Crimp using Lee Factory Crimper.
Unload the rounds

See, many fewer steps involved.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

I heard one person mention that a competetor was so anal that he weighed his primers, so I always thought that to be just a joke, so I was a little surprised to see that in your prep.
What kind of variation do you see in primer weight?
I'm not home to do a check a box of primers myself to see if you are pulling our legs here
Anyone else weigh primers ?
 
I'll just buy a good Benchrest primer and use as is.
Weighing primers is over the top.
However, the concentricity of the loaded round is very important.
Runout is a killer to long range accuracy.
I weigh each component [except primers, lol]
Then sort according to the increment I have decided on.
I will also weigh the finished round to make sure variables have not sneaked in.
Variation in powder charges will give vertical stringing at long range.
Practice, practice, practice.
Regards, Eagleye.
 
adubbert said:
when reloading for long range (600-1000 yard)what do you do diffrent than hunting loads?
Click to expand...

It might be helpful to add a bit of context. F-Class and long range benchrest, for example, are the most demanding when it comes to accuracy requirements - so you'll see a lot more (worthwhile) effort being done by an F-Class or LR-BR shooter in making 600y and 1000y ammo, than you would from other shooters

I know of an F-Open competitor who weighs primers. I honestly don't know if this effort is worth it, or not. For what it's worth he does very well; then again, other shooters also do as well or nearly as well as he does. It could simple be the case that he is being completely comprehensive in his reloading, and therefore his weighing primers is more a symptom of this and he is doing it just-in-case-it-matters rather than doing it because he or others have determined that it really does matter.

I shoot "Target Rifle", which is a .308W fired with iron-sights and a sling, from 300y to 1000y. Our bullseye (5-ring) is approx 2MOA in diameter at each of the distances we fire, and we also have a V-bull that is half that size. A good TR shooter is able to fire a group of 10-15 shots into about 1.25 MOA, and if he is really at the top of his form he can achieve a bit smaller than 1.0 MOA.

My ammo is as good as or better than the majority of TR competitors; it is good enough to win national and international matches in this game.

It is vital that your ammo groups substantially better than you do, so that the combined error of you plus your ammo is reasonably close to being the same as your error only. More accuracy is better, of course, but once you have ammo that shoots a decently-small fraction of your own shooting error you start to get into diminishing returns. My TR ammo at short to mid range (300y to 600y) shoots groups about 0.4 to 0.6 times as big as the groups that I as a shooter (with iron sights and sling) am capable of producing. This is 'good enough', in that when you add my error plus the ammo's error together, the vast majority of what you see on paper is due to *me* not my ammo.

My ammo would probably not be competitive in F-TR shooting, which is F-Class shooting with .308 and .223 rifles. The target size in F-Class is half the size of the TR target (so, a ~1-MOA 5-ring, and a ~1/2-MOA V-bull), and the shooting performance of the topnotch F-Class shooters is almost but not quite twice as good as a topnotch TR shooter. F-TR is no longer my game, but as an outside observer I would estimate a top F-TR shooter to be able to fire a 10-15 shot group into 0.7MOA reliably, and if he's having a hot run he can probably hit 0.5 MOA.

My ammo making is a blend of carefulness and studied laziness. Over time I have found out what really matters, and I make sure that I pay close attention to those details. I also, hopefully intelligently, neglect the aspects that aren't terribly important. Here are some things I do and don't do:
  • brass - I pay up to buy good consistent brass (Lapua in my case). Brass quality doesn't matter as much as most people think, at least when you're talking TR-level accuracy. I buy Lapua brass to support my laziness. It is consistent enough that I am able to use a bushing-style neck sizer die for most of my loading, without having to turn the necks.
  • sizing brass - I've discovered that I need to use good accurate well-designed dies in order to size a case without introducing a crooked neck. I use Redding bushing dies, but there are several other equally good sizing dies. I neck-size, but I do this for convenience reasons (not having to apply and then clean off lube), not accuracy reasons (I think that F/L sized brass shoots just as accurately as neck-size brass, in fact there are some respectable authorities who think that F/L sized brass can shoot *better*)
  • brass prep - none, other than full-length sizing from time to time in a body die, triming to length and chamfering the case mouth inside and out when and as needed (perhaps every 3-10 firings). From time to time I'll clean them up in a vibratory cleaner, because they look nicer that way and I think I shoot prettier ammo better. I do not uniform my primer pockets, or clean them, or work on the flash holes, nor dor I neck turn.
  • bullets - I pay careful attention to what the best 155-grain .308 bullet of the day is. "Best" consists of several factors; one is that they are very accurate. Another is that they are "easily" accurate, i.e. I am able to quickly find a good accurate load, and that load data is relatively insensitive to changes in seating depth. I current shooter Berger 155.5 Fullbore bullets and I am absolutely thrilled with the, I have successfulley shot 'old' (#2155) Sierra 155s (though they are one of the lowest-performance bullets these days). I have also had some very successful testing of the Berger 155 Hybrid.
  • bullet seating - I use a good seater, so that the bullet is seater pretty straight. I use a Redding micrometer adjustable seater, which I like and can recommend, but there are also other good ones out there, for example Forster makes an adjustable seater which is just as good and I think it happens to be quite a bit cheaper too. My loaded ammo has total indicated runout of 2-3 thou. FWIW I find this delivers acceptable results, I haven't found a need to try to achieve 1 thou or less T.I.R.
  • primers - I use any likely-to-be-decent primer. I have never gotten around to doing any valid testing on different primer lots. I am currently using Federal 215 Magnum match primers - not because I need magnum primers, but I have them and they work well. I would be pretty confident also using, without testing, Federal 210 (regular or Match), Winchester Large Rifle, and CCI Large Rifle (regular or match).
  • powder - I shoot a .308W, so I have the luxury of following the herd in some very deeply-worn footsteps. There are many powders that are well-known to produce good results in a .308/155. I have been using H4895 for the past 3-4 years. I would not bat an eyelid switching to Varget, Reloder-15, Vihtavuori N140, etc.
  • weighing powder charges - I carefully throw my powder charges using a good measure (Redding BR-30). With a medium-short stick powder like H4895, most charges are within a 0.4 grain window (+/- 0.2 grains), though over 50 throws the window is usually a full 1.0 grains. To most people this sounds horrible and unusable. Back when I did F-Class shooting, I found that this gave me superb results from 300y to 600y. I will without any hesitation use or suggest using thrown charges out to 600 yards. I might or might not bother weighing charges for 1000 yard shooting, depending on the powder and load I am using, and to be honest how much time and effort I have (bigger factor). Most of my shooting at 1000 yards in the past several years has been done with thrown charges of H4895, and I don't think that this has been *any* obstacle to my performance.

Here's what I've gotten using this sort of ammo.

In 2009 I had a bit of a hot run during our national matches and was shooting quite well. My performance in the Grand Agg was pretty mediocre but I had such confidence in my shooting that I started to legitimately doubt my ammo (I was using a different bullet in 2009, a much fussier one), so for the last couple of days of our nationals I borrowed a box of ammo from my roommate and used that. This ammo was the old Sierra #2155 bullet, seated to magazine length, with a decently thrown charge of Varget, in a full-length size Winchester case with some primer (WLR or BR2 I can't remember). Here's how I shot in the last two matches:

http://www.dcra.ca/results/2009/CFRC/a634.htm
DCRA 2009 CFRC THE PATRON'S 25 Sep 2009 11:49:25

consisting of
GOV GEN FIN 800 15 @ 800 M
GOV GEN FIN 900 15 @ 900 M

TR COMPETITORS

PRIZE POS. NAME [HPS 150v30] NO. ATTR SCORE

1. TAMULINAS,STACEY,CIRCLE PINES,MN.USA # 95 MMXXT 150v20
2. SEKELLICK,RON,CANTON,CT.USA # 37 MMXXT 149v19
3. VAMPLEW,DESMOND,SCARBOROUGH,ON # 3 MMXAT 149v19
4. CHISHOLM,DANIEL,KESWICK RIDGE,NB # 62 MMXAT 149v18
...snip...
​

The target we shoot at long range has a 24" diameter 5-ring and a 12" diameter V-bull. At 1000 yards or its metric equivalent 900m that's a 2.4 MOA 5-ring and a 1.2 MOA V-bull. At 900 yards or its metric equivalent 800m, it's slightly bigger MOA-wise.

In easy wind conditions, those target dimensions are relatively easy; a good shooter should be able to get a "5" virtually all of the time and should be able to get the "V" bullet more than half the time. As you can see I dropped one point, and out of 30 shots fired I got 18 Vs, which was good enough to get me fourth place. On the one hand I was pretty happy with my shooting, on the other hand I was very angry at myself for having fired a bad shot at 900m which went out of the 5-ring. You can see three other shooters that day did a better job and got even better scores than I did (it was a day of quite light and to be honest pretty "easy" wind conditions; these are really high scores for an 800m+900m match fired in the afternoon).

So there's an example of a good bullet seated to magazine length and fired with thrown powder charges, being able to deliver about 2/3rds of the shots into the V-bull at long range.

I wasn't shooting quite as hot in 2012, but here are my results from the 900m match in our grand agg:

http://www.dcra.ca/results/2012/CFRC/a601.htm
DCRA 2012 CFRC THE ALEXANDER OF TUNIS 01 Sep 2012 22:04:55

consisting of ALEX. OF TUNIS 10 @ 900 M

TR COMPETITORS

PRIZE POS. NAME [HPS 50v10] NO. ATTR SCORE

...snip...
54. CHISHOLM,DANIEL,KESWICK RIDGE,NB # 64 MMXAT 48v4
...snip...

​

This is a 900m 10-shot match, and the conditions in 2012 were relatively 'easy' for the most part. The winner of the match fired an extraordinary 50 with 9 V-bulls (!).

My shooting in 2012 was plagued by me making various errors, mostly making an occasional bad shot and losing a point because of it (I think I made 12 such identifiable mistakes over the course of our Grand Aggregate). My 48 in the Tunis was a result of making on or two bad shots, hence the two points that I lost. But if you'll notice out of the ten shots on score that I fired I got 4 V-bulls, i.e. about half of my shots were Vs. When I look at my 2012 performance, I see adequate equipment (i.e. capable of shooting a 50 with a very high V-count) driven by a shooter having some problems (breaking too many bad shots).
 
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