Savage 10 FCP 175 SMK/Varget Range Report

lapadat

lapadat

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I feel I've figured out the basics of reloading - now I enlist the expertise of the professionals to get me to that next level. Looking for input on fine-tuning.

Savage 10 FCP McMillan with Mark 4 4.5-14x40

Specs:
Varget
175 SMK
Fed 210
Win brass - sized, trim to book length
OAL: 2.81"

Groups shot at 200 yards:
Left group: 44.5 grains 1.382"
Mid group: 44.7 grains 2.033" (1.017" without flyer)
Right group: 45 grains 1.375"

The squares are slightly smaller than 1" - My caliper is set at 2"

Rifle is pillar/glass bedded. Groups shot from prone with front/rear bag, Conditions on these groups was 10-12C, very slight breeze >1 mph

IMG_1565.jpg


Last group was 5 rounds @ 44.5gr Varget with 4-7 mph winds at 1000 lasered yards.

IMG_1564.jpg



Lap
 
Are you single feeding or loading to mag lenth? Play with your seating depth and you will tighten them up more. Did you chrony your loads as well? If so were your speeds consistent?

Still some very nice groups, plus holding .6MOA to 1000 is really promising. :)
 
Group one looks excellent. It has very little vertical dispersion, and the left to right can be attributed to conditions. Repeat this and and see if you get the same results.

Again, COAL means absolutely nothing, Where the bullet sits in relation to the lands is everything, and to that end it is worth while finding out where your lands are and load develop from there. The 175 SMK is a very seating depth tolerant bullet, but I suspect 20 thou jump will give you best results.

Empiraclly, I would follow this procedure to find the lands, shorten OAL by 20 thou and then find a powder load that yields best results.
 
try going down a bit as well. give 44.3 a shot.

also try CCI BR2 primers if your using varget powder.


@ 2.810 it looks ovious your loading to fit the mag. keep at it.

make sure to use a comparator when u seat your bullets.
 
43-43.5 of Varget with the 175SMK is pretty close to the Federal Gold rounds. Out of a 5R milspec and Armalite AR10 they shoot very well. I'd consider going downward in Varget powder to close the group up. CCI Benchrest primers was advised by another poster and is good advice.
 
I just shot yesterday at our local range testing some handloads with my new chronograph. I have a Sav 10 FCP-K .308 as well and load 175 SMK, but I too slow them down with 43.0 g Varget. My OAL is a bit longer as well. Just fired a group at 200 that measured .8"

I forget where I read it, but I heard someone found a bit of a sweet spot with this round when they didn't push it to the max.

I just bought an OAL guage and comparator from another CGN'r and cant wait to fine tune the bullet seating depth.
 
Epoxy7 said:
43-43.5 of Varget with the 175SMK is pretty close to the Federal Gold rounds. Out of a 5R milspec and Armalite AR10 they shoot very well. I'd consider going downward in Varget powder to close the group up. CCI Benchrest primers was advised by another poster and is good advice.
Click to expand...


43.9gn of varget is the load i use in my 5R as well. pushing the 178 amax not the 175smk. close enough.
 
Looks nice.

The SMK 175 is pretty tolerant of jump, and it is likely that you have a fair bit of jump with your mag-length ammo. But as you can see it is shooting very nicely. At some point you might to try what Obtunded suggests and see if you can get even better results. But what you are getting now is just fine, definitely good enough to load up a bunch and go out and do a lot of fun/practice/match shooting.

A 1.2 MOA group at 1000 yards is pretty good, even moreso considering that the vertical amount is less than a minute if my eyeball-SWAG is correct. Variable winds will tend to widen your groups at long range, so measuring a group's vertical can be a better proxy of how accurate you and your rifle and your ammo are shooting.

Your ammo is certainly good enough to justify firing groups of 10 or even 15 rounds at 1,000 if you care to do so.

As for fine tuning:

- make sure your bullets are straight (measure your runout and if it is 5 thou or more, find out why and fix this)

- as mentioned earlier you might want to try OALs closer to the lands, say 10 or 20 thou off the lands. Though to be honest your ammo is shooting so well now that there might not be a whole lot of improvement available to you. One of the very nice things about medium-performance match bullets is that they are quite forgiving.

- for long range shooting such as 1000 yards, velocity uniformity becomes important, otherwise groups of 10, 15 or more shots will become "strung" vertically. You can work with a chrono to fine tune your loading (mostly powder charge amount) to seek out small E.S. or S.D. Alternately and just as effective is to shoot groups of 10+ shots at 1000 yards, and tune according to loads that consistently give you the smallest amount of vertical dispersion.
 
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