So after a lot of help from Mystic Precision, my rifle is now operational.
http://1.bp.########.com/-Ev9lQn0Nx3A/TekkEqGaWUI/AAAAAAAAAWo/I6qYdyjDAiM/s1600/2.jpg
I had an old savage 110 hunting rifle, and I didn't really need a hunting .300 Win Mag, but I wanted a long distance paper puncher with a good bite to it. I find recoil very fun, to be honest. Makes it that much more satisfying.
I ordered a Choates varmint stock from Choates Machine and Tool, a Shilen match grade stainless 30" barrel, 1 in 10 twist, bull contour (S8). Ordered a Timney target trigger, Farell 20MOA steel bases, Burris 30mm ZEE rings and shims. The action was timed and bedded to the stock, all put together by Mr. Teo. The scope is one of the sweet Sightron SIII LR MOA 8-32x56 and it is just awesome in every way.
Amazing stuff, for my first true custom rifle.
So I started handloading for her a while ago, using once fired Federal brass, Retumbo powder and matrix 210gr bullets with CCI large rifle magnum primers. I encountered a few issues with my first bout with a reloading press.
First, I was not used to compressing powder, and being slightly weary of it, I halted and did my research. It turns out this powder works better when compressed. My doubts cleared, I carefully weighed every powder charge, trimmed my brass, chamfered the case mouths, lightly lubing the cases, doing everything the same way for every round.
Then I found that the Matrix 210gr VLDs had some minute inconsistencies in the hollow point, a result of their manufacture. Each bullet was + or - as much as 0.01" in length, due to the very tip being slightly irregular. It meant I just had to trust the micro-adjustment seating die, as measuring OAL to find if all the bullets are seated the same was useless.
There was also some playing around with overall length, as the long VLDs didn't like being seated to the cartridge's listed OAL.
After working out those issues I also noticed that the ogive shape of the Matrix VLDs didn't play nicely with the bullet seater, as it touched only at a small portion of the die. A ring can be seen halfway up the bullet's ogive, a single contact point on the entire bullet. That means there could be inconsistent seating depths and bullet runout, and the seating depth was impossible to find due to inconsistent bullet lengths.
Runout was another issue. My single fired brass had been fired from my old barrel and chamber, and there was no way in hell it fit my Shilen's perfectly cut, minimum dimension chamber. Even some factory ammo didn't fit in that chamber! Having it full length resized was mandatory just for the brass to fit in the chamber but it made the runout exceed 10 thou.
All that aside, 80.6 grains of retumbo fired this group at 200 yards.
You have to admit, a half inch group at 200 yards ain't too shabby. Yes, I need to do 5 shot strings, but I didn't have the brass, bullets or powder to afford a full 5 shot load development, and I'm about to load 5 shot strings from 80.2 to 80.8 with .1 grain increments to fine tune this.
On top of that, my second-fire brass has now zero runout, being fire formed to the match chamber. When I say zero, I mean it in it has less than 0.0002" runout (two ten-thousandths at most) so I can only see the accuracy increasing. I expect 5 to 10 shot strings to fall well under half MOA.
This is a short video of sighting in the scope and chronying the factory loads that would fit into the chamber.
[youtube]QFokD0fe0ts[/youtube]
That's again to Mr. Teo for all his help and service, I'll update when I get more range time with this baby. The rifle refuses to fire over 1.75" groups at 200 yards with even the handloads it dislikes the most, and just didn't want to fire over 1.5" groups at 100 yards with even the cheapest factory ammo of mixed bullet grains.
I think she's a shooter.
http://1.bp.########.com/-Ev9lQn0Nx3A/TekkEqGaWUI/AAAAAAAAAWo/I6qYdyjDAiM/s1600/2.jpg
I had an old savage 110 hunting rifle, and I didn't really need a hunting .300 Win Mag, but I wanted a long distance paper puncher with a good bite to it. I find recoil very fun, to be honest. Makes it that much more satisfying.
I ordered a Choates varmint stock from Choates Machine and Tool, a Shilen match grade stainless 30" barrel, 1 in 10 twist, bull contour (S8). Ordered a Timney target trigger, Farell 20MOA steel bases, Burris 30mm ZEE rings and shims. The action was timed and bedded to the stock, all put together by Mr. Teo. The scope is one of the sweet Sightron SIII LR MOA 8-32x56 and it is just awesome in every way.
Amazing stuff, for my first true custom rifle.
So I started handloading for her a while ago, using once fired Federal brass, Retumbo powder and matrix 210gr bullets with CCI large rifle magnum primers. I encountered a few issues with my first bout with a reloading press.
First, I was not used to compressing powder, and being slightly weary of it, I halted and did my research. It turns out this powder works better when compressed. My doubts cleared, I carefully weighed every powder charge, trimmed my brass, chamfered the case mouths, lightly lubing the cases, doing everything the same way for every round.
Then I found that the Matrix 210gr VLDs had some minute inconsistencies in the hollow point, a result of their manufacture. Each bullet was + or - as much as 0.01" in length, due to the very tip being slightly irregular. It meant I just had to trust the micro-adjustment seating die, as measuring OAL to find if all the bullets are seated the same was useless.
There was also some playing around with overall length, as the long VLDs didn't like being seated to the cartridge's listed OAL.
After working out those issues I also noticed that the ogive shape of the Matrix VLDs didn't play nicely with the bullet seater, as it touched only at a small portion of the die. A ring can be seen halfway up the bullet's ogive, a single contact point on the entire bullet. That means there could be inconsistent seating depths and bullet runout, and the seating depth was impossible to find due to inconsistent bullet lengths.
Runout was another issue. My single fired brass had been fired from my old barrel and chamber, and there was no way in hell it fit my Shilen's perfectly cut, minimum dimension chamber. Even some factory ammo didn't fit in that chamber! Having it full length resized was mandatory just for the brass to fit in the chamber but it made the runout exceed 10 thou.
All that aside, 80.6 grains of retumbo fired this group at 200 yards.
You have to admit, a half inch group at 200 yards ain't too shabby. Yes, I need to do 5 shot strings, but I didn't have the brass, bullets or powder to afford a full 5 shot load development, and I'm about to load 5 shot strings from 80.2 to 80.8 with .1 grain increments to fine tune this.
On top of that, my second-fire brass has now zero runout, being fire formed to the match chamber. When I say zero, I mean it in it has less than 0.0002" runout (two ten-thousandths at most) so I can only see the accuracy increasing. I expect 5 to 10 shot strings to fall well under half MOA.
This is a short video of sighting in the scope and chronying the factory loads that would fit into the chamber.
[youtube]QFokD0fe0ts[/youtube]
That's again to Mr. Teo for all his help and service, I'll update when I get more range time with this baby. The rifle refuses to fire over 1.75" groups at 200 yards with even the handloads it dislikes the most, and just didn't want to fire over 1.5" groups at 100 yards with even the cheapest factory ammo of mixed bullet grains.
I think she's a shooter.
