so its been a long road to get to this point. i got my .223 last fall, started reloading maybe 4 months ago, and been learning as i go (there is so much to learn between the setting up the rifle itself to the reloading and load development)
well its finally all starting to pay off.
maynard was very kind to give me a maclennen 1-8 twist heavy palma barrel which i have to replace for him soon, i had grizzly gunworks chamber it in .223 wylde for shooting longer throated bullets. finished at 28". its sitting in my home made stock, and as you can see, its standing on its soon to be replacement.
so once everything was set up, i started load development. so luckily a local store had 80gr berger vld's in stock at their supplier, so i bought 300 to start testing. early on in development i knew they were going to work, so i bought everything the supplier had (900). the powder i have available to me is benchmark and h322. i decided to start with benchmark, because ive already been into the 8lb keg and all the h322 is still sealed.
the early ladder tests were not very impressive, but i managed to squeeze some 3/4 moa groups from 22.0gr at 200m, so i figured that was my charge, and started playing with seating depth. i found that a COL measured from the ogive at 2.020" (it might be 2.120 i cant remember i'll have to look at my load data tomorrow) gave me the results i was chasing. i don't have a chrony, but from my calculations i'm hovering around 2650fps.
i'm fortunate enough to have my dads farm within 10 min from where i load, so it allows me to load a few, shoot, go back and load and so forth. i bought 10 rail road ties, stacked them up and braced them, then got a backhoe and piled dirt in behind as my backstop. i think that should be sufficient.
so here are some 300m groups i shot earlier today, under pretty perfect conditions. the first group i have no idea what happened, but i changed my shooting position to a more comfortable position (i was laying on a prickler), i was adjusting my POI between groups as well.
group 2 and 4, if i did my math correct were 0.531 and 0.677 moa, and group 3 was something special.
so needless to say, i'm pretty happy with the results thus far.
also this is the first 5 shots i have ever taken at 500m. i was hoping to get my 600m come up but we were interrupted by the police again so we decided it was best to shut down for a while.
a little better picture of the replacement
well its finally all starting to pay off.
maynard was very kind to give me a maclennen 1-8 twist heavy palma barrel which i have to replace for him soon, i had grizzly gunworks chamber it in .223 wylde for shooting longer throated bullets. finished at 28". its sitting in my home made stock, and as you can see, its standing on its soon to be replacement.
so once everything was set up, i started load development. so luckily a local store had 80gr berger vld's in stock at their supplier, so i bought 300 to start testing. early on in development i knew they were going to work, so i bought everything the supplier had (900). the powder i have available to me is benchmark and h322. i decided to start with benchmark, because ive already been into the 8lb keg and all the h322 is still sealed.
the early ladder tests were not very impressive, but i managed to squeeze some 3/4 moa groups from 22.0gr at 200m, so i figured that was my charge, and started playing with seating depth. i found that a COL measured from the ogive at 2.020" (it might be 2.120 i cant remember i'll have to look at my load data tomorrow) gave me the results i was chasing. i don't have a chrony, but from my calculations i'm hovering around 2650fps.
i'm fortunate enough to have my dads farm within 10 min from where i load, so it allows me to load a few, shoot, go back and load and so forth. i bought 10 rail road ties, stacked them up and braced them, then got a backhoe and piled dirt in behind as my backstop. i think that should be sufficient.
so here are some 300m groups i shot earlier today, under pretty perfect conditions. the first group i have no idea what happened, but i changed my shooting position to a more comfortable position (i was laying on a prickler), i was adjusting my POI between groups as well.
group 2 and 4, if i did my math correct were 0.531 and 0.677 moa, and group 3 was something special.
so needless to say, i'm pretty happy with the results thus far.
also this is the first 5 shots i have ever taken at 500m. i was hoping to get my 600m come up but we were interrupted by the police again so we decided it was best to shut down for a while.
a little better picture of the replacement
