Another test day at Wilton. For me it was 225 gr bullets breech seated over 15 gr of 2400. Shot very near the same as the 277 grainers with 17 gr of 2400, but with a lot less recoil. Last night I thought I'd try my wood spacer and slip-on Limbsaver pad again. This time I doubleface taped the wood spacer to the crescent buttplate. Stayed put all day. On the bench the added length of pull was not even noticeable. Gonna keep it for a while.
So, I started at 200 yds and worked my way out to 500 yds, recording scope settings along the way. The wind was howling on and off as well as changing direction regularly so not a day to attempt any group sizes. But when the conditions were the same the accuracy and repeatability was pretty impressive. It was enough to evoke a "WOW!" every so often out of Paul, who was spotting for me. 500 yds was what was going to tell the story on whether these little bullets would cut the mustard. In spite of the wind, they did a great job of maintaining windage. But I was getting vertical stringing that used most of the body on the ram. I would place 2 shots almost touching at the top of the back and then the next one would go into the belly, but at the same windage. Paul is very quiet and not good at calling conditions. Another issue at 500 is you are shooting over a short berm for the 200 yd .22 silhouette part of the range. Any head or tail wind will become vertical at that berm. But I don't think that was the problem.
I had my chrono set up and was watching the MV for every shot. The shots that went high had about 30-40 fps more MV than those that hit low. Because I am breech seating, neck tension is not in play here. Those of use that understand what could be happening tended to agree that I probably need to up the powder charge a bit. I think my next move is to go to my local club and bench the gun at 100 yds on paper on the protected range. I'm going to make up 5 round test loads and look for the best group. Then take that back to Wilton and have another go at 500 yds.
My shooting partner, Steve, brought his .30-30 Meachem with the new Hart barrel. For those who might not remember (I have severe CRS so I understand) Steve could not get that new barrel to shoot. I fixed his problems and made an M-die for him and delivered it yesterday so he could load for today. He was shooting while I was shooting and another good shooter, Craig was spotting for Steve. He kept looking over at me and smiling. When I looked at him he'd say, "She's shooting good". Nice thing to see was when Steve made a scope adjustment, the bullet impact showed the same adjustment. What he needs to do now is make some test loads and put them on paper. He said he's going to go up in 0.2 gr steps to see how they perform. I was truly pleased to see that rifle shoot well. I knew he was frustrated having a rifle with a new, top-notch barrel that would not shoot. I think the cockeyed GCs were the root of the problem and the mold not fully closing just contributed to the problem. Steve was a happy man when he left the club today.
I had brought my laptop and was running GRT on it so we could plot the loads to see how they compared with the chrono. Then others were curious, and I sat there pumping in numbers for various rifles and loads. I think several went home with plans to download the software tonight. What was nice to see was GRT was predicting the same MV that I was seeing on my chrono for my loads.
Paul had brought his Hepburn with him. It was a .40-65 that he had another member line the barrel to .32-40. He has not been able to get it to shoot. We talked about it and suspected that he was loading too hot a round. He also was using 2400 which is rapidly become the Kleenex powder at Wilton for cast bullet loads in rifles. We put his rounds over my chrono and they were doing 1638 on average. He only put 5 over the chrono. But those five had an SD of 12 fps which is not too bad. But they were all over the place. I ran his bullet in GRT and it predicted similar MV to what we were seeing. Craig said the Schuetzen guys are running in the mid 1500's for the .32-40. So, I kept changing the powder charge in GRT until I got a mid 1500's MV load. He's going to load some up and go up and down a few grains and give it another go.
So, it was another great day at Wilton. I think everyone left a little better informed and pretty much everyone left with a grin on their face. I did get another M-die job. But I'm used to that. The M-die is becoming a staple at Wilton as well. But I ran out of ratty dies to use to make them. So, now they have to provide a die for the mod. I don't charge anybody for this. If I did, it would become a job and I don't want a job. I specify that it has to use a 1/2-20 thread for the adjusting stem so I can use a Gr 8 bolt to machine the plug. I'm starting to think that I should just go to Fastenal and buy a bay of 1/20-20 bolts to have on hand.