Playing with Loads - .243 Winchester and 95 gr. Berger VLD

[Browningguy]

I currently shoot a 12FV in .243 Winchester and had always wanted to try this bullet since it seems like a pretty good compromise between BC and velocity for 300-600 yard shooting. Unfortunately no matter what I tried I could not get it to shoot in the factory barrel (100 yard groups of 2-3" were common). I recently installed an 8 twist 28" Lothar Walther barrel and thought I would give them another try since I had a bunch left over from my previous experiments. This was the first try in this barrel so I only used H4350 powder and all of them seated well into the lands, no way to get these babys in a magazine with an OAL of 2.87". These were all loaded on a Forster CoAx press with a Forster full length sizing die, brass is Lapua with CCI BR2 primers. It was a pretty windy afternoon at the range yesterday, 10 gusting to 15 quartering right to left. and temperatures around 70.

I decided on 3 shots with each powder weight as it should give me a decent representative idea on grouping, and these were shot round robin style, one shot each working my way around the target so I wouldn't be worried about trying to shoot a tiny group. It was interesting that each powder charge shot progressively lower with lots of vertical dispersion, right up to the 41.5 gr. load which it seems to like a lot. For the next range trip I will load 5 rounds each in .2 grain increments from 41.4-42.4 and see where that leads me. In any case I'm really happy this bullet seems to work in this barrel, I was about to give up completely on VLD's. And by the way Berger gives a maximum charge of 42.4 grains with this powder/bullet combination.

1st target with 39.5 grains
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/jcm9371/24395grBergerload1.jpg

2nd Target 40 grains
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/jcm9371/24395grBergerload2.jpg

3rd Target 40.5 grains
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/jcm9371/24395grBergerload2.jpg

4th Target 41 grains
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/jcm9371/24395grBergerload4.jpg

5th Target 41.5 grains
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/jcm9371/24395grBergerload5.jpg

[airaddict]

Nice results. Now u should try every tenth between 41.5 and 42 and see what happens. Then u can tackle seating depth.

Brian

[Browningguy]

Thanks, I was going to try 2/10's from 41.4-42.4 (the max Berger recommends), after that if I am not happy I'll play with seating depth. I think I am about .020" jammed right now, can't go much more than that I don't believe so backing out will be the only choice. The last load only gave .135" vertical at 100 yards which is pretty good for me, even shooting off a rest and rear bag, and with the quartering wind we had yesterday I am very happy even with the final groups horizontal, I wasn't trying to hold off the wind at all, just keeping the same hold on the target.

[Dennis]

For what it's worth, my 243 never like Bergers, "many of my rifles do"

For some reason it loves Nossler NBT's and Sierra Match Kings, factory and hand loads, intersted, I will email you pictures of my load targets.

Just PM me.