Followed instructions, I'm going to have to.......
turn in my "Man" card.
I have this .243 Win that I built that's been sitting on the back burner while I've been working out of state for most of last year. Anyway I'm currently furloughed, but prepared for it, so I have a ton of time to catch up on my reloading and shooting. I have a bunch of heavy bullets bought for it because I twisted it 1:7 to shoot 115 grain Berger and DTAC's.
Data on these bullets is hard to find online and since the only Berger's I own are for this rifle I decided to send them an email instead of buying their book for load data. I was surprised how fast they responded, it only took about four hours and I had the data for the 115's in my sweaty hands. They sent as well a PDF on how to load the VLD's, here's a little excerpt from it that I followed.
Quote:
Load 24 rounds at the following COAL if you are a hunter (pulling a bullet out of the case with your rifling while in the field can be a hunt ending event which must be avoided) or a competition shooter who worries about pulling a bullet during a match:
1. .010 off the lands (jump) 6 rounds
2. .050 off the lands (jump) 6 rounds
3. .090 off the lands (jump) 6 rounds
4. .130 off the lands (jump) 6 rounds
Shoot 2 (separate) 3 shot groups in fair conditions to see how they group. The remarkable reality of this test is that one of these 4 COALs will outperform the other three by a considerable margin. Once you know which one of these 4 COAL shoots best then you can tweak the COAL +/- .002 or .005. Taking the time to set this test up will pay off when you find that your rifle is capable of shooting the VLD bullets very well (even at 100 yards).
I loaded up the loads just like the instructions said. I was only able to shoot 100 yards today as the wind was kicking and the 100 yard bench gave me more shelter to shoot. I had a steady L-R 5-15 mph wind at the 300 yard bench and gusts up to 25 mph.
The rifle in question was my Steven's 200 that I built. I'm not going to say it shot well because it was a Savage product. I spent around $1800 building this rifle and it had better shoot regardless of what action was used. The only thing original on it is the action and bolt body, the rest has been replaced.
http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r...1383949075.jpg
http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r...1383949079.jpg
The load I chose to test with was 40 grains of RL-22, CCI 200 primers, and Winchester brass. The PDF didn't say what load to start the test with, so I chose a middle of the road load from the published data. The test took a little over four hours to complete as I was shooting three other rifles as well in between groups. I recorded the MV of all three round groups, and only had my chronograph fail to read the one three shot group in the .050, that is why you see duplicate readings in the exact same order on my spreadsheet.
http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r...ootingdata.jpg
The first .010 group I messed up on and shot two different targets on accident but it was much larger than the subsequent groups so I didn't include it.
http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r...gerVLD-1-1.jpg
I'm very happy I followed the instructions, and the next test will be at 300 yards.
