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

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/v1...ergerload1.jpg

2nd Target 40 grains
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ergerload2.jpg

3rd Target 40.5 grains
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ergerload2.jpg

4th Target 41 grains
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ergerload4.jpg

5th Target 41.5 grains
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ergerload5.jpg

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

Brian

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.

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.