Best bullet weight for my 110 Hunter 6.5CM 24"

[Pasq]

Looking for the bullet weight that my 110 Hunter in 6.5CM is gonna like the most. Anyone have the same rifle? If so, what does it like? Going to start shooting groups. Looking to not waste money on ammo it definitely won't like. TIA.

[Fuj']

General rule if it's an 8 twist barrel, The 140's are pretty much standard. Prior to ditching
everything Creedmoor, I was working with 130 class bullets and got better results. But it
will depend on what your twist rate is, and 8 is usually what is used. If loading, my barrels
prefered the 140 RDF Noslers and the 130 Sierra HPBT's.

[CFJunkie]

I have 3 6.5mm CMs Savages - two with 26-inch barrels and one with a 24 inch barrel.
The two 26-in barrels really like 142 SMKs and 147 ELD-Ms but shoot 140s (ELD-Ms, Berger Match, LR and Hybrid, Nosler RDFs) almost as well.
One of the two shoots 130 TMKs and 130 Hornady Match well also.

The third rifle with the 24-inch barrel likes the 130 TMKs and ELD-Ms best.
It also shoots 140 ELD-Ms almost as well but 142 SMKs, 143 ELD-X, and 147 ELD-Ms not as well.

I would say that it isn't the model that makes any difference, but the particular barrel.
I would recommend that you try different weights and bullet shapes to see what shoots best.
All my 6.5mm CMs prefer the secant ogive shaped bullets over the older tangent bullet shapes.
Example, all shoot the 140 secant shaped bullets much better than the 140 SMK bullets with a tangent shape.
The amount of bullet body touching the lands seems to make a difference, at least in my rifles.

[charlie b]

Did you 'jump' all those bullets or were any jammed?

I got some 147 ELDM's for my first crack at a 6.5CM load. I should be ready to shoot it next month.

[CFJunkie]

charlie b,
Not sure whether your question was directed at Fuj or me.

With a new rifle, I generally start with a jump around 0.020 and work around it to see what the barrel prefers.
As the rifle barrel ages, I try to follow the chamber erosion to maintain the preferred barrel jump, but all of my best rifles now have shot between 5,000 rounds (6.5mm CM and .308s) to 6,700 rounds (.223) so the barrel erosion is pretty significant.

With my .223 I can't track jump with lighter bullets because the light bullets are shorter and they now fall out of the neck before they touch the lands.
The heavy bullets can still be seated way out, but I have to watch for signs of losing consistent neck tension.
I am seeing that with my 69s now, so I have dropped the seating back to achieve a consistent neck tension.
The 73s and 77s are still in the zone so I am still tracking jump.
But if I stay around 0.010 of the objective jump, I don't see any real change in accuracy from load to load.
The group averages remain around group average with a bullet powder combination.
I try to maintain consistency but session to session that always is a challenge.
To track consistency, I try to keep my shooter induced variation as low as possible - right now my Standard Deviation for groups sizes within a load is well under my goal (under 0.050 inches). Last session I managed SDs of 0.006 for one load and 0.021 for another. Some days I manage to get it right. There are many days when I don't.

Since I measure everything for every load, and record every group, I can usually find a seating depth that continues to work, even if erosion causes me to give up on maintaining a jump. For the lighter bullets, I am getting really good accuracy at jumps far from the "perfect jump" that used to work when the barrel was new.
Actually, I have found that there are "jump sweet spots as far away as 0.180 from the perfect jump for certain bullets. With lots of groups down the barrel, you can find those things by doing analysis of bullets with a variety of seating depth measurements.

So far, I haven't seen any loss in overall accuracy by comparing recent and early group averages, but I expect that soon I will be changing barrels on a couple of rifles to see it I can find improvement.

[charlie b]

Thanks. I suspected that and had the same issues with my .223.

The Bergers I have used in the 6mmBR and .308 liked to be jammed. But, the Hornady ELD's preferred a jump, like the SMK's I've used. I figured I'd start off that way with the 6.5CM as well.

And, yes, I am still a major factor in group sizes. With the 6BR I am consistently below 0.5 now with more groups in the .2 and .3 range. Getting into the nitty gritty details now :)