Ladder test.

[semtav]

If you listen to SEMTAV much at all you may soon find yourself diapering otherwise perfectly good bullets and pillaging landfills.

You forgot about carousing second hand stores!!

[desert deuce]

SEMTAV, there are several of your idiosyncrasies that I don't routinely mention, for various reasons, mostly out of pity.

[ian45662]

Put the ladder loads to the test. @ 200 yards. Right out of the gate the little 365 grain Creedmoor bullet shined. I picked 52 grains based on what I saw in the ladder test and that was a really nice load. Just over an MOA at 200. Can’t really ask for much more. I then tried the same load but with some neck tension. About .001. It wasn’t to bad other but had more horizontal disposition that the slip fit bullets but still what I would consider a good group. I kept the neck tension with the 3F load but looking maybe I should have left them slip fit. May revisit that but there was only shoot a 15 fps gain on the average. I still had 5 rounds left over of the 1.5F slip fit bullet so I fired them to see if the goodness was repeatable and sure enough it was. There is a shot in the bottom left of that group that I pulled but even with that it’s still a good one. The 1.5 had an average speed of 1280 which might be a problem at the ram line in Friendship. We will have to experiment with some hotter loads of 3F to try and get that to at least 1320. If nothing else we may have to get a Creedmoor with 2 reduced bands. The money bullets had the speed I was looking for but the accuracy was terrible. finally seeing this on paper explains why Deana Galloway Egbert scores went up as soon as she started shooting these Creedmoor bullets. So now we can put these money bullets to bed for now and focus on the Creedmoor bullets. We might go out to Friendship next weekend and try this load on some silhouettes. Deans had her best scores with this bullet but she wasn’t shooting this load. So maybe the 2024 season will bring her a AAA score? I think that might be the best group I have shot with a 38.

[ian45662]

The rest of the pictures

[ian45662]

I didn’t post the target with the money bullets because they were so bad. I would have thought that they would shot better than that. Some of them looked good in the ladder test. As I was punching out spent primers the stem wouldn’t go into one of the fired cases. I looked at the case and that thing had grown a lot. You could start to see rifling marks. So then I measured the brass I used with the moneys and a lot of them were long. .005-.050 past my chamber length. Well hell that’s why they shot like shit. Have to figure out what made that happen and shoot the money bullets again.

[Kurt]

Ian,

Both of my .38-50 rifles the brass stretch. This stopped when I stopped annealing the brass after the brass were formed. Now that the brass has hardened again the stretching has pretty much stopped.
Arnie gave me some GG bullets to try and one pulled the case neck off with the Graff brass that was annealed before loading.

[ian45662]

I will keep that in mind as this brass was freshly annealed. I don’t think it did it with the lower powered Creedmoor load.

[desert deuce]

I know this appears to be apostasy, rising almost to heresy, BUT, for competition consider trimming brass 5-10 thousandths shorter than chamber length. How much shorter seems to depend on the individual rifle. Money bullets in particular. In fact, you can usually see the problem clearly when a bullet will not fit in the mouth of a fire formed case. There is a reason for that. Ever wonder why 45-70 RP factory brass comes 2.07-2.08 in length?
The last thing you want to happen at a match, when you are on the clock, is a case separation. Been there, done that, this is how I avoid that. Even then you may see case stretching, so then consider if you should trim back another 2 thou. Every chamber is different, even if cut with the same reamer.

Bring on the clubs and pitchforks.

[ian45662]

Actually I do trim them .005 short of the chamber. I have had much bigger problems with brass that was to long as apposed to brass that was supposedly to short. I was wiping twice with these moneys so a wet camber could also have been playing into it. The graf brass I have is also heavier than the Remington so if I use that it may help also.

[desert deuce]

Speaking primarily to the .44 & .45 calibers (especially the 2.4 & 2.6 length cases) a wet chamber in my world does cause case separations. So much so that I keep a broken case remover in my shooting box for both calibers.

[bpcr shooter]

Speaking primarily to the .44 & .45 calibers (especially the 2.4 & 2.6 length cases) a wet chamber in my world does cause case separations. So much so that I keep a broken case remover in my shooting box for both calibers.

Found this to be true in a 44-100, 45-100. Havent had an issue in my 90.....yet, but like you I keep a case remover in my box now just incase.

[JonnyV]

I've had 6 total case separations with my 90. Am thinking that a wet chamber played the major role in it. Also wondered if a piece of brass was too long, could it get caught by the bullet and dragged into the bore? In any case, I am now having two new barrels made up for this rifle with tight chambers and I religiously trim every piece before annealing. Also pestered Bryan for five new bore mops. Problem seems resolved, but 10 days of shooting at the DI match will tell the tale...