Shooting groups

Ken Hartlein · Post by **Ken Hartlein** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 10:24 am

I went to the range this week to shoot some groups with different powders in my rifle. I shot two five shot groups of Goex cartridge, Swiss 1 1/2, and Goex FFF. I cleaned the barrel, and shot a fouling shot then shot groups 1, 2, and 3, then cleaned the barrel again and shot another fouling shot then shot groups 4, 5, and 6. I was shooting at 100 yards from a bench using a homemade set of bench styx but forgot my rear sand bags so the buttstock was off the shoulder only. I loaded all the groups exactely the same using 67 grains of powder weighed then through a 24" drop tube, starline brass fireformed, CCI BR2 primers, Walters .060 veggie wads, Lyman 457132 bullets that weighed within .4 grains in each group. The compression varied with each powder because I used 67 grains of each powder. The bullet was seated to .590 below the case mouth. Results:
group 1 cartridge 1 5/8"W x 1" H
group 2 swiss 2 /3/8W x 3" H
group 3 FFF 3 1/8"W x 3 5/8"H

Cleaned, fired 1 fouling shot

group 4 swiss 2 3/8"W x 2 7/8"H
group 5 cartridge 7/8"W x 2 1/8"H
group 6 FFF 2 1/2"W x 2 1/2"H

Looks like the cartridge shoots pretty good in this rifle, like I said I forgot my sand bags so I was shooting off the shoulder and I'm going back to try it again with just swiss and cartridge. The compression varied because of the different column heights of the diferent powders, the FFF wasn't compressed much at all, the swiss more and the cartridge even more. Very interesting, and fun.

Rickd · Post by **Rickd** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 12:33 pm

Ken. One suggestion would be to load the Swiss with less powder so that the compression is in the range of .030. Goex generally shoots best with heavy compression in the range of .350, while Swiss generally performs best with almost no compression at all. That should give you a better indication of how each powder will perform in your rifle. Keep on havin fun!

Ken Hartlein · Post by **Ken Hartlein** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 2:25 pm

Rickd, you are right, I am going to drop the swiss load so it's only compressed .100, I think it would be more fair to the swiss load since I have heard so much about swiss not shooting well when compressed. I compress the cartridge about .250. One thing I found to be kinda interesting was that either swiss or cartridge gave about the same group whether it was the first group shot with a clean barrel or after 5 shots behind the other group. I did use 5 good long blows on the blow tube between each shot and I use an excellant lube, the one that Lee Stone gave me the recipe for. Even after 15 shots the fouling was soft, no problem chambering and three patches with 1:10 ballistol/water and it was clean.

Omaha Poke · Post by **Omaha Poke** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 2:48 pm

Ken, you might try more Swiss and more compression

. I have been testing Swiss 2F and have worked up a load with a 551 gr bullet backed by 66 grs of Swiss 2F, and this load is compressed .2015 (or 3/16"). Yesterday at Machias, WA 500 yd any position match I fired a 426 out of a possible 450. Three 15 round strings. My best was a 147 out of 150 with 6X's. Might have done better, but during the first string the temp was about 65 degrees with 84% humidity and my glasses kept fogging up and I couldn't see for beans. Too many people say that Swiss doesn't like to be compressed without ever trying compression.

When the cases from this load are deprimed and dropped into warm soapy water there is very little residue that washes out, and the cases are very clean, indicating a very clean burning load.

I am going to try some loads with Swiss 1 1/2fg this next week in my .45-90, starting at 85 grs. Randy

Ken Hartlein · Post by **Ken Hartlein** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 4:53 pm

Omaha, thanks. I think that is about what I was compressing the swiss, I was using 67 grains of 1 1/2 and 67 grains of cartridge, the swiss column was not quite as high as the cartridge, I just messed up and forgot to measure the compression, but you can bet I will the next time. I'm going to try some swiss compressed 0.00 and some compressed .250 and see what happens!

Ray Newman · Post by **Ray Newman** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 8:06 pm

Omaha: your experince w/ Swiss is similar to that of a Fellow Shooter. Seems as if he very gradually increased compression & his groups improved.

As an aside, I think in one of Garbe's columns he said that w/ Swiss, you still need to tinker w/ the load. IIRC, he said that some charges might require more compression.

In your case, the combination of a heavy bullet & compression eesults in a very good combustion. What's the lube?

I think what we seeing & hearing is that many Shooters stick w/ a successful Shooter's load & don't experiment or are afraid to do so. Or they just accept what is said w/o furhter inquiry....

Omaha Poke · Post by **Omaha Poke** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 11:39 pm

Ray, the lube I use is one that I made about a 10# batch of. If I remember correctly it is 40% beeswax, 40% almond oil, 10% neatsfoot oil, 9% left over SPG and Black Magic, and 1% lanolin. It has worked for me very well in both winter and summer for over a year now. I still have enough left for about two more years so I won't start experimenting with something new until next year.

Randy

Ray Newman · Post by **Ray Newman** » Mon Jul 05, 2004 12:01 pm

Randy: interesting list of ingredients as it's the 1st time I’ve seen almond oil mentioned as a lube ingredient.

No “eye of newt?”

Any quasi-secret incantation that you mutter while mixing it up….

Radar · Post by **Radar** » Mon Jul 05, 2004 1:20 pm

Ken,
Some of the folks on here are saying to use more compression with the Swiss and I do not agree with that. I done some load testing back in January with the new lots of Swiss and found that my 45-90 and 45-70 did not like Swiss compressed more than .130 . Both rifles did very well using about .085. However, as the weather became hotter in April and May, I noticed I was getting fouling during the matches. I was blow tubing about 5x then I increased to 8x then to 12x. Now, I dont know about you but I cant handle blowing 12x and then trying to get a good sight picture. I went back to the drawing board and decreased my compression to .035. Accuracy at my 500 meter target showed about 7" of vertical stringing and 9" horizontal. I just shot at a match Saturday and was blow tubing 4x throughout the whole match. I shot 9 rams and had no vertical issues, so I really think that a more compressed Swiss load may cause trouble during the hotter weather. I have been wrong before and I may be wrong now but this was my experience with the more compressed loads.

Radar

LJBass · Post by **LJBass** » Mon Jul 05, 2004 1:51 pm

Radar,
What lot of Swiss were you testing?
Regards, LJ

Omaha Poke · Post by **Omaha Poke** » Mon Jul 05, 2004 3:16 pm

Ray, the reason I use almond oil, is that it has to reach a much higher temperature before it begins scorching than any other oil, such as canola, peanut, safflower, etc. It is used in high temperature (very hot) cooking. It seems to work for me. I am going to try the lube recipe that Larry Basset, LJBASS, uses. He is a great shooter, and his lube seems to work well in all weather also. Randy

Ken Hartlein · Post by **Ken Hartlein** » Mon Jul 05, 2004 7:33 pm

Radar, you might just be right, I think the new swiss burns hotter so in a hotter climet it might make a difference. All I know for sure is that the cartridge shot a BUNCH better in my rifle, in fact if I threw out one of the flyers in the cartridge group I would have had a 5/8 x 7/8 inch group. That's plenty good enough for me, especially since the cartridge is USA and almost half the price of swiss, but I'm still going to experiment a little, what the heck, that's half the fun.

Ken Hartlein · Post by **Ken Hartlein** » Mon Jul 05, 2004 7:38 pm

Omaha, that is some good shooting, the "nutt" behind the butt must have been doing a good job that day for sure, for sure.

deerhuntsheatmeup · Post by **deerhuntsheatmeup** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 5:18 am

Ken,

Just yesterday I was doing some load testing with Goex Cart at the Terapin Creek FES Range. I shot some Really good groups on the rams and turkeys and pigs. Postell bullet similar to yours. Also, I was wiping after 35-40 shots with normal fouling and no loss of accuracy.

FWIW, Later, David Barfield

Radar · Post by **Radar** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 4:58 pm

LJBass

I am currently using the 200.603 lot of Swiss 1.5.

Ken,

I have used Goex in the past and it does quite well, my only complaint with it was the variance from lot to lot. I am sure Goex is getting better with quality control and may cut into the Swiss market. I have tried some different brands of powder (Elephant, Wano and Schuetzen) and some of them are extremely dirty. Some folks say you need to "sock" the Wano or Schuetzen to get it to perform, my answer to that is I dont have time to ruin my socks.

Swiss does not seem to like magnum primers either. You may have to go to a standard primer to get better results.

Radar

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Shooting groups

Shooting groups

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