.308 Win - 175gr Sierra Match King with IMR 4064 (part 2)

welcome back folks to the seedy underbelly of YouTube where we talk about the topic of hobby small arms ammunition manufacturing and today we are going to continue to thumb our nose at Authority and talk about this topic by continuing our quest in 308 Winchester to duplicate this stuff this is the federal gold medal match with 175 grain sierra matchking hopefully you saw the last video where we shot this stuff and we picked a powder in IMR 4064 which is exactly what we think federal uses in their ammo and we kind of started low worked our way up here's the load data from the last video our max charge in that video was forty two point zero grains that gave us right about twenty five hundred and forty five feet per second the best news is that the best accuracy we saw was at that max charge of forty two point zero grains now in the last video we made up this chart to kind of help us protect predict about what the charge weight we would need for this load is and it came out just a little bit above forty two point five grains so the plan for today's video is just continue working our way up with IMR forty sixty for our starting charge today is going to be our max charge from the last video we're going to duplicate that forty two point zero grain load and then we're going to move up in point two grain increments which puts us maxing out at forty two point eight grains which happens to be exactly Sierra's maximum charge with IMR forty sixty four there should be good stuff and also in the last video we were shooting Lapua brass this is an old batch of brass that has quite a few firings on it and isn't that far from retirement so if we bang it up and tear up the brass with gas adjustments or just general problems in breaking in our new barrel we wouldn't have to worry too much because it was an old batch of brass now we showed in the last video what our next brash choice is going to be this is going to be some IMI match seven six two by 51 brass that was generously donated by a viewer but I ran a poll to see what you guys thought about the brass situation whether I should do one more video with the Lapua and kind of finish out this IMR 4064 load with Lapua or if we should just go ahead and switch over to the IMI the results were 70/30 in favor of continuing in today's video with the Lapua brass so thanks to you guys for chipping in on the poll we had 221 votes 150 people wanted to stick with Lapua 154 and 67 wanted to switch I couldn't make up my own mind so I'm glad you guys helped me those of you that voted to switch to the IMI don't worry man we're going to circle back around and we're going to shoot IMR 4064 in this brass no doubt about it so no worries there now another suggestion that was made in the comments section of the last video was to go ahead and load up the federal brass that we recovered from the factory ammo and see how it performs at forty two point four grains because that's what we recovered when I tore one of these guys apart but the thing to keep in mind is I only tore apart one for a box of factory ammo like this you're going to see several tenths of charged weight variation no doubt about it so forty two point for grains is what we pulled out of the one we pulled so I don't know I think we'll go ahead and do that today I'll load up ten of these pieces of brass with the forty two point for grains and we'll just see what happens we are using a different primer of course than you know the federal would be a federal primer we're using CCI primers so that will be one difference as we use the federal brass to see how that charge shoots alright I think I've talked enough one thing I want to do I've got Lapua brass i've got federal brass and i've got our new i am i match brass let's do some quick case capacity measurements alright first of all i've got three pieces of brass that i went ahead and put a primer in one of each type now a one piece sample is not exactly exactly the best in this case i'm not really looking for minor differences i'm looking for major major differences so i just want to test one of them really quick first of all we need a scale and we need to turn that scale on can you guys read that alright this is the piece of Lapua it's starting out at one seventy nine point three we need to bring in some water and fill this guy up oops it snuck up on me working around a camera's a lot of fun alright so i dry it off the body of the case which is important if you've got water running down the side of the case or whatever it'll throw off your measurement but that's where we're at right now and of course whenever I want clear I can't get it but full water and a little bit concave right now so this this little syringe I'm using I'm just going to try to get one more little drop in there what what too much siphon off a little bit sometimes when I get like this I'll just kind of get my finger and continue to do that until the levels down to where I want it I think that looks just about right yep she's full so now that's way this guy two thirty five point three can you guys even see that probably not all right so if we go to thirty five point three minus one seventy nine point three we get fifty six so I'll tell you what let me do these other two cases without the camera in my way and then we'll tally up the results all right here's how the numbers came out the Lapua did end up having the most capacity followed by the federal 308 brass I also pulled out a piece of star line that I had fired in this gun it was still dirty I don't think that would screw up the measurements too much but it came third at fifty four point four grains and the least case capacity was the IMI match at fifty three point four grains one extremely important thing to keep in mind here the IMI brass has not been fired its brand new brass all of this other stuff is fired brass from my gun so this IMI is gonna pick up quite a bit of capacity and I would guess after being fired it'll probably be pretty close to the star line now a couple of the ways to look at this if we look at it as like percentage change the federal is 1.1 percent less capacity than the Lapua Star Line's 2.9 and the IMI is 4.6 percent less that's a lot right four point six percent so here's another way to look at it I pulled out some Alliant power Pro two thousand mr it's a spherical powder what you see here is a 56.0 grain charge of 2000 mr you can see i am i right up to the top of the neck and Lapua a pretty good ways down it so these are significant differences this is why this gets to be a big deal and something we need to keep in mind of as we move forward with 308 and you as an audience are gonna have to keep in mind a load you see me test or work up here with Lapua if you try it in military brass you might just get yourself into trouble that much less case capacity is a serious pressure difference right alright enough of that I think what I want to talk about next is brass resizing now what I've got I want to look at first is this is a piece of Lapua brass that we fired in our JP barrel so this guy has been fire form to the JP this is a piece that is has been fire formed to my tikka bolt-action rifle so I want to take a few measurements and compare them I've got several examples of each the first measurement I want to look at is just kind of like right here below the shoulder with the JP brass what 456 take a couple measurements in a few different spots yep looks like 456 we'll grab a second piece just to make sure it is 456 now the tika 456 and 456 so these two chambers looks like right about there we've got the same number so let's flip it around and look at the base right about there man my camera is being stupid it doesn't want to focus properly for 73 this is still the tikka brass for 72 and the JP is for 71 and the second piece is for 71 so as far as body dimensions go our JP barrel appears to be just a tiny little bit tighter than the tikka but very very close to one another so the next place to look is headspace cartridge bass appear on to the shoulder with the D 400 insert in our Hornady headspace comparator alright let's get this guy zeroed looks good here's our tikka one point six two to one point six to one and one point six to two so we'll call it one point six to two for the tikka for the JP here's a one point six two five one point six two six one point six two six good so the JP Barrel has gotten around four thousandths more head space than my tikka so they're both pretty skinny in the body but the JP is a little bit taller now this can be a problem because the longer your head space the higher out your die needs to be so you don't bump your shoulder too much and what you can run into sometimes is that when you adjust your die to properly bump your shoulder a cup thousandth the body of the case just doesn't get far enough into the dye to size the body as much as you need that makes sense so this is kind of a this can be a tricky combo where we seem to have a reasonably tight bodied chamber but headspace may be a touch on the long side when compared to my tikka I'm not saying it's out of spec this I bought the bolt with the barrel JP heads faced it I'm certainly not saying it's out of spec I'm just saying that it can be a tough a tough situation on the sizing guy side of things and someone in the comment section of the last video actually mentioned they have a JP Barrel and they needed to go to a small base resizing die because the chamber was too tight and he was getting malfunctions I think he said so so far so good right I mean our guns been running fine but if we don't do run into function problems we'll have to speak more on this subject and a small base die could be the answer so I've already set up my die here's a piece of Lapua that I have resized so let me show you the differences in our measurements the headspace right around that one point six to five number and the resized piece is down around one point six to one I think is what we're going to see here with most of these guys one point six to one so I bumped these around four thousandths of an inch I might have gone two or three but I decided to go ahead to four and my camera battery died where were we I think we were talking about yeah the head space on my resizing die setting I may be bumping a thousandth or two more than I'm then I would like but I just wanted to get that case up into the die there was a bit of space between the shell holder and the bottom of the resizing die right so I just wanted to do what I could to get it up in there you might ask yourself okay well your 308 die how much does it resize when you screw it all the way down here's a piece that I had screwed down enough I was getting firm contact with the shell holder but not caming over too hard right just kind of a nice full resize from that die and I'm getting one point six one five so hopefully you kind of get what I'm talking about here but the ultimate test is gonna be the body dimensions see what did we say here below the shoulder 456 our sized piece is 453 good so it looks like we've got enough clearance there at the shoulder now let's look down here near the web of the case sized piece is 470 or 469 get it in here just a little bit better yeah let's call it 470 and our pre sized piece is 471 down there so I think we're good you know on our re size and like I said so far we haven't had any function problems that I've related to brass so I think my die is tight enough to do the job but if you're going through a similar sort of thing and having function issues this exercise of comparing you're fired brass versus what's coming out of your die can be important on deciding whether you need a small base sizing die alright folks we've talked about this stuff enough we've covered the important part of sizing here we covered bullet seating in the last video the die is still in the press from that video I'm not going to touch it I'll double-check the readings but nothing exciting there so I think we should just jump forward over all of the boring stuff and go ahead and get out on the range so of course it's been sunny and beautiful all day long until I come out here to shoot and now it's looking like some storms are rolling in hopefully they'll stay away our gun is a narrow precision m5e one set up with a JP super match barrel this is a 20-inch barrel with a 1 in 10 twist everything is just as it was whenever we finished the last video the suppressor is still on the gas is still tuned for suppressor use kind of we never quite got it where we wanted it in the last video so I'm gonna be continuing to tweak on the gas a little bit here while we've got the suppressor on the first load I want to shoot is in the federal brass that we recovered from the factory ammo this is 42.4 grains of 40 64 I think the only difference in this load should be the primer we're using a CC eye primer where they of course would have used the federal primer so let's see how this does we'll use it to warm up the gun it is completely cold and dirty like I said I haven't touched it since the last video let's get started well one thing I do want to change really quick I want to move the scope one minute to the right our groups in the last video were just a touch left so alright let's get started so that's not a terrible way to start our velocity 25 90 which matches the factory ammo velocity almost perfectly it's just a couple feet per second higher than we saw the group wasn't anything spectacular but then again it wasn't embarrassing either not bad for a cold bore I guess so let's move on to our reloads first up is going to be 40 2.0 grains this is a duplication of the last load we shot in the last video which was twenty five hundred and forty five feet per second so we'll see if we get similar numbers today dang it alright I didn't like to pull back so I need another gas adjustment so we seem to have a bit of a velocity jump today that 42.0 grain load is twenty-five hundred seventy four feet per second where last time it was 25 45 that's pretty weird well it's starting to rain so I need to make a decision of whether to grab the cameras and run inside or try and do one more group before I have to do that yeah let's go ahead and shoot forty two point two grains [Music] yeah I think I reached the point where I've got the gas just about perfect the guns just barely running barely locking the bolt back but I'm still seeing ejector mark damage on the brass so it's unfortunate and there were several people down in the comments of the last video that said they had given up on trying to shoot a suppressed AR 10 because it tears up brass so I hope that's not always gonna happen I mean it appears to be that way here with IMR 4064 there's just no gas setting that makes it work but maybe other powders will be better all right it's still raining but I think it's just gonna be a sprinkle I'm actually seeing some Sun peek out so maybe it'll blow over I don't know take a break and look at the radar all right so the rain has passed and I don't think any of my cameras are broken so let's see where were we okay man so our velocity is just higher today I'm not sure why that is 25 81 feet per second for that last group no I guess our initial estimate in the last video was forty two point five greens would be 25 ninety so I guess we're not too far off whatever yeah whatever let's get back to shooting and of course that last shot screwed it all up dang it so the velocity looks a little bit low on that one you know so the rain did come through it's ten or fifteen degrees cooler now than it was but also the first shot in that group was twenty-five hundred thirty three feet per second so that one shot kind of makes me question that number all right we're moving on forty two point six grains is next all right folks now we're talking that is a very good group and I have no explanation for this velocity three of the four charges now have been twenty five hundred seventy four feet per second it makes no sense so last up is forty two point eight grains let's see what happens a little malfunction here doesn't seem to have screwed anything up all right so that's pretty good showing for the suppressor the velocity finally jumped up to 25 96 but maybe we're in one of those mythical regions where like 42 to 42.6 there's not a lot of velocity change I don't know I'll be interested to see if the same thing happens when we take the suppressor off so what I need to do is let this guy cool down long enough for me to get that done so let's do that okay so our suppressor has been taken off I've reset our adjustable gas block to the setting that was working so well in the last video 5 turns out from bottom to out on the Jaypee adjustable gas block so first up is going to be our 42.4 grain load in the federal brass so let's see how it does ok gun didn't go off yep didn't get a round in the chamber let's try one more yeah empty chamber again so I better open up the gas a touch more okay let's try this okay so that one was about 30 feet per second slower than the one we tested earlier when we were suppressed but I think something else is going on here and to be honest I bet it has to do with my cronograph because when the rain came I tore down my cronograph and took it out and went up I set it back up maybe the angle is a little bit different that's a possibility I don't know but okay we're moving on to our Lapua brass first up is 42.0 grains see how it does yeah so the chronograph only gave us three good readings that time I'm running out of daylight here so we might not be able to trust our chronograph readings from it from this point forward next video we're probably going to need to introduce the magneto speed chronograph and see how that guy affects groups with this barrel hopefully it'll be minimal and we can switch to using the magneto speed but that doesn't help us today all right next up 42.2 grains yeah our current graph is useless at this point but you know what the last video we already proved that the velocities really weren't changing as we added and removed the suppressor so the numbers we got from earlier with the suppressor are fine to tell us what's going on hopefully even though they were a little bit weird next up 42.4 grains 42.6 all right last up 42.8 grains [Music] all right folks we made it before it got dark good let's get packed up get back to the bench all right so this is gonna be a confusing batch of brass to talk about I guess and the conversation might just stay confusing here with 308 here's a couple pieces that I shot suppress see a little burr raised up on that guy that one seems to be mostly okay that guy has a burr as well it it continued throughout all right that's just the norm no matter what and it didn't really seem to change much as we increased our charge weight today so whatever the only thing we're really left to look at here to judge pressure is the primer and the primers seem just fine nice and rounded you know maybe there's an argument here for using the softest primer we could find or a softer primer than the CCI 200 s which have a reasonably hard cup if brass damage at this point in our learning process is not going to be a reliable way to help judge pressure then yeah a soft primer that'll flatten on us might not be a bad idea now here are three pieces from our max charge without the suppressor now in the last video we tuned the gas just right and didn't have any pressure signs on any of our brass when the gun was unsuppressed what I decided to do today turn the gas block way up I didn't really talk about it all out on the range it was getting dark we didn't have a lot of time to for me to flap my gums so the point of the test turning the gas way up was to see whether this barrel and the gas port diameter and all that garbage I wanted to find out whether an adjustable gas block was really necessary some brass came out looking fine these blue marks I should have mentioned that some of these had ejector marks from the previous video and I've marked them blue so any damage that is not in a blue area like that big old nasty ejector marked there that one seemed mostly okay yeah that one got a little burr on it that is all from today and that was with the gas turned up without the suppressor so it looks like suppressed or not an adjustable block isn't a bad idea so I think that's about it for brass the ar-10 certainly seems to be a challenge when it comes to Reed and brass we're gonna have to learn as we go all right let's look at the groups and the velocities separately and we'll do it all at once like let's start with the group size can't help but be disappointed we only shot one group under an inch today that was our 42.4 grain load without the suppressor which is the second line and it's funny that it's right beside the worst group of the day forty two point six grains without the suppressor at one point seven seven eight inches so folks I think we'd have to call this a little bit disappointing or quite a bit disappointing so we did see our best group with the suppressor at forty two point six grains one point zero to five inches and without the suppressor it was forty two point four so maybe that forty two point five region is what we should maybe pick as a load I guess I mean if the groups weren't good but at least they were consistent I guess there's not there's not a clear winner on today's target at least let's look at the limited amount of velocity data we do have our best light daylight you know frost for our chronograph to work was was the top row with the suppressor and that's where we got those strangely consistent readings in that twenty five seventy four to 2581 range for our first four groups you know I thought about trying to pull out all the raw numbers of each shot and maybe we put it on a chart and see if maybe we can see something but I got to be honest I don't trust the chronograph from today I think we had a temperature swing that was significant we had wildly varying light you know some of these were in Sonlight and others were extremely dark so I just don't trust I think we got some wonky readings today so unfortunately I don't know what to take out of all out of all this I think the next video we introduced the magneto speed and we see if the magneto speed seems to be affecting groups at all because you know looking back at all the groups and the groups from the last video and it doesn't seem to be making a whole lot of difference whether we have the suppressor on or off there's not enough point of impact shift to worry about at a hundred yards the velocity is the same in both scenarios so I just don't think it's making much difference next video will strap the magneto speed chronograph on there and kind of look at the same thing see if it makes any difference most of my other barrels it doesn't make any difference at all and we use it most of the time here on the channel so hopefully we'll find the same thing here big heavy profile but I got a feeling it'll be just fine so I think we need one more video with IMR 4064 and I think we ought to maybe tweak this overall linked a little bit two point eight inches hasn't really given us the accuracy we're looking for with the with the 175 grain match king so it's time to play around with that a little bit so we'll just make that the main subject of the next video but I've started to think about what powder we should move on to next after IMR 4064 and other than our disappointing accuracy the biggest thing I've taken out of this first couple videos is this brass damage situation when we put on the suppressor so that's what's been going through my head is wondering whether somewhere along the list of powders available to us are some options that will that will work okay suppressed and the ar-10 so I've come up with three three candidates for our next test powder and we're going to run a poll the first is I'm our 4895 should be just about perfect for this scenario it's just a touch faster than IMR 4064 I believe or charge weights will be a grain or so less probably on the top-end but should be a pretty good performer and we'll definitely be testing it at some point the other option would be to go much faster burning hot stand benchmark if the burn rate chart is to be be believed benchmark is significantly faster burning it should have a significantly different gas profile I would think so if we know 4064 really didn't work out maybe significant faster would work better suppressed same thing on the slow side here's some Hodgdon age 48 31 SC this is the slowest powder that Sierra has load data for with this bullet we could try this stuff again it should have a significant gas difference - IMR 4064 I would think so that's that's kind of what's been going through my mind so that'll be the pole what powder should we go with next benchmark 4895 or 48 31 SC fast medium or slow okay outside of that anything else to talk about our test with the with the federal brass the groups were about the same size you saw him on the target there right I don't think I mentioned them but it didn't really seem to make much difference we already showed earlier in the video case capacity wise there was like a 1% difference so we didn't really see much change there did we so not not much to really report there all right folks I think that covers it for now so thanks for joining me and I'll see you guys next time

Channel: Johnny's Reloading Bench

Views: 79,743

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Id: Wdx2qzaE-ME

Length: 29min 15sec (1755 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 11 2018