all right folks it's time for our next 223 video and the bullet we're going to be testing is the 62-grain spear gold dot these haven't been out very long and it's a pretty exciting addition to the 224 diameter bullet lineup if you ask me those of you who use 223 for for hunting or personal protection this might be a pretty pretty sweet new option and the plan today is to test them not only for accuracy but we'll also put some into some ballistics gel and see what see how they expand now they came out with a 55 grain version and a 62-grain version here in 22 caliber and I went with the 62 green version but since the time I bought these they've also released a 75 grain version I didn't even know until I started looking on the Spear website for load data and I saw they had load data for 75 graders and I didn't even know they existed so I found some I think it was at mid-south shooters supply and I've got those on order so I'm going to be testing the 75 green version of this guy as well but today is all about the 62 Graner as I just mentioned spear has got some pretty sweet load data on their website for this bullet they've got both 223 Remington and also 556 load data it's pretty much the same powders but your 556 load data is a little bit hotter and they use overall links which is kind of weird because on the five five six side they use two point two six zero inch which is our normal magazine length for the AR platform like we're gonna be shooting today but over on the two to three side of things they used a shorter overall length I think it was two point two three zero I'm not sure what that's all about that's a little bit weird the other problem is I can't find anywhere on this load data where they they mentioned what barrel lengths they're using to get the velocities they're reporting so I don't know the 223 charge weights are lower but the velocities are higher so I'm assuming they used a 24 or 26 inch barrel for the 223 data and then used an 18 or 20 for the 556 I don't know now the good news about this load data is they use a whole bunch of my favorite powders so the first one we're going to be testing with today is Alliant power Pro mm mr we have found this powder to get some incredible velocities in 223 it's not the most accurate powder you're gonna find but it consistently gets you the highest velocities so mm mm ours gonna be our first powder our second powder is going to be IMR 8208 XBR this is becoming one of my favorite powders to test pure accuracy you can't always get you the highest velocities right we're gonna be much faster with powerpro mm and then we're going to see the very best accuracy with IMR 8208 xbr so those are the two powders I test so we're gonna go off of the 5 5 6 load data and the the max charge with Power Pro 2000 M ours 30 point 2 grains 30 grains in a 223 case that's pretty crazy I did measure out one of the max charges to make sure it was gonna fit in the case and it's actually not too bad comes up right to about the the bottom of the neck I think we're gonna have room to seat the bullet I want to shoot four tenths of a grain increments which takes us all the way down to 28.6 for a starting charge on the 8208 XBR side of things I want to go up to 25 point for grains we're gonna shoot the same four tenths of a grain increments that puts us starting at twenty three point eight the primer for today is going to be the Remington seven and a half small rifle benchrest primers I normally use CCI forty ones in these videos but I'm running a little bit low and I've got plenty of the remington seven-and-a-half laying around so that's what we're gonna use here today the brass is the same batch of Lake City 2014 headstamp brass that we've been shooting for a little while here in our 223 videos I've already got these guys primed they're cleaned up and sized and trimmed and the case mouth has been chamfered all that all that stuff's done I'm ready for pattern bullets so let's see overall length we're gonna go with two point two six zero our full magazine length I did check this bullet in my gun and it hits the lands right about 2.30 five inches so we're gonna have about forty five thousandths of jumped to the lands which is pretty reasonable so I guess that's about it this is gonna be a quick video here today folks I'm ready to start weighing powder and I'll probably spare you that so I'll see you here in just a minute over at the bullet seeding die okay folks I don't expect any drama here with bullets eating but I am using a new bullets eating die for the first time here in 223 I picked this up for 224 Valkyrie because I was having a lot of problems in that cartridge finding a good bullets eating die this is the Hornady custom grade bullets eating die and I've got the what they call the Micro just seeding stem on here a little bit rusty I need to do I need to keep these things oiled better but I'm getting rust on lots of stuff these days the humidity got out of control here in my house a little bit this summer but ok whatever what the hell am I talking about uh the Hornet II custom grade die the first one of these I got was for six point five millimeter it really impressed me I bought a 30 caliber one and then now I've got a 22 caliber one this die represents a great value and it gives you to a micro adjustable seating die cheaper than just about any other way because the like the standard seating die here yeah there's the package the four four one zero to the standard seating die is pretty inexpensive and then this micro just seating stem is an additional 20 or 25 bucks the other really cool thing about these seating dies is they have different seating stems you can get or I guess in 22 caliber this is the only other seating stem that's available except the one that comes with it but this one is for the 75 and 80 grand eld match and a max so it gives you a couple options you know it gives you a couple stems what I found with this bullet is that it actually preferred this eld seeding stem it gave me the best fit so the one that's in this package is actually the one that comes with the die I guess I probably should just show you let me pop out the seeding stem here there it is and if we drop this guy down onto a bullet you can see it kind of Wiggles a good bit it's not a perfect fit a little bit wobbly but if we look at the other one yeah here's the other one this is the one that comes with that seating die the wobbling this is even worse so this is a situation where we don't really have a perfect fit available but at least we had a couple options they got us a little bit better this guy wobbles just a touch less than that guy now the good news here though even though our 2000m are charge of thirty point two grains is a pretty full case we're still not going to be compressing a whole lot here with this bullet so here's how you set up this guy you take a piece of whereas you put it in your press and you run it all the way up then we screw down the die until we feel it touch there was right there so that's where it's hitting the case we want to back out at least one turn and what I'll generally do is I'll go one turn so there's one turn then I'll keep turning a little bit further until I can see the the graduated scale on the side here and then tighten down the lock ring so there we go we're actually about a turn and a half up from where we were touching the case so now we're ready to try and seed some bullets these if you happen to watch the six point five millimeter the six point five Creedmoor video with these gold dots you'll know that we had a little bit of a problem or it's not really even a problem but it's here it's the same way here in 222 the bow tail even though this bullet does have a little bit of a boat tail it doesn't provide much for the case mouth to grip a hold of so these are almost like seating flat based bullets you got to kind of hold it in place while you bring the case up into the seating die so let's go ahead and seat the first one here our target overall length is two point two six zero doesn't feel like that touched anything at all so I'm going to go ahead and bring the adjustment down there we go I could feel it touching and let me go a little bit further that's almost a hundred thousandths there we go so now that seated it down into that case mouth a little bit our target overall length is two point two six zero and you can see where we are at two point four to six the good thing about the scale let's go down 150,000 s each turn is 50 thousandths and there's a little scale here so I can see there's 50 there's a hundred there's 150 so let's see it again yep 2.2 7 8 so we're actually 18,000 s'long which makes sense because this first load I'm using these are the ones we're going to shoot into ballistics-gel they've got the 30.2 grain load of power Pro 2000m are so pretty compressed charged so let's go down 18 thousandths and that should be pretty close and I'll go ahead and seat a second guy just to be sure this guys 2.2 6-3 this guy's 2.26 1 so I'll tell you what we'll go down yeah let's go let's go two more two more and we'll call that good enough I'll seat all five of these guys and we'll get a bit of an average measurement all right two point two six two two point two six one two point two six zero two point two five eight and two point two six two good so we're right there around where we need to be now those were some of our most compressed charges and the next ones I want to seat have a bit less powder so if I just use this setting it's going to seat it a little bit too deep I'm gonna good and back out ten thousandths and then let's eat one of these guys and see just how long it is yeah it's not bad so that one's two point two six eight so let's see what the next guy gives us here two point two six seven next got two point two six six so it looks like between our most compressed and least compressed charge of 2,000 M R we got maybe three thousandths of difference in overall length so I need to go ahead and go back down seven thousandths which should put us just about where we need to be so this row will be just about perfect and I'm gonna have two or three thousands of difference to adjust out as I go along hopefully that makes sense all right as we get a little bit more compressed I'm gonna have to keep turning on the seating die just a little bit to maintain that same overall length two point two six zero two point two five eight two point two five dime and the last guy in this Row is two point two six two good that'll still fit in the magazine no worries there so that's about it folks I just need to get the rest of these guys seated and we're ready to go ahead and hit the range hi folks it has been two weeks since I filmed the first part of this here video so I've had to go back to my notes here to remember what the hell we're even doing okay we're shooting the 62-grain spirit gold dot I'm really excited about today's test because I fired the six point five millimeter version of this bullet and the groups were awesome so I'm hoping to 62-grain 22 caliber version is going to shoot awesome as well we are shooting at 100 yards the dots down there are one inch in diameter this is an 18 inch wide oak armament SP our barrel with a one-in-eight twist 18 inches long a mid leaf gas system it is put into a Palmetto state armory upper I'm shooting through a silencer Co Omega suppressor and we're using a magneto speed chronograph hanging off of there as well alright let's get started the guns warmed up I put about 20 shots through it get in the scope zeroed so we should be ready to go first up is power Pro mm mr 28.6 grains let's see if they'll shoot okay so I chased down that first piece of brass not seeing any major signs of pressure the velocity of that first shot was twenty nine hundred and ninety-four feet per second but I didn't really write in my notes here what sort of velocity I was expecting from this so I don't know that seems about right I guess let's see if they'll group all right that's pretty good start velocity 29 76 and a standard deviation of 11.6 and the other four pieces of brass look pretty good as well so we're moving on 29.0 grains is next a little bit of horizontal stringing there I was fighting my bag setup just a little bit on that one dang it all right next up 29.4 grains [Music] [Music] yeah so kind of choked a little bit there on that last shot I'm just wondering so if this bullet seems to be shooting this well with powerpro mm mm or how good are those groups gonna be once we get to 8208 XBR I don't know I better check that brass so the brass looks good I've had a few ejector swipes here and there but this brass has got several firings on it at this point sometimes it's hard to tell what's old and what's new but none of it looks really bad so we're moving on 29.8 grains is next yeah last shot kind of got me on that group as well okay brass still looks okay last up with mm mr is 30.2 grains so let's make them count and finish off with a good group here [Music] [Music] all right that's a pretty good finish for mm mr 3124 feet per second 9.5 feet per second standard deviation the brass still looks okay nothing scary pressure wise and some pretty decent groups so I'm gonna give the barrel a few minutes to cool down rest my eyes a little bit and then we'll move on to 8208 XBR all right time to get back to it 8208 XBR first up is 23.8 grains okay so much for better standard deviations we had one shot that was high 2806 that kind of messed things up a little bit it was the second shot yeah interesting no pressure signs on the brass so we're moving on 24.2 grains is next all right so that was a little bit better group next up twenty four point six so I'm starting to see just a little bit of an ejector mark on the brass but a couple other things here have got me a little bit worried as well like we jumped up eighty feet per second from the twenty four point two up to twenty four point six where the first jump we had only we only gained like thirty five feet per second plus our standard deviations are looking gross velocities a little bit all over the place so here with twenty five point zero grains I'm gonna keep my eye on the brass and the velocity all right so that time we gained forty feet per second and our standard deviation got much better to seven point nine hmm I don't know the brass still looks okay a couple shiny spots on a few pieces but nothing to freak out about so we're going to go ahead and finish her off here twenty five point four grains [Music] all right so the first three shots look really good but the final result isn't that bad either we made it up to pretty much 3,000 feet per second so let's take a quick detour by the ballistic gel and then get back to the bench all right so for our ballistic gel test I shot a total of three shots and recovered two and these guys are some of the prettiest little mushrooms you are ever going to see the expansion is just crazy uniform it pills back in five petals and you can see since they're bonded like the lead is even there all the way out to the end of the petals that's where a normal here's that here's an example of a normal bullet that expanded really nicely but you'll see the petals that peel away the jacket generally separates from the core not a big deal but you do lose a little bit of weight here but these guys don't seem to have lost anything so I did test these at short range I was like 10 yards from the ballistic gel blocks when I shot him the velocity this was with 2000m R so this the velocity on these was a little over 3,100 feet per second so about 30 124 is what we got on the range so nice high velocity and definitely complete and total expansion I tried to dig all of the gel I could out of there but there's still some gel left over it's gonna mess with our weight measurement just a little bit and speaking of that let's grab a scale and see what these guys weigh okay here's the first one fifty nine point three and the second is fifty nine point two so they lost less than three grains well we've got to allow for that gel has a little bit of weight so I don't know maybe five grains you know I never did weigh any new ones looks way one of these guys and see how close to 62 they are sixty two point three sixty two point three sixty one point nine so they start off right around 62 and when they expand you only lose a couple grains that's incredible okay now penetration was right around 16 inches like 15 to 17 inches the the gel blocks I have are 16 inches long they're the blocks from clear ballistics so one of them was just right at the end of the first block and the other one just barely went into the second block so 15 to 17 inches not a ridiculously huge amount of penetration and just some incredible uniform devastating expansion I love the way these performed I could not be happier and I'll tell you what I'll go ahead and show you the bullets from the six point five millimeter video this is the 140 grain spear gold dot in six point five millimeter same expansion pattern with the five petals just extremely uniform so all of these gold dots are shot into gel performed really well so let's look at the brass really quick there's really only a couple pieces I want to show ya there are a couple pieces from our Max charge of 2000 M R they look great they look great just a little bit of a shiny spot there and I think I saw yeah there's one on that guy nothing to freak out about at all so we did didn't hit anything scary with 2000 M R and really it's the same way with 8208 XBR the ejector marks I don't I can't even tell if I'm getting them on camera but they're they're they're a little bit more pronounced yeah I think it's that guy Yeah right around the see they're a little bit of a circle but yeah nothing to freak out about good looking primers and pressure signs weren't a problem today okay so now let's have a look at the groups overall pretty darn good we had a couple crusty groups with each to the powders on the top row with power Pro mm mm are right there in the middle 29.4 was the best group we shot today but at the top charge 30.2 grains was a pretty small group as well we made it up to 30 124 feet per second I did finally go back to the spear web site they predicted 3184 223 yeah 31 84 5 5 6 and 3208 for 223 so we were 60 to 80 feet per second slower than what they predicted which is no surprise since we've got a short little 18-inch barrel right so velocity good we did have two groups over an inch that second in the fourth groups kind of wanted to spread them a little bit horizontal but I'll tell you what this isn't the last you're going to see in this bullet I'm really impressed with it and if we come back to 2000 M R we'll be exploring that top range maybe up around thirty point two or maybe that middle range around twenty nine point four these are very good results so the other powder 8208 XBR I'm a little bit disappointed we did shoot some pretty good groups the second group was a 686 the fourth group was a 649 that last group a 708 was a pretty good looking group but we had a couple ugly ones and also the standard deviation numbers were all over the place our velocity just was not very stable and I realized afterwards one of the reasons why that might be this is the can of a t28 xbr that I was using I mean you'll notice it has the metal lid this is the over Hodgdon and I am our lid I'm afraid this can might actually be one of my grandpa's old cans and I'm not sure how long how old it is or how long it's been open you know powder will stay for a very long time and stay good you know if it's stored in a reasonable temperature and all of that stuff but once you crack it open start using it it loses a little bit of that shelf life this one this stuff doesn't smell weird or anything a t28 XBR does have a pretty strong smell anyway and this stuff doesn't smell bad but I don't know the velocities were fine they were just they weren't I was expecting really good standard deviations numbers with 80 to 80 XBR and that's one possible cause yeah here's what the new plastic lid looks like and I don't remember exactly when they made that switch maybe maybe it's only a few years old I don't know but I think next time we try a t28 xbr we'll use the the newer lot number velocity with a t28 xbl was pretty good we made it to 20 993 basically 3,000 feet per second and the spear data predicted 3064 in 223 and three thousand twenty four and five five six so we're around 30 and 70 something like that pretty close to the gap we had with 2000 mr so what more could you ask for here folks this is a really good shooting bullet I'll probably put up this six point five millimeter video at the same time I put up this one it also shot really well it also performed really well in gel so this just seems to be a fantastic line of bullets did I mention that they're not ridiculously expensive let me look it up hold on standby yeah the 22 caliber versions are running right at 20 bucks like $19.99 or a little bit less for boxes of a hundred so that's an extremely good deal if you ask me for this sort of performance for that sort of expansion the six point five millimeter version I think is about thirty cents a piece so I guess twenty to thirty cents is is kind of the price range they're in that's pretty competitive so overall you know big big thumbs up here for the spear gold dot 62-grain 22 bullet my stupid order with the 75 Greeners is backordered so i'm not sure what i'm gonna get those but when I do I'll be making a video on those guys so I think these are just downright useful so these are definitely jumped to the top of my list for butt-kickin five five six and 223 bullets so that's it folks that's where we'll wrap it up and I will see you guys next time
