6.5 Creedmoor - 70 more handloads for the T/C Compass

hi folks welcome back time for our next 6.5 Creedmoor video we are going to shoot a ton of amo in this video we're gonna load and shoot a bunch of stuff the first 26.5 Creedmoor videos have gone really well getting lots of views that's good people seem to be interested so today it's just time to continue our exploration the problem in that last video I may have mentioned some certain thing that I wanted to test in the next video I think it was probably 130 green sierra matchking I might have said we were going to test that next also since that last video I have received my box of hundred and thirty-five grain burger classic hunters I'm really interested in trying these guys out but the problem right now is we've we've only fired thirty pieces of our brass we shot thirty hand loads in the last video and I don't really want to get into any serious load development until we fire formed our brass because your case capacity changes between new brass and resized brass and actually that's something we'll test here in this video we'll do a case capacity check of some new brass some fired brass and some resized brass just to see what the difference is but the main goal for today's video is to go ahead and fire our 70 more pieces of new brass so that'll basically get our entire you know brass stockpile here into a once fired state and then we can move forward from there so that that's kind of the plan for today fire form 70 more pieces of brass so in the last video our results with our factory ammunition the Horn of the American whitetail and the federal non-typical whitetail were pretty disappointing they just didn't really shoot very good groups so I also want to shoot some more groups with those guys maybe towards the end like we'll shoot all 70 of our hand loads get a better idea of how the guns shootin and then go back to the factory ammo one more time and see if it still shoots crappy you in that last video these were the first rounds we shot through the gun so maybe once we get the barrel fouled up and get a nice nice coating a copper lay down in that guy maybe the factory ammo will tighten up as well I don't know we'll find that out in today's video program as well a couple more things I've got I did pick up the 26 insert the number 26 insert for my bullet comparator if I can find the stupid thing oh right there it's right in front of me so yeah this is the Hornady bullet comparator that you clamp on your calipers and you can measure overall length to the OD I've of your bullets instead of the tip of the bullets but I had bought the basic insert kit and it didn't come with the six point five millimeter insert so I've got that we'll play around with that some today another thing I picked up was a modified case for the Hornet II overall length gauge so in our last video I used yeah this guy this is a case that I had chopped a slit in with a dremel tool we were using this to try and figure out our maximum overall length with different bullets but now that we've got this modified case which it's just drilled and tapped so that it will fit on a horn in the overall length gauge or a stony point tool they used to be called stony point tools and actually this one right here this is my grandpa yeah this is my grandfather's old one and it actually is a stony point screws right on there yeah there you go stony point oal gauge so we'll play around with this guy a little bit today as well I ordered the tap so that I can tap cases myself in the future and I think once I get the tap I'll probably do a video specifically on this tool and we'll talk a little bit a little bit about it in this video but there are some things you need to keep in mind and some inherent inaccuracies when using a modified case like this so that's another thing we'll talk about and then at that yeah after that we'll start loading up some rounds I've picked out three bullets the first of which is the hundred and forty three grain eld X in our last video our first group with the eld X was point eight seven eight inch group pretty decent last video we shot it with H 4350 here in this video I think we'll go with some real oder 17 we had good luck with free loader 17 in the last video so we'll go ahead and shoot some of it with the 143 I also wanted to shoot some of the 123 grain Sierra match Kings I've got a bunch of these bullets I've got a big old pack of 500 of them so these will make for some good ammo hopefully they'll shoot really well I expect them to shoot well but I just I kind of want to get some rounds through the gun right we I want to get this brass fire formed before we go back and test more with the heavier bullets because my stockpile of the lighter bullets like this is a lot greater since I've been shooting 6.5 Grendel for a couple of years so these lighter bullets I have more on hand with this guy I think I want to shoot some Winchester 760 this is the old label the new Winchester labels a little bit different but it's all the same stuff when Chester 760 this is also known as H 414 yeah like a Hodgdon H 414 they're the exact same powders and if you see them on the Shelf sometimes you can actually pick up the bottles and look at the at the lot numbers where the heck is the lot number on this one it's normally right there but yeah a lot of times even the lot numbers will match up from H 414 in Winchester 760 and also H 110 in Winchester to 96 not exactly 6.5 Creedmoor powders but a similar sort of thing where they just they brand certain powders with both the Winchester and the Hodgson branding the third bullet I want to test for today is the 129 grain Nosler a q bond long range this is another bullet where I've got several hundred of them in my stockpile and they've never shot well for me they're not cheap bullets they've got a nice high ballistic coefficient and they're nice-looking bullets but in my Grindle at least I was never really able to get the accuracy I was looking for out of these guys they shot okay they shot well enough for me to hunt with them but never really saw the pure precision that I was hoping for and I guess that's always a balancing act with it with a bullet especially a hunting bullet because you know this is a bonded hunting bullet I haven't got to shoot anything with it yet but let's assume that this has outstanding terminal performance right shoot a deer it does impressive damage it acts just like a bullet should right in that case I mean you have to be a little bit forgiving okay maybe it's not the most accurate bullet I can shoot but if it's the best-performing bullet I can shoot it might be worth you know being being the choice so that's always kind of a you know kind of a balancing act there picking bullets that you think are gonna perform the way you want on an animal versus just the purely best shoot and smallest grouping bullet for this bullet well we're gonna shoot reload or 15 a little bit fast for 6.5 cream all right this is a pretty fast burning powder but looking at the nozzle or load data for there a cube on they showed this is the most accurate powder so we're going to give this bullet every chance to impress us here today hopefully so I'll tell you what for starters let's do a couple case capacity measurements just for the heck of it because I'm curious alright before we can measure case capacity I need to resize the case because three types of cases I want to check case capacity on here real quick is a brand new piece of brass a fired piece of brass and a resized piece of brass just to see what the differences are so let's go around to our fully sizing die which I think we set and we set it up in the last video but that's no fun let's go ahead and just start from scratch so to set our sizing die properly I want to use the Hornady headspace comparator kit this is the D 400 we're going to talk about this here in just a minute there is some confusion as to which insert you should use for 6.5 Creedmoor or at least there is in my eyes and that's one of the next discussions I want to have but for the time being I'm going to use this 400 this is what I had used in the last video number I'm sitting here is 1.5 3 6 so I want to screw my sizing die down until this goes to either 1.53 five or maybe even 1.5 three four so are the shoulder of our case is going to get touched by the sizing die and push down just a little bit so I've taken it down until it touches and gone just enough to kind of take the slack out of the press that's where its that's where it's set right now so the press isn't like camming over into the press or anything like that it's just uh just taking out the slop so let's see what number that gets us I should probably write down my number here so I don't forget it one point five three six yeah that one says one point five three five yeah one point five three six was our number or I'm seeing every once in a while one point five three five five let me use a little bit of reading imperial sizing guy wax to Lube the case up and in down-and-out still seems to be one point five three six so I don't think we I don't think we quite hit that shoulder yet I'm going to screw the dye down a tiny little bit and tell you what that expander ball felt a little bit rough on that last sizing so I'm gonna get a little bit of Lube inside of the neck of this case and then a fresh thin coat on the outside so back through one more time yeah felt a whole lot smoother that time with the Lube in the neck yeah I'm seeing one point five three five now so we just barely touched it so one more just tiny little tweak and one more trip through one point five three four five is what I'm seeing mostly so it's kind of it's a long one point five three four so that's good so our dye is now set to bump the shoulder on a fired case about one to one-and-a-half thousandths which it should be just fine for our bolt-action rifle so now let's get to measure in case capacity now since we're gonna be filling these cases with water I need to put a primer back in there I probably shouldn't pop the primer out of that case I just resized but I didn't really feel like taking the trouble to pull out my decapping pin so I've got let's see I've got a fired piece still got the spent primer in it I've got the piece that we just resized with the primer popped out of it let me throw one in this guy and we've got a new piece of brass with of course no primer in it so let me throw one in this guy so I want to start out by taking the empty weight and recording that for each piece one sixty six point four one sixty six point three one sixty seven point three and I've got some water I've got a syringe so I'll fill my syringe with water just to be certain I'll double-check the weight yep one sixty six point four then I just want to fill this case up with water and what you've got to be careful to be consistent about is you know the surface tension of the water you can make it so that you know there's like a big bubble of water or it's concave you just have to be consistent make them all look exactly the same when they're full and you also want to make sure you don't have any drips of water coming down the side of the case or anything like that so this this is now a case full of water to my normal level of fullness and then we just take a measurement to eighteen point six and let's see - eighteen point six - one sixty six point four equals 52 point two so our fired case held fifty two point two grains of water now one thing I did check on these three cases a minute ago I don't know why didn't put it on camera but I did check their overall length or the the case length and they were all pretty close not they were there wasn't enough difference for me to really freak out about it fired case is about one point nine zero eight resize case is one point nine one one so three thousandths of difference and then I think this guy was in the middle that 1.90 eight so I don't think three thousandth of additional length you know which means our our water level if I do my part right and get it just looking the same will be three thousandths of an inch higher I don't think it would make a tenth of a grain difference or enough to register on a scale or really make enough difference in this measurement at least I don't think all right there's our sized piece full of water to eighteen point one I think there's our new piece and I'll tell you what while I've got all this crap out I might as well grab a piece of our Hornady in our federal brass from our factory ammo and see what sort of case capacity they have there's a Hornady and a federal alright I finished my measurements I got the water off the bench before I spill it and I've done the math and the numbers are pretty darn interesting here first of all let's stick with our with our brass which is Starline small rifle primered brass I maybe should have mentioned that that's our primary batch of brass Starline small rifle brass the fired cases held fifty two point two grains of water the sized case held fifty one point eight and the new case held 50.9 so it's nice that our you know our capacity is right around fifty makes it easy to kind of double our numbers and think in terms of percentages so fired brass versus new brass we see 1.3 grains of difference so two and a half or three percent difference in total case capacity between new brass and fired brass I was surprised by our sized brass number I thought it might be a little bit lower we only see four tenths of a grain of water difference between fired brass and sized brass so that would be less than 1% so I don't necessarily have a like some big overreaching aha sort of point to make here other than to say you know this is kind of the you know the reason why I want to go ahead and get all of our brass fire formed before we get into any semi serious load development because the new brass does have a good bit less capacity than the fired and size brass how much how much difference that really makes probably not that much now for the truly shocking stuff let's look at the capacity of our fired Hornady and federal brass alongside our Starline brass Hornady has the most capacity at fifty three point three grains of water our star line is second at fifty two point two and federal has the least amount of capacity at fifty point seven now if we look most to least so Hornady at fifty three point three and federal at fifty point seven so that's what two point six grains of water difference that's a five percent difference now that I would say is significant like if you were shooting Hornady brass and we're and was going to federal brass you might have some problems especially if you've got yourself a nice hot high-velocity crazy load worked up in Hornady brass and then you just go ahead and dump it into some federal brass and hit the range you're gonna have some problems what I found also interesting is our new Starline brass the capacity was fifty point nine so the fired federal brass has less capacity than a brand new piece of star line that just blows my mind now let's look at the weight of the actual cases this is what kind of blew me away the most the federal was 178 this does include a primer which can kind of throw the numbers off a little bit and say our star line is a small primer where the Hornady in federal are large primers but whatever there's some there's some you know extra variables at play here but still that federal brass being a hundred and seventy-eight grains Starline being 167 and Hornady being all the way down at 155 i've got 23 grains of weight difference between Burnaby and federal brass seems like a ton so the lesson I'm taking from this is man be careful with some horrid with some federal brass this is a lot like your situation in 308 right if you load 308 it's everybody's favorite nice to give like I'll be careful if you're using military brass 760 by 51 brass it's thicker and has less case capacity and you can blow your face off well I guess people can take that same advice substitute in federal 6.5 Creedmoor brass and go out and warn everybody because it does seem to be significantly less case capacity than the others so I'm feeling pretty good that's another reason I kind of like the Star Line here we're in the middle right pretty small sample size with only three brands but feels good to kind of just be in the middle so there it is that's that's my justification of why we we want to go ahead and get all this brass fire form before we before we move forward any more net the next topic I want to talk about is the Hornady headspace comparator and which insert is the proper one to use now in the last video I used the D 400 insert and the numbers only these like you know the 400 there if we grab our calipers the inside of this guy so the inside this guy is about 0.4 more or less so there you go that guy is four tenths of an inch so what I did instead of looking on the Hornady website or anything I just went straight to the Sam be drawing for 6.5 Creedmoor and if we look at this guy here you can see that for the cartridge the headspace datum line is defined here as point four inches so the cartridge uses point four inches officially I have a headspace comparator kit that has an insert that is point four inches now it was no brainer man I'm going to use a point four ensure that way the measurements I take I can actually look at the sámi drawing and see how close they are I will warn you that it never does seem to line up just right the numbers I always get off of cases seem to be a little bit smaller then the say me drawing says they should be but we'll get to that here in a minute maybe but back to the main point so that's why I chose a point four and someone commented in the last video that the Hornady website or the Hornady comparator kit which if we look right here on the back it's got a bushing sizing chart with a you know a whole list of a whole bunch of cartridges this is an older set that I've had for quite a few years it doesn't it doesn't have 6.5 Creedmoor on here but if you go and look at the same list on their website it does include 6.5 Creedmoor and they say that you should use the point three seven five insert this guy right here this is the C the C 375 and you know well if you grab case and look at where it sits on the shoulder does seem to be in a pretty nice spot of course the 400 goes down a little bit farther and it's closer to the actual shoulder so I don't know what to do here I want to use the 400 and I don't know if that's a mistake on Hornby's part for calling out the 375 or if there's some good reason for it so I'll tell you what I'm gonna go ahead and use the 400 but if you can make even a halfway decent argument for me to actually use the 375 like quantity says I should I am open to listening to it so I could he I could be easily persuaded if you want to try hit me up down in the comments but for now yep I think we're just gonna use the 400 I'll tell you what I'm kind of getting bored with talking like I really want to get to Loudoun seems like we're spinning our wheels here a little bit I think we you know we've covered some good stuff I'm happy to have talked about it but we'll save this will stave the Hornady overall length comparator for the next video maybe because for today's video I'm going to be going with recommended overall lengths in all of our loadings we're not going to get cute with overall length we're not going to try and you know load them long get closer to the lands or anything like that we're going to go with recommended overall length with all these guys so yeah well we'll talk about that guy later so let's talk about load data of course we're using new Starline brass with small rifle primer pockets there they are just like last time and just like last time we are going to continue to use the off I don't spill them everywhere the CCI 450 Magnum small rifle primers we went over this a little bit in the last video this is just what we're gonna use here for a little while at least and from the results of the last video it's looking like a good choice because the standard deviation numbers we saw with our velocity were beyond amazing they were excellent and primers can certainly have a big impact on that so I'm liking our choice so far we're gonna leave primer discussion for later and possibly much later here in the 6.5 Creedmoor world but that's going to be our primer for today so our first bullet the 143 grain Hornady eld x we shot this guy with h 4350 in the last video the groups were halfway decent you know one thing I didn't really talk much about in the last video there was so much going on that it was kind of hard to process everything but in the last video we shot it at two point eight inches of overall length which was the Hornady recommended overall length and then we also shot it at two point nine inches of overall length the group opened up a little bit but if you remember that video we were also I was trying to shoot the gun fast to see if I could get some heat you know a lot of heat in the barrel and see how much our groups were gonna grow so that might have been part of it I don't know but for today like I said magazine link well not our magazine length but standard length of 2.8 inches shot a really nice group so that's what we're going to stick with today that's the Nosler book I don't want that I want the Hornet eBook 143 granny ldx 2.8 inches of overall length with reloader 17 they show a charge range of 35 point three to forty one point three what's what's super aggravating is Alliant Alliant has just terrible low data on their website and they don't have 6.5 Creedmoor they kind of tease you there's a spot that says 6.5 Creedmoor and then there's no day so I don't really have another good comparable if we go to the Sierra load data and look at the numbers they use for the hundred and forty two grain match King that's the closest comparable we've got they show a max charge of forty two point one grains so they show forty two point one Hornady shows 41.3 I want to play it safe let's knock it down to forty point five being our max charge so let's shoot thirty nine thirty nine and a half forty and forty point five now the other thing I should mention here with with with LDX I only want to shoot twenty of these guys we're gonna shoot twenty five of each of the others but we've got 70 pieces of brass so somebody needs to be the odd man out here and that's going to be the eld X so for our four different charge weights I want to shoot up to forty point five so we're gonna shoot thirty nine thirty nine and a half forty and forty and a half so our starting charge there of thirty nine is about in the middle of the range four for the Hornady load data so I'm hoping that's gonna be a nice safe place to start hopefully we're not getting ourselves into trouble by starting to hot and you know in these early videos we need to cast a wide net we need to cover a lot of ground as we learn more like you know once we're on our fifth video of shooting reload or 17 with one hundred and forty two hundred and forty three grain bullets we'll start getting a feel for how far we can push it but at this point you know we're working from nothing this will be our first time with reload or 17 and a bullet this heavy so trying to play it safe and I think I think a thirty nine grain starting charge should be fine so our second bullet is the hundred and twenty nine grain Nosler a cube on long-range Nosler does have data for this guy they do show reload or fifteen being the most accurate powder tested they show charge weights from 35 to 39 grains so I want to start in the middle thirty seven point zero as our starting charge and we'll work our way up to their max so 37 37 and a half 38 38 and a half and 39 you know a powder this fast we're not going to set the world on fire with velocities here it just burns too fast to get the sorts of numbers but maybe we can find some accuracy out of a bullet that I've had difficult finding that you know difficult defining accuracy from so it's worth a shot plus I've got a ton of reload or 15 on hand so that makes it an easy choice last up is our Sierra the 123 grain sierra matchking now in with this guy I found myself into one of those very confusing situations where I'm looking at some conflicting load data and a lot of it has to do with overall length I believe the the Sierra load data uses an overall length of two point eight one zero so right out there at full magazine length let me set a bullet down here into a case and we'll have a look at what it looks like at two point eight one zero all right this is two point eight one two but it's close enough that's another really good usage for these cases that you have a split end and you know looking at seating depth it's pretty easy with these guys now you can see where the bow tail starts and you can see about how much of our case how much of our neck is contacting the bearing surface of the bullet let me make a quick Sharpie mark there we go maybe that'll help if it's not coming across well on camera that is enough I wouldn't want to go much less but it does seem shootable and actually if I look at my notes from the last video I don't yeah my tests from the last video showed the maximum overall length for this gun with this bullet at the time was two point eight nine one I have to imagine our throats probably worn in just a little bit now so maybe we picked up a couple thousandths but more or less eighty thousand soft ooh lands at this seating depth so I'll tell you right now that this is what we're gonna go with this is what we're going to shoot and we'll see how it goes but if you go over to the Hodgdon data they shoot an overall length of two point six seven zero a hundred and forty thousand shorter that's a lot let me all right here's one more or less at two point six seven zero regardless you won't be able to see where the boat tail starts it's going to be just a little bit below the neck now this still pretty good looking around right I mean that doesn't look overly short but it's a hundred and forty thousand shorter than what Ciara uses in their data now as you might imagine the max charge for this overall link is significantly less than the max charge for the Sierra overall length so at this overall length Hodgson shows a max charge of forty four point two grains with winchester 760 that's what we're talking about winchester 760 forty four point two grains Sierra at their longer overall length shows a max charge of forty six point zero grains so almost two full additional grains of powder at the Sierra overall length that's a lot of difference that's a whole lot of difference now with the dinossaur a coupon we did go ahead and go up two nozzles maximum but here with 123 steer I'm not going to flirt with the max either max so we're going to use horn ADIZ or no we're gonna use Sierra's overall length of two point eight one zero but we're only going to go up to forty four point zero grains so that's two grains below the Sierra max and it's even two tenths of a grain below the Hodgdon max with that much shorter overall length so hopefully we won't get ourselves into trouble should be nicely below max so that's our load data for today pretty straightforward stuff casting a wide net trying some fast powder trying some varying weights should make for a fun test while we yeah while we get the rest of this brass fire formed and speaking of brass that's basically going to be step one I want to go ahead and run all these cases through the size and die - you know - just to straighten out the neck I'm going to deburr and chamfer the case mouth to get rid of any boogers and then I'm going to put a primer in them so I already showed you the sizing die setup so I guess I'll see you guys about the time I'm ready to start priming so I'm trying out a new hand primer that I just picked up about a week ago so far so good and it's the Frankfort Arsenal perfect seat hand primer I still like my RCBS hand primers don't get me wrong but this guy's got an adjustable seating depth that I wanted to try out so I've been playing around with it here once I get some more experience with it and get a better feel for how it works and the best way to adjust the seating depth and that's sort of junk I'll be doing a standalone video on it but you might start seeing it pop up in a video or two here and there as I test it out seems to do a pretty nice job and the price isn't completely ridiculous so I thought I'd give it a shot all right there's the last one so this brass of course I did finish resizing it and I hit the mouth with a deburring and chamfering tool inside and outside of the neck it makes that crazy nails on a chalkboard sort of sound so I figured I'd spare you guys from having to listen to that but at this point we are completely ready for powder so I want to start out with reloader 17 and 143 grain eld X so I'm gonna get the other the other powders and bullets off the table and get these guys measured out so I'm keeping things pretty simple here on the powder weighing thing just a leaf scoop tenth of a grain scale I'm not agonizing over every single kernel of powder plus or minus the tenth here's just fine now tell you what if we see standard deviation numbers as good in this video as we did in the last video we may never agonize over every kernel of powder here as far as weight charge weight goes as we move forward with 6.5 Creedmoor or is it six five Creedmoor had a lot of good recommendations in the comment section of the previous videos six-and-a-half Creedmoor I liked that one a lot and half baker's dozen Creedmoor or was it baker's half-dozen Creedmoor something like that I'm diggin that I might sprinkle that guy in occasionally so I'm almost done here we're our first 20 charges for the 143 eld X so let's go ahead and get two bolts eating all right for the 143 eld we've got the perfect seeding stem right we've got a seating stem that fits this guy absolutely perfect so I need to swap it into the dye let's try and do it from below this time now the clips too far up in there I can't reach it all right so I'm gonna remove the seating stem then I picked the wrong angle here did not try that all right off with the adjustment stem I should say right that's our micro just adjustment stem that's been working pretty well for so far and I need something long here's a lead decapping pin let's see if it's long enough and small enough yep there we go out with that stem and all right seating stem in back out the adjuster a little bit and two point eight zero zero is our goal two point nine two six so let's go down 125 actually there's a hundred twenty see what that looks like first two point eight oh six I'll so I'll go ahead and see it a couple two point eight oh six 2.80 four and two point eight oh six so I tell you what let's just split the difference let's go down five and run them back through okay and now we've got our yeah our proper insert for our bullet comparator so let's let's compare how consistent they are to the tip like there's a two point seven nine eight two point eight oh four two point eight two point seven nine eight and two point eight oh one tell you what I'm gonna try and measure them one more time and get them in order of shortest to longest all right two point seven nine eight two two point eight oh four being the longest so we're seeing six thousandths of variation when measured to the tip so now let's switch to the bullet comparator and see if we see that same amount of difference now this is basically just like the headspace comparator except a much smaller hole and this is going to measure to the ogive of your bullet now since our seeding stem contacts the ogive of our bullet during bullet seeing this is generally a much more consistent measurement so two point one six one two point one six two two point one six one two point one six one yeah this one two two point one six three this is the longest round to the tip and it's the longest round to the ogive as well let me go ahead and run it back through one more time and it kind of helped a little bit it's same two point one six two here but it was saying one two point one six three a second ago so I think it is still the longest one but now we're looking at to the ogive we're looking at mm of variation rather than what did we see six when measured to the tip and this is where it counts alright so everything's pretty boring from this point forward I want to see the rest of these 143 eld X bullets I'm gonna go back to measuring powder I'm gonna seat some more bullets and that's pretty much it about the only interesting thing I can think of that I might be doing here is as I switch bullets I will be checking to see which seating stem fits the bullet the best and swapping it out if necessary but I think I've shown that enough times at this point that that's a little bit redundant so if anything exciting happens I'll definitely let you know but I'm thinking I might just see you guys out at the range as in the last video I think I mentioned putting a higher power scope on this guy but I want to go ahead and just continue testing a little bit more with this four to twelve by forty four vortex crossfire to scope that way those of you who bought the vortex package like I did or Arkin centering it you know can get a better feel for for what this scope is actually capable of but to make up for it just a little bit I've dusted the cobwebs off of the lead sled here I'm gonna try and use this guy maybe it'll help me out I do have a 25 pound bag of shotgun shot to help stabilize it a little bit so we'll see it's actually been quite a while since I've shot with this guy but I figured we'll try to you know try it out today and see what happens man every time I look down at this 70 rounds ready to rock rate just makes me excited that is a whole lot of fun right there I'm really looking forward to today's testing zero pressure I've got all the time in the world it is just afternoon so I've got like five plus hours of daylight left I've got plenty of batteries charged for all of my cameras the weather's good a little bit of breeze but nothing bad so I've got no excuses for bad groups today I'm gonna go ahead and shoot everything suppressed today and I'm gonna throw my magneto speed cronograph into the mix I don't think we did this in the last video it really usually doesn't cause any problems especially when it's on the when it's hanging off the suppressor it seems to be a pretty minor difference and I want to get some good velocity numbers for today so I need to go hang my target and let's get shooting all right let's start things off with 143 grain LDX with real odor 17 our first load is 39 grains I am going to go ahead and feed these guys from the magazine so let's get started [Applause] all right is that group as good as I think it is I'm gonna have to go in and get my spotting scope the old 12 power scope just didn't want to do it today all right that one over in the center makes it a little less impressive than I first thought it was but still cold gun cold shooter it's not bad moving on next up is thirty nine point five grains alright 40.0 grains all the brass has been looking really good so far and no problems here with 40 so our velocity seems to be rising pretty slowly what are we up to you 2565 I should have written down with the book predicted tell you what while the barrel cools down I'm gonna go grab the book because I'm curious how much we're lagging behind it looks like we're lagging behind the Hornady manual right about 100 feet per second so that's pretty much exactly what we saw in the last video with our factory ammo lagging behind about 100 feet per second which is reasonable because you know they they use a 24 inch test barrel alright our last load with 143 grain eld X is 40 point 5 grains of reloader 17 I'll see how it does all right so that last group opened up just a little bit but that's respectable velocity made it up to 26 13 that's pretty good so let's move on to the 129 grain NAS or a cue bond all right so the wind is trying to make my life difficult get a little bit gusty on me here but you know what that's supposed to be one of the advantages a six point five millimeter right these high B C bullets they just cut right through the wind has no effect my friend so next up is 129 grain Nosler a cube on long range as I think I mentioned this bullet has not shot well for me in 6.5 Grindle so I'd love to see it shoot better here in the Creedmoor and we're using their most accurate powder reloader 15 so starting off 37.0 grains let's see what happens [Applause] all right well that's a disappointing start not surprising but disappointing still okay 30 37.5 grains is next okay that one didn't go off I don't know if I didn't I've been kind of short stroking my bolt a couple times here today I've noticed yeah I didn't get a round in the chamber magazines in yeah that was it I just short stroked it all right another disappointing group with the Accu bonds so let's move forward this is 38.0 grains it looks like maybe the groups are tightening here as we get higher in charge wait 38.5 is next brass still looks pretty good alright last stop 39.0 grains let's hope this trend of tightening grouped in groups continues all right that was an interesting shift in point of impact very interesting indeed all right so in an attempt to make this target as confusing as possible I added a couple more spots and I want to at this point I want to go ahead and shoot a couple more groups with our factory amo the first is the 129 grain interlock in the hornet e american whitetail so we'll shoot a five shot group of it on the left-hand dot and then next up we'll shoot the 140 grain federal non-typical so first up here 129 grain Hornady alright so that was a pretty darn good looking group with the with the Hornady american whitetail so next up is five rounds of the 140 grain federal non-typical whitetail alright those groups were pretty good with both of our factory ammo at least a little bit of an improvement over what we saw in the last video so that's good I want to give them that opportunity right the guns nice and broken-in we've laid down plenty of copper in it the guns warmed up the shooters warmed up everything's warmed up perfect perfect conditions for them to show what they've got so not too bad alright folks we got a little bit of a problem here with the last set of groups with 123 grain Sierra match Kings which you should be watching right now look at this crazy stuff kinda started out okay and then just went nuts my scope came loose the little thumb screws here came totally loose and my frickin scope was just jiggling on the gun okay not quite to that extent but pretty close and I didn't figure out what was going on until I was carrying my gun back to the house you know thinking wow man that those match King groups sure were crazy and I started feeling this weird jiggling noise like as I was carrying the gun by my side I could feel something like this was banging up against my leg or something and I could feel it like something's making a weird noise both screws had just come completely loose so if you end up with these vortex bases definitely want to put a little torque on these dudes but I mean to be honest man those freaking lead sleds are nuts alright that puts some serious force on a gun and I really I think that's what was causing you know what caused the problem but yeah at this point let's just have a look at the groups and let's continue talking about 123 grain match king for a second because well like I said the first two groups weren't bad a 114 and then at 821 but look at these standard deviation numbers fifty two point eight fifty four point nine twenty four point eight forty six point two and then by some miracle the last one was a six point set of it but the vast majority of the time here the velocities were just all over the place with Winchester 760 now Winchester 760 is a ball powder says right there ball powder a spherical powder and some of these I don't know a lot specifically about Winchester 760 but I know a lot of ball powders are very you know have the reputation of being very hard to ignite and I think that characteristic carries kind of carries through just to the nature of ball powders so we might be in a situation where you know these small primer pockets and our small rifle primers are doing great with the extruded powders but they're going to fall on their face with the ball powders and that'll probably be the first test we do where we pit the small rifle primers against the large rifle primers is with some ball powders because you put a nice big hot large rifle primer in these guys and maybe this stuff lights off a little bit better and gives us some more consistent velocities I don't know for sure that's you know that's just that's my working theory right now really happy about the tightening up of our factory ammo here 1.21 inches with the Hornady and point 9 1/2 inches with the federal that's you know two or three tenths smaller than the groups were during our last video so that was really good to see the a cube on long-range continues to disappoint not the worst thing in the world right our worst group was one point six three inches our best group was one point one two inches not exactly terrible but if we compare it to the hundred and forty three grain eld x9 46 665 721 and our biggest group was the last one here at a 1.11 so the worst group with the eld ex was better than the best group with the 129 grain a coupon long range that's just what I've seen out of that bullet and it's it's a little bit disappointing I like the signs from the sierra matchking it looks like this bullet you know it's generally pretty easy to tell whether a bullet is going to like a gun well just like you know our previous test with 143 great al DX was with age 43 50 and it shot well you know felt pretty confident that when we switched to reload or 17 it was going to continue to shoot well crappy bullets generally shoot crappy and good bullets generally shoot good and as I get more experienced and test more things in more different platforms seems to really hold true you know I just noticed this this group here with the a cube on long-range I've missed of that little guy right there the fifth shot yeah so that's probably worse than a one point four six inch group whatever who cares it's crappy bullet and I guess that's what I'm that's the point I'm trying to make is I'm just to the point where it's probably not worth the time to go chasing fifteen different powders with this a cube on long-range when we know that yeah this is just this is kind of how it shoots it'll certainly vary some with different powders but the odds are good I think that it's never going to be it's never going to give us the performance we're seeing from the horn and II will test it though my god I've still got a couple boxes of them left so maybe we'll try it out work on that theory I'd love to be proven wrong I'd love to find a powder that it loves and shoot some itty bitty groups but I don't have tell you what let's have an up close look at the brass so there's not a lot I want to show you with the brass but I'm still trying to learn this guns language because every gun is different and one thing I want to show you is this guy really does seem to crater primers so you can see around you know the edge of the firing pin mark is raised up and you could call that a cratered primer and not be wrong a lot of guns that's absolutely a pressure sign and a big problem you know it's a sign that yep pretty soon you're gonna start piercing the primers but with this gun it just seems to be you know it just seems to be normal and I've seen this on others like you can pick every any any piece of brass in this box right now it looks exactly the same way just grabbing ones at random here now another thing I am seeing yeah this is a good one here you see how there's a little bit of a shiny mark I can get the light just right yeah it's right by the are there if I can get this you know get it to shine just right but it's just a little bit of a scrape smear sort of mark and I'm seeing that on quite a few pieces but it doesn't seem to be a pressure sign or at least I don't think it is at this point I'm seeing it on our low charges and high charges but it's not always there but it's there pretty often there it is you can just see that that one little shiny mark so at this point I'm not considering it a problem or a sign of pressure just because I'm seeing it on all different charge weights and you know like we covered the the minor cratering I'm not considering that pressure either I was trying to have a look at the firing pin a little bit earlier to see if maybe I could you know see what was going on there that is kind of cratering but it doesn't seem to be like way oversized like I thought the firing pin hole might be much larger than the firing pin itself and there was just you know a little open area around the firing pin that was causing the cratered look but I don't man like I said I'm still still getting getting to know the gun that's what you got to do with every gun that you're reloading for is just get to know it get know what's normal so that you can recognize what's not normal and if you look at all of the primers nice and rounded I haven't seen any flattening with primers so far like there you go these five rows were with reloader 15 then this was the one I really thought we might hit some pressure remember this was the Nosler load data we went up to their max charge of what was it 39 yup it was 39 grains so this fifth row here I was thinking we might see some pressure but everything looks good so far I have noticed some circular marks from the ejector let me see if I can find some of those here's one there we go right on top of that star is a little bit of a circular mark where the ejector was this was not a top charge this was our next highest charge with winchester 760 but I'm also kind of seeing this occasionally and it doesn't seem to be related to the higher charges so at this point you know with with what we've shot I just haven't really noticed anything yet that I can definitively say like yep there's the first sign I'm sure we'll get there soon enough but whether it's going to be flattening whether it's going to be a worsening of the cratering whether it's going to be a Pierce primer or whether it'll be markings on the face I don't know yet we'll find out together so you know at a hundred and what are we 115 hundred and ten rounds or so through the gun I'm still very pleased I'm still very optimistic about the type of performance we're going to see I need to buy another box of 143 green ldx bullets because it clearly likes those guys it clearly liked 130 grain Sierra game King I can't wait to try the hundred and thirty-five Greenberger classic hunter so those three those will probably be our next couple videos is focusing in on one or two of those guys throwing some more powders at them seeing what sort of velocities we can get up to and seeing what sort of groups we can shoot with a tight scope because it's not like that scope just you know completely loosened in one shot it was probably slowly loosening up and I'm wondering whether you know how much it affected had even on the better groups for the day and I guess for that reason I should probably go ahead and give the a cube on long-range the benefit of the doubt I don't know so I'm sorry about the audio when I was out on the range my stupid audio recorder here on the back the Auto level switch got switched on so it was ramping the audio level up and down Oh God was awful I'll tell you what folks I've been I've been riding the struggle bus here for a couple weeks with some technical problems I've thought a couple times about making videos to just apologize for not getting out more videos like the the pace has been super slow but actually I've got the main one of the main culprits here this is a battery for the camera you're watching on right now this battery went bad and it took me awhile to figure out what it was doing what normally happens is you know the batteries in the camera the battery goes dead the camera stops recording it saves that file that's in progress to the memory card and then it shuts itself off and then you put in a new battery and you're back in the game well this guy started failing so fast that the camera didn't have time to write the the file in progress or you know complete the file that was in progress so I went like ten days where I was just missing random video files like I'd finish up a video and sit down and get to start editing and I would just be missing the whole chunks of video so a couple videos recently I've had to either reshoot apart or explain to you guys that a part was missing and that I was trying to make up for it oh just a mess but I finally figured out I finally tracked it down to this battery I ordered some new batteries so I've got new batteries and the other thing that went bad on me is my my normal microphone that I that I mainly use I was walking back in from the range after a after a range session and this thing was kind of trailing behind me and it got closed in the door and it was bad that that's what screwed up the the the last video the 6.5 Grindle video was this guy but this is something like I knew I should have had a spare on hand but I didn't so that's that that's cost me some frustrations I got a new one finally in the mail yesterday and that's what that's what you're hearing me on right now so I'm sorry if this comes across as whining and complaining but since I'm begging you guys for money and you're coming through I feel a serious obligation to get videos put out right if I'm not if I can't get four or five videos a week out I don't feel like I'm holding up my end of the bargain and I definitely have not been holding up my end of things here over the last couple weeks so fresh batteries new microphone hopefully now we can maybe you know start getting some videos cranked out the other problem is like it seems like every video I do is just this big hour long way too in-depth sort of thing lately but they you know I feel like they've been needed videos right they've been it's not been fluff like I've been trying to cover some new stuff and it's just made for some really long videos which I don't care how good my batteries and microphone are working I can't put out those every single day I can put out the 20 minute video right I can I can I can film one of those in a day but the big long ones they just take too long to edit and then upload and all of that so alright I'm rambling thank you guys for all the support you can come to patreon.com slash reloading if you'd like to support the channel and I'll see you guys next time

Channel: Johnny's Reloading Bench

Views: 82,377

Rating: 4.9358649 out of 5

Keywords: guns, shooting, reloading, 6.5 Creedmoor

Id: Cl-wOMO-ZAY

Length: 62min 35sec (3755 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2017