6mm Creedmoor PRS Load Development

[Music] success I just finished my load development for an upcoming match that I plan to shoot using this six millimeter Creedmoor how a 1500 that you've seen here on the channel in fact I wanted to put this rifle together for last year's Finlay Cup that's the match that's coming up and it's literally taking me a full year to get around to putting this rifle together it wouldn't shoot initially so I rebelled it it's been quite a journey after the Ribera lling with the suppressor I put five shots into point two eight eight inches that was with Federal Premium factory ammunition the only problem was the SD was about 25 FPS which is something that you would expect with factory ammo it's not tuned for this particular rifle so here's what I want to lay out this time for this match I'm going to be loading about 600 rounds of practice ammo and about 200 rounds of match animal I might even practice more than that and so therefore I have three requirements based on the match and based on how much practicing I'm doing requirement number one sub half MOA performance consistently from a prone shooting setup indicative of what you'd have at a PRS match not locked up in a bench rest but I'm confident putting five shots into a half inch at a hundred yards with the rifle requirement number two is sub 10 FPS SD on the velocity why because the ranges that this match are going to go out to a thousand yards and potentially just a little bit beyond that and if I don't have a tight SD sub 10 FPS I'll have too much vertical dispersion third requirement there's two reasons for this requirement I want to load the practice ammo and the match ammo on a progressive reloading press why because eight hundred rounds total is gonna be a large workload and if I don't have to do that if I can do it with progressive reloading equipment I want to and I have an upcoming story where I'm actually going to feature some equipment and the process as well the second reason is Jim Finlay he died a couple years back this is now a memorial match in honor of him he loaded his match ammo on a progressive I thought that would be a nice touch to load it on the same equipment that he did with basically the same overall setup plus it's gonna make my life a lot easier so in this video what I want to do is walk you through this kind of unique setup that I've put together to do low development with the goal of loading this ammo on a progressive so let's put a few rounds together and then I'll talk about the results of my load filming before we get into the process let's talk components real quick I'm using star line brand new large rifle primer brass here I've also got small rifle primer six millimeter Creedmoor which is kind of nice Starline offers large and small primers for both six millimeter Creedmoor and six v Creedmoor and what that allows you to do is to tailor your loads to whatever requirements you're working with larger primers can be more consistent in their ignition extreme temperature spreads small primers can have more longevity for the primer pockets and they can potentially have tighter SDS I tested both I did not find tighter SDS with the small primers and so here I'm using the large primers I could use either one for this application I've found brand-new Starline brass to shoot really well I've got some insane results with two to four Valkyrie also that you're going to want to check out I'm using Hajin H 4350 this is right in the middle of that burn rate zone that you're going to want for either six five Creedmoor or six millimeter Creedmoor now I worked with Hornady 108 al DMS and the Berger 105 hybrid targets I found these hybrid target bullets to shoot just a little bit better in my rifle and they've got a great g7 BC 0.275 and I felt like this would be a great choice for this particular application using CCI br-2 bench rust primers these are very consistent in their ignition they work really well they're reliably great components we're going to start with is something that I recommend you do anytime you're loading precision oriented loads with brand new brass and that's to take a full length sighs or die and run the expander ball through the case neck and what I've got here is an RCBS six millimeter Creedmoor full-length size are set up for full length sizing but if we short stroke it we're going to be able to just go through the case neck just to open that up a little bit if you don't do this there's two problems first you're gonna have excessive bullet tension you get the little rings on the bullet from the seeding stem also see this little flat spot there that's just the case has been dinged around a little bit that's going to come right out when we run the expander ball through and that's another reason to go ahead and do this finally this is going to set the stage for the next step now that we have perfectly uniform case next I'm going to take an Ellie Wilson chamfer tool we're going to give it a quick spin on the inside and outside of the case next the case mouths right at the end of the neck there so that when we seat bullets we get real nice seating without any shaving and then when we go to chamber around that's tampering the outside of the case neck will provide that extra smooth feeding there we go next we're gonna prime I've got the leotta bench Prime set up here with the CCI br-2 primers what I do like about this tool is the fact that it has extremely good leverage and feel when the primer bottoms out in the primer pocket I can feel that very distinctly it's also very quick to load that doesn't hurt when I talked about low development targeted at loading on a progressive press this powder major setup is really one of the main considerations this powder thrower is similar to the power thrower that you'd find on a progressive and therefore I wanted to load and shoot a bunch of ammo using this type of a powder measure to see where we would get a consistent velocity even with manual throwing no trickling no auto trickler nothing for bullet seating I'm using an Ellie Wilson type micrometer bullets eating die and a kam Arbor press this type of die seats bullets very concentric ly and because of the micrometer adjustment makes it very easy to adjust your bullet seating depth when you're doing low development my bullet seating depth is 2.8 1 1 which is very close to the specification of 2.8 0 0 that all 308 derivative or 308 length cartridges have 4 magazine and I wanted to keep it close to 2 point 8 inches just because of feeding and reliability and so my process here was to start with close to 2 point 8 inches see if I can get good groupings if I can leave it there if not then experiment with bullet seating depth and so far this seating depth has worked really well so there we go 5 loaded cartridges these are representative of the ammunition that I've loaded to perform this load development and typically what I'll do is I'll start with a 10 shot load development string a latter test where you're incrementing the powder charge say 0.2 or 0.4 greens shoot the string to look at stable nodes in powder charge and then do some optimal charge weight type testing around those nodes to see which node will give both small group sizes and an insensitivity to powder charge fluctuation I'd already performed a bunch of that testing with the initial incarnation of this rifle with the factory barrel so what I did was I looked at where some of those nodes appeared accuracy nodes and velocity nodes and I did some targeted pinpoint testing around those what I found was forty point six grains of H 4350 was a good starting point and I got really good accuracy here's a five shot group with 0.35 three inches in size and that was shooting with a break which is what I had thought I wanted to shoot in the match but I had an SD of 14.1 so what I did was I looked at the velocity and then I looked at the velocity of that Federal Premium factory ammunition that shot really well and you're up close to 3,000 feet per second 2850 somewhere in that range when shooting the factory ammo and I thought I'm a little bit lower than that with my 40.6 so I upped the charge weights to 40.8 now I just shot about an hour ago this group right here this is five shots into point four four zero shooting off of a table relatively rapid with the suppressor with the new trigger that's a great result if I can hold that type of accuracy awesome and I wasn't even trying that hard the rifle is just shooting really well turns out I really like the suppressor I like the way that it changes the recoil more so than the brake the brake it blasts you in the face it can be kind of abrupt I just find for me that the suppressor works really good and it enables me to concentrate on the shooting a little bit better and here I've got sub half him away when I did some of the testing with the chronograph I found this particular 40.8 grain load of H 4350 with the burger 105 hybrid target bullets to produce I shot two five shot strings in a row one with 6.8 fps and one was 7.8 fps now we're talking we've got sub half MOA accuracy we've got sub 10 FPS SD on our velocity and we through it with a drum type powder measure just a thrower not throwing and trickling not using the fancy auto trigger which I will use and I've used four parts of my load development in the original art incarnation so for this particular scenario I'm feeling really good about this load the brand-new Starline brass is working great that once fired brass shoots just as good so if I go through all of this brass in my practice and resize it full-length size it and load it again I know it's going to perform really well and I have a high degree of confidence that this ammo will load really well on a progressive press and will continue to shoot sub half em away and give me that sub 10 FPS SD on my velocity the two to four Valkyrie ammunition that I load with 70 grain RDF bullets from Nosler on a progressive press shoot quarter MOA and have around a 10 SD 10 FPS SD but that has more to do with the low development on that side so I've been able to get this to work before confident that it will work in this case so that's a quick tour of my bulk match ammo load development process stay tuned for the progressive loading follow-up story that means you're gonna want to be subscribed with notifications make sure you click on that bell also if you like this video give it a thumbs up I'd really like to know what do you think do you have a particular match load development methodology that you'd like to discuss is any of this consistent with what you do before match please drop a comment we'll start a discussion don't forget I got ultimate reloader t-shirts at the store I'm on patreon and we got that first link in the video description I'll link to a more fully featured article with more data and pictures until next time happy shooting and happy reloading [Music]

Channel: gavintoobe

Views: 28,349

Rating: 4.968317 out of 5

Keywords: 6mm Creedmoor, 6mm Creedmoor Large Primer, 6mm Creedmoor Small Primer, Athlon Midas TAC 6-24x50mm FFP APRS3, Berger 105 grain 6mm Hybrid Target Bullets, HOWA 1500, PRS Load Development, Reloading, Reloading Blog, Reloading Press, Reloading Videos, Starline Brass, Ultimate Reloader, 6.5 Creedmoor, PRS Competition, Long Range Shooting, Match Load Development

Id: tXZWsPPe3L4

Length: 12min 57sec (777 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 20 2020