Finding The Best Velocity Node...

well it's time for a new Barrel so you spin one on same caliber same everything uh that your old Barrel was and you're thinking yeah I'm just going to use the same cartridge I used with the old Barrel right I don't have to change a thing yeah not so fast hi everyone it's a 4 gun guy and today we're going to talk about my journey with a new Barrel now I've done videos on Barrel Breakin and all of that but I wanted talk to you about sometimes when you put a new Barrel on you might have made some changes like I did to the chamber and yeah that same cartridge fits in there perfectly but maybe you shoot it a little bit and you go something just seems off so what I want to go over today is I put a new Barrel on why do I think I want to do my ladder and seating depth testing all over again I already did it so we'll look at some numbers talk about maybe did I find a new node from a velocity standpoint and then what do I do after that right what's the next step after finding that velocity node and then we'll have some final thoughts so if you're ready to go let's get to it let's talk about why you might want to do a new ladder test when you put a new Barrel on that rifle and as I said in the intro right this is a a new Barrel my buddy Larry de uh put this one uh on for me chambered it for me and uh he made some changes because on my old Barrel I was loading my uh Alpha cases again it's 6 mm BR 107 grain serum match Kings I'm using h4895 powder with a CCI 450 primer and once I got up into the 2800s from a velocity standpoint on that old Barrel I started to get pressure signs so I got some swiping on the head of the case I got some a little bit of Bulge in the primers and uh I talked to Larry about it and he said well he said that it it's probably the way the chambers cut and you're not going to be able to go much above that so we talked I got that Ramer made and uh put it you know spun this uh Barrel on and we're going to see from the testing that I just did that that pressure issue isn't there anymore but uh when I broke the Barrel in and here's something that I think some people jump into uh I usually take about 200 250 to break a barrel in now I'm going to preface that by saying some guys including me will go shoot a match with a brand new Barrel so you just have to realize that sometime during the first 200 250 rounds that Barrel is going to speed up it could be a 15 feet per second uh speed up it could be a 50 feet per second speed up you just have to be ready for it I've seen guys Larry the guy who did my Barrel we've been in matches where Larry's got a new Barrel on that thing and about stage eight out of a 10 stage match he's adjusted because he's realized he's going over the Target because his Barrel finally sped up and so you just have to take take notice of that and adjust for it if you're going to do this in a match with my old load cuz I was loading 28.4 grains of h4895 it was giving me as we'll see velocities of somewhere around 2765 27 70 which is generally where I like to live but out at out at the range a couple times I I kind of noticed when I was checking zero that's at 100 yards that the groups were kind of opening up a little bit they they weren't as tight as they were with the old Barrel so I thought okay I'm going to do the ladder test so here's what I did I kept the seating depth the same because that's what you're going to do don't try to chase too many things all at the same time so I loaded four different different powder loads uh 284 which is what I have been going with then I went up in 3/10 increment so 287 29 and 29.3 now I knew 29.3 was going to get me into the low to mid 2800 feet per second range and I don't want to go beyond that I just don't uh I I think you you start eroding the barrel a little uh a little faster um I don't need that much speed and so I wanted to stay in that range and just see what would happen let's look at the numbers we'll look at the chart and we'll see what we came up with there's something very interesting that's going to surface here so I'm going to put this up on the screen right here and this is the just the overall Excel kind of spreadsheet that I use for this stuff right down the left hand side we see the load the velocities uh I used my Garmin to to do all this in an indoor range and they've got a great 100 yard range nothing to interfere with it no wind or anything if we look at these velocities and I'm going to go out to I'll put the next one up which is just the the chart and the output uh from the raw data let's look at the upper left the the the table there we can see that at 214 or 284 average velocity 2761 287 2778 29 2805 and at 29.3 grains 28.3 one now you look at that and you go that popped out at me right off the bat and so I put the column on the very end of this table what do we see well from 20 284 to 287 was only a 16.4 foot per second difference in that 3/10 of a grain load difference but once you got to 29 that jumped up to 27.2 ft per second that's almost twice what it was was the three grain difference between 284 and 287 now look at 29 to 293 the load and the velocity difference over the 3/10 of a grain right was 26.4 ft per second so that was a very interesting indicator that that jumped out at me right off the bat when we now look at these numbers you know I try not to focus on SDs and Es because they're all going to be pretty good with this rifle and that cartridge I just know they are these were seven shot strings by the way so yes I know some people are going to say oh you've got to shoot 20 or 30 strings I'm not running that many through this rifle I'm I'm not going to waste you know uh what 30 times 4 I'm not going to waste 120 rounds down this Barrel to erode it just that much that's as much as a match so I thought seven rounds four strings that's less than 30 rounds that should be good but if we look at the results here uh again back up to the table you've got the SDS the 's the uh the group sizes and what you really start to see is that this 29 and 293 have the best SDS and 's and they have some of the best group sizes look at the group size from 284 287 and 29 you've got 73 6168 all good I'll take those all day long right but now you get to 293 and it it almost halves the group size so and if you look at the SD and Es 3.5 and 10.4 that's pretty darn good for me so uh that all translates down then into the chart and if you look at the chart you can see see our nodes we do have nodes we've got a node at 284 where I've been uh loading the node at 287 kind of I mean it's a node but there's a little too much jumpiness in there for me and then when we get to 29 and 293 those look great so I took all of this and and just decided to uh to really look at which group did I want to really go with so let's look at the groups themselves I've got it right here and I'll put this up on the screen uh if we look at the 284 that's the uh 7.26 or 73 group that's not a bad group vertically vertically that's a really good group right the 726 is horizontally uh and we generally don't concern ourselves with that too much 287 another really good group 6 MOA 29 this group was again 69 uh MOA we had a few Flyers there the vertical on this group wasn't as good I didn't think as the others and when I get to 293 wow that to me is a really good group now that grp group says it's 044 but you got to realize it's 044 because of the horizontal spread I'm going to wager if I took the vertical spread of this group it's somewhere down around. 3 maybe even 0. 25ish so that's a really really good group let's talk about now what this means and what the next steps are well let's do a brief recap so again new Barrel new chamber job I waited until it was broken in before I actually did this testing and that's something I started to say earlier but too many guys run 20 50 rounds through their Barrel then they try to do this and that's a big mistake because you're going to be chasing things all over the place because your Barrel hasn't settled in yet so make sure you break it in it's not that you're going to be 3et off the Target that you know that's not what this is all about it's breaking it in so your velocities remain consistent with the cartridge you're running through it right so with that being said uh after that so after this I really have decided on the 293 load so what's next well I know Sierra match Kings from what I've seen of them and from what I've used I've probably shot four five 6,000 rounds of the 107s through this through this rifle different barrels they tend to like about 20,000 off the lands but I'm still going to do a sitting depth test here so I'll run 293 then I'll start probably at 15,000 20 25 30 3540 so maybe maybe that group you can go you you could go 20,000 to 30,000 off and get a really good node 40 50 60 maybe it's crummy and then all of a sudden 70 80 90 it falls right back in so you can test for all of that I'm not going to get carried away and try to go as far out as I can and see what works I'm going to try to find something in that 20 to 40,000 range and then we'll go with that once I find that I'm done I don't chase the lands the only thing I'll do is exactly what just happened here after the barrel broke in with the load I was running 500 600 700 1,000 more rounds from now if I'm out at the range zeroing with the cartridge that I have chosen with the seating depth I've chosen and that group starts to open up let's say I get to uh you know 8/10 uh MOA or 1 MOA that's when I'll start looking at the seating depth again and maybe loading out out a little longer if I can right you can erode the lands so much if you keep shooting the same barrel uh that you may not be able to load out uh with the cartridge overall length uh as long as you can your case uh your cartridge may not fit in your magazine you may not have enough uh neck tension to hold that bullet in there you got to be very careful with that stuff a lot of stuff I'm throwing at you but I wanted this to be kind of a shortish video and just tell you that this is the step one that I'm going through and then I'm going to do a follow-up video to this probably in a couple weeks after I do that seating depth test and let's see I mean that's a pretty darn good group 100 yard group right there so there you have it I've got a lot of stuff coming up some videos on some equipment that's been sent to me some equipment that I bought uh and then some miscellaneous videos well thanks for hanging in there guys I really do appreciate it all the likes comments subscriptions and until next time Shoot Straight [Applause]

Channel: The 4GunGuy

Views: 932

Keywords: Ladder test, ladder, velocity, fps, PRS, Rifle, Shooting, MDT, Manners, MPA, Impact Precision, 6.5, creedmoor, 6.5 creedmoor, 6mm, 6mm Creedmoor, 6GT, 6mm BRA, BRA, Dasher, 6mm Dasher, hornady, reloder, long range shooting, long range, precision, precision shooting, reloading, chassis, stock, trigger, scope, pistol, pistols, shotgun, rifle, Atlas Bipod, bipod, MDT ACC, centerfire, ammunition, annealer, annealing, sizing, mandrel, powder, drop, measure, bullet, case, brass, primer

Id: 4Zw001Lf6kk

Length: 14min 54sec (894 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 04 2024