Reloading for Accuracy

I'm going to cover a topic here but I seem to get a lot of questions about and that is reloading reloading for for accuracy it's very apparent to me that most people out here that are reloading that's just about what they're doing is reloading well I'm a precision hand loader with a tremendous amount of years of experience looting hundreds of different cartridges over time and I'm going to start here with this aspect we all need to understand something that there are there are bullets that are more accurate I consider extremely accurate and bullets that are just so so with that in mind it should be obvious that if we are loading bullets that aren't that accurate a bullet in the first place and most rifles that were not going to get the performance that we're looking for so I'm gonna focus on some specific bullets a specific caliber here and try to try to bring you up to speed here what you need to do to maybe ring the accuracy out of your rifle this is providing that everything's been done to a rifle it's necessary to get accuracy in the first place such as properly vetted properly mounted scopes and one thing another and also properly bench resting your rifle we have a video on that you can go to that for properly bench resting your rifle which I find to be a tremendous aid to top accuracy with any any load combination now precision hand loading we have to have all the necessary equipment to reload and if we're going to look for accuracy we need a chronograph if you're loading and you don't have a chronograph you're missing a great part of the whole spectrum here invest in a chronograph there are chronographs that are reasonably inexpensive that you can purchase and I've used oil to chronograph for many many many years I stick with that it served me very very well it's more expensive but it's a very good chronograph and there are other advancements and chronographs since that point in time when those particular chronographs came on the market now I'm going to start right here one of the most popular cartridges out here for hunting and this seems to be clear across the country and into other parts of the world is the 300 Winchester Magnum I build at this point in time probably more 300 Winchester Magnum for people hunting all around the country from hunting perhaps even whitetail deer to have several larger game elk moose bear one thing another and properly loaded this cartridge is capable of taking all this game in North America and most game and in any other parts of the world Africa and elsewhere so there are certain aspects as I said to this reloading that will bring you more full-spectrum to what you be need to be be doing I choose for the thread in Winchester Magnum invariably choose Norma brass or Winchester brass the norm of grass maybe a little bit more readily available Norma has always made very precision very precise brass that's of extremely high quality and that's where I would start I said unless I full-length sighs my my new cartridge cases to make sure that they're they're uniform the next three uniformed you know this brass sometimes is a little out around in the neck so we need to size the size of cases and once we've sized a few cases you need to try those cases in our landfill to make double sure that new virgin brass sized you know should undoubtedly go right in your rifle without a doubt and I always use a chamfer tool I champ from the inside of the case mouth lately so that it doesn't have any age most this Norma brass does in the first place but I I do it anyway and a prime I always primed my cases with an individual priming tool I don't use a reloading press to prime my cases that can be done but I use a hand priming tool and I've used this particular hand priming tool for many many years there are various offerings for hand priming tools for you primers need to be seated you know realistically a thousand to a couple thousandths below the the surface of the base of the case that means that that primer is seated fully to the bottom of the primer pocket what this tells you folks is that and that firing pin strikes that primer it's got a solid a solid force to hit against that primer can't move slightly if those primers receded completely to the bottom of the primer pocket you see and seated in such a way and this is something that that has been knowledge from for many many years most of my lifetime that our primers are dimensioned and our cases are dimensioned so that when primers are seeded that that's how it comes out to be now the next thing you know we're shooting the 300 Winchester Magnum so we need to choose a powder that's suited to this cartridge now yes you can go to your loading manual and you can find 10 12 15 listed powders for that cartridge but look at the velocities that these powders provide for you with the top charges look at the charges look at the charge weights and normally most loading manuals indicate loading dense of the other case the more densely that we load that case that mean meaning that the more densely that we fill that case full with with the powder the better results that we're going to have with that combination and I have found that two powders shine not that you can't use something else but two powders shine and give you the top performance top performance to me is accuracy and velocity both in combination now we can get accuracy but our loads might be down a couple hundred feet a second well if our loads are down a couple hundred feet a second of three and Winchester Magnum then stick with the 3006 folks if you're gonna load a Magnum load it with the powder that's proper to give you the performance that you want I am mark seventy eight twenty eight specifically the regular seventy eight twenty eight not super short cut super short cut is not the Potter to be using and we have been told that these Potter's are the same they are not the same the charge weights not the same the case filling ability volume wise is not the same so it is simply not the same it's just plain and simple if we don't have the same same area of taken up in the case by the powder it's not the same powder it's just plain and simple and I approve this out many many different times so 78 28 and auxins each 1000 - tremendously good good Potter's and that should be all you need are those two powders - ring ring this cartridge out I always have on stock a very very good supply necessary primers and so forth anything that I might possibly ever use and I invariably start out with a federal 215 primer or a Winchester large rifle primer what most people don't understand is that Winchester a large rifle primer is very very similar in its in its power to ignite large fairly large volumes of slow-burning powder I always try both the primers and I may even try other primers for instance a Remington nine and a half Magnum primer I may try that I may try the federal 210 match primer those primers should cover anything you want to do with this cartridge and as far as the powder charges depending on hour depending on bullet weights we're going to talk about various bullet weights here I'm gonna start here with 180 grain weight bullets I feel that some of the very best game bullets and bullets in the accuracy Department our 180 grain dollar a coupon 180 green Barnes X triple shock bullets that's a boat tail bullet they're extremely accurate also I use a lot a hundred and eighty grain mouse or partitions and occasionally some 180 green Swift siroccos and I have had absolutely bang-up accuracy with all these with all these bullets with those two powders with those two primers and from experience I find that most of the listed listed maximum charge awaits for for instance almost any cartridge including the 300 Winchester Magnum I'll start about two grains below the maximum and I'll come up with half a grain at a time and I may end up right at what the maximum charges I might be a half grain over and perhaps innocence as I might even be a grain over what's listed now here's here's what we need to understand just because the Lord Emmanuel lists something is maximum that does not mean that it's a maximum load in your rifle rifles are different as you and I folks and one rifle will accept certain powder charts and another rifle accept an entirely different charge maybe several grains more maybe even more than that so working up a half a grain at a time you know I would say here that it is very important I wouldn't load it all without having a winning 10th micrometer to measure my case heads you can go to one of my videos to to see exactly how to measure cases were the 1 inch 10th graduate and micrometer and I used that micrometer to determine whether I have a working maximal load or not a top working maximum load shouldn't go over about a half a thousandth of head expansion on the rear portion of the belt and using this method will assure you that you have a combination that's going to work that you've got a load combination that would give you the ability to perhaps load those cases ten ten times or more if you don't have a go by a gauge to gauge those cases such as this micrometer you may find that after two three loadings or something all of a sudden now your case may not you know hold a hold a primer tight well that's because you've expanded your cases a little bit more and that micrometer is going to tell you ahead of time by following the one in the one half thousand head expansion that that's where you need to stop now if you go to a full thousands or maybe a tenth or to over a full thousands you're going to find the probably after four or five loadings now all of a sudden your primers is starting to become a little bit loose well your best combinations in almost any rifle is going to be a load that's going to work out by using your micrometer at about a half of thousands expansion this is where I find that we get tight very tight velocity spreads those standard deviations in our velocity and accuracy these things all go hand in hand this pressure the velocities the uniformity of everything in combination with one another the powder charge the case and the primer and so forth and years and years and years ago I realized very very early on in just my very first few years of reloading ammunition that if I could come up with a combination where I could see my bullets reasonably close say something closer than 1/16 of an inch from the rifling maybe up as close as 20,000 soph the rifling that this is where I had some of my best accuracy and over the years as I've built rifles I build I build rifles for every active aspect of performance and velocity and accuracy come together when everything is right factory's notoriously notoriously seat their bullets very very deep in the cartridge cases to function through through rifle actions magazine boxes and one thing another and when I'm building 300 Winchester Magnum sand working with this eye I want to work with a rifle that has the ability that has a magazine box ability to load to at least three and three point six hundred long now I may not load that long but most of the time that I'm loading a 300 Winchester Magnum depending on the bullets and one thing another I'm loading rounds out there that are about three point four fifty two maybe three point five ninety or something like that that gets me fairly fairly close to the rifling and you've got to understand that some of these links that I'm throwing out here are because we're using we're using fairly high Blish these coefficient bullets in some instances with long slender plastic tips that add length to them that add length to the bullet it's an entirely different bullet than for instance a one hati Nosler partition type of a bullet that bullet doesn't have the length but it has the ability to get closer to the rifling because of that the length doesn't restrict the ability to get your bullet out reasonably close to the rifling and it's it's very foolish to to load ammunition for your hunting rifle that's going to touch your lands that's not what you want to do this is not this is not you know a competition accuracy game we're talking about precision one we're a fairly long distance accuracy out of the 300 Winchester Magnum so taking all these things into account I'll seat my bullets if I kin starting at around 20 or 30 off the rifling I'll go from there and I'll work my charges up a half a grain at a time paying attention to my velocity spreads see what I have and the accuracy on the target and the repeatability and you know I touched here just a moment ago on on pressure after we've been through all these aspects and then all these things and we found a load and we've used these cartridge cases 10 12 15 times that in itself if you've been paying attention to pressure assures you that you've got a maximum like a good maximum working load a safe load because the cases haven't expanded to not accept a primer so I'm going to point out a couple areas here I find that as a roll with seventy eight twenty eight and hundred and eighty grain bullets my load is going to be somewhere between 76 and 78 grains of 78 twenty-eight when the 300 Winchester Magnum now again I'm not talking about extremely short cartridges I'm talking about cartridges loaded out with the bullets loaded out where they need to be and this is this all this all works hand in hand now the H 1000 somewhere in the neighborhood between about seventy nine and a half and eighty one-and-a-half greens of each 1000 is going to be probably the area that you're going to that you're going to get your performance again depending on your specific rifle don't compare this your rifle you're working with at this moment with perhaps another rifle of your buddies or maybe even another rifle that you have in that caliber don't don't compare both of them each one of them are individuals don't say well this rifle will load this and I can load this rifle with with a different powder charge well yeah yeah this is always going to work out like this because things are different things are not the same there's things that are not absolute chambers are not exactly the same barrel dimensions are not exactly the same but taking things into account those the areas that I find the things that things work well and once that I've got what I think is a very good very good load here worked out with my chronograph my micrometer and my accuracy shooting in a hundred yards I'll move to a 300-yard target and do some verification do some verification in the accuracy Department to see that that rifle that shooting perhaps a 4/10 group is going to carry in all fairness it should be a rifle it'll shoot one point two hundred three hundred because it's three times as far I might mention that just a couple days ago I just finished a 300 Winchester Magnum and the load that I worked out for that rifles I shot a point 182 group those are three shots in 182 thousands this happens this happens it doesn't happen all the time and I might state that it was with H 1000 and this happened to be 165 green nos or a q bonds a little bit heavier barreled rifle some Darrel weight barreled rifle extremely extremely accurate extremely uniform and you're not going to find anything better than that but it's a rule the rifles that I'm building are going to shoot at on occasion groups that are going to be that tight somewhere in the threes the fours or round five round a half of an inch and these these accuracy indications of a mentioning coarseness with high quality match quality barrels and I always always stick pretty much with the same barrels I've tried just about everybody's barrels and I've had a lot of good luck but a lot of Earl's there's some barrels that work better than others and this is what you've got to understand and there's some various different methods of making barrels and it's all about precision and uniformity so I hope that for those of you that are been shooting your third Winchester Magnum in your tried four powders and you've tried four bullets and all these other things that maybe we can narrow this down for you provided that everything is else is OK with this rifle and you're going to realize better accuracy from me basically helping you along the precision loading process to get you to where you want to go you

Channel: The Real Gunsmith

Views: 18,377

Keywords: the real gunsmith, 300 win, randy selby, federal primers, winchester cartridges, nosler accubonds, nosler partition, imr7828, imr 7828, h1000, h 1000, reloading rifle cases, reloading, handloading, wyomging gunsmith, learn gunsmithing

Id: 9vv6yqTwq8s

Length: 23min 22sec (1402 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 01 2023