Tips and Tricks for Hand Loading Precision, Long-Range Rifle Ammo

hi folks and welcome to Attica armory in this video I wanted to talk to you a little bit about hand loading your own custom precision long-range rifle hammer [Music] if there's only one thing that you take away from all of this it's that the key to accuracy is consistency and the key to consistency is to remove as many variables as possible just remember that none of this stuff will help if your barrel is all fouled up so please remember to check out our citrus powered synthetic CLP at a dega Armory so just a little bit of background on my perspective here on a 42 year old US Army veteran who's been teaching shooting in both military and civilian environment since 2013 I grew up learning marksmanship hunting and mountaineering in the beautiful Rocky Mountains and I've been involved in custom gun work and hand loading for over two decades now I'm also a Gemini I enjoy long walks on the beach sappy romantic comedies and group yoga sessions in the park now I don't want to imply that my way is the right way or the only way to do things all I want to do is show you what I've found that works for me and hopefully save you some trial error and money is you get yourself up to speed with precision rifle loads now let's talk about gear for a few just so you know we have no affiliation with any of the manufacturers or distributors of these products and we don't sell any of this reloading gear this is just stuff that I use personally there's definitely a lot of gear options out there so feel free to shop around for what best suits you now let's start off by talking about the foundational hand loading tool the press for precision rifle loads I tend to prefer a solid single stage press like this Lee breech-lock challenger press it has a full wrap frame so there's no flex and it's very easy to swap the dies out and most importantly it is extremely consistent in general automated or progressive press don't seem to yield the same level of consistency that you'll get from an old-school basic single stage press under the arm of a methodical OCD hand load nut job like yours truly another valuable tool is this Hornady Lock and Load Oh al gauge the less time a bullet spends jumping through the free boar and into the throat and ultimately into the lands and grooves of the barrel rifling the more accurate it will be and this tool will help you to determine the optimal overall length of your custom load by gauging the true distance to the lance of your specific barrel this custom oal can be a bit longer than conventional load specs but hey let's be honest folks who wouldn't appreciate just a little more length right and you can see here that the alejo gauge cases are threaded on the back so these are specialty cases made just for this one little word of warning on this is that your custom oal might be significantly longer than Sam I cartridge specs actually call for this can cause serious issues with magazine-fed rifles particularly Auto loaders as the cartridge may become too long to fit in the mag or it might bind during feeding if that's the case you may have some trial and error in finding the longest oal that will still fit in your mag and feed reliably for Auto loading precision rifles I generally like to load rounds no longer than the max semi cartridge overall length to ensure proper function and simply adjust the powder charge slightly if the original load called for a shorter oal next up you're gonna want a quality scale that measures down to at least 1/10 of a grain I wouldn't go too cheap on this tool as your load consistency will probably pay the price make sure that you have some good calibration weights to calibrate every time you use it and remember to check the calibration regularly throughout the loading session that said I have had good results with this decade-old RCBS range master 750 it seems to be very precise despite the occasional firmware quirks a good analog scale would also serve you very well another handy item is a powder trick letter like this reading model 5 this will allow you to add powder to the scale 1 colonel at a time and it works particularly well with large Colonel rifle powders and is essential to getting that powder charge just right now despite being a bit of a tech junky I don't tend to actually trust electronics much I don't really like all the electronic crap they put in my truck especially in the drivetrain and the powertrain and that's probably why I like using an analog caliper like this Tecton for precision loading aside from having kind of a cool retro vibe I tend to trust it a bit more than the cheapo digital caliper because it relies primarily on hard mechanical connections with gears and teeth as opposed to electronic sensors it's probably just my own perception and may not be based in reality at all but what the heck everything's about feelings nowadays and this just feels more trustworthy to me another critical tool is your crimping dye I've been using the Lee Factory crimp dye for many years with great success a good case crimp is essential for guaranteeing a uniform starting pressure as it holds the bullet in place for longer and allows pressure to build up a bit before it begins its journey this leads to a more complete and efficient powder burn and further reduces inconsistencies in muzzle velocity for bolt actions and single-shot rifles I only apply a light crimp maybe a quarter to a half the depth of a full crimp this relieves stress on the case neck and causes less deformation to the bearing surface of the bullet autoloaders I usually do a full crimp to avoid having any bullet set back when it slams against the feed ramp during feeding another item that you'll want to get if you haven't already is a decent set of manual case prep tools some reloading kits come with these little fingerling sized deburring and primer pocket tools but using them gets old really fast if you have a lot of case prep to do it's easy to get tired and start getting lazy which leads to cut corners and poor consistency Wyman makes a variety of nice prep tools that'll help make things a lot easier on your hands on the other side of that using motorized prep machines require a bit of extra care on its own in that you don't want to go overboard while deburring the case neck remember it only takes a tiny sham for inside and outside the neck to do the trick [Music] [Music] all right so you can see here our spread five shot group pretty nice I mean a couple of these are just stacked right on top of each other I've got a little bit of vertical stacking going on and you know maybe that might be it could be temperature related it is quite cold out here today and as that barrel warmed up you know between shots and might have something to do with that but overall that's you know under an inch and I'm good with that for a stock rifle that's that's a great group let's talk about brass for a minute when you're choosing brass you basically have two broad choices option one you can spend gobs of cash on high-end premium cases that offer the maximum geometric uniformity and metallurgical consistency if you can float the bill for this there's definitely some nice options out there or option two you can use standard cases like this Winchester brass and you can simply sort them for uniformity yourself a simple way to get consistent cases is to first do all of your cleaning sizing and trimming and then go through and weigh a ton of your cases one at a time to get an average case weight once you get an average weight you can then weigh all the cases individually and remove the ones that are grossly over or under weight just set those aside for less critical applications you'll also want to remove any damaged or malformed cases or those with odd shaped primer flash holes through a careful visual inspections out of a 500 piece a lot of 308 cases I ended up with about 300 that were adequately suited for precision loads which is not bad considering the affordable price one little side note on cases I'm not a big fan of reusing Nadeau head stamped cases for precision 308 loads for two reasons one they have a current prime meaning that you have to remount the priming pocket prior to priming who try saying that three times real fast primer pocket prior to prime microphone real quick and - they tend to use a thicker more rigid brass that's harder to resize and seems to have a bit less case volume than commercial 308 in other words some standard 308 powder charges can become compressed loads in 7.62 NATO brass moving on when you're using brand new cases I like to first run a full-length sizer and then fire form them in a specific rifle that I'm loading for fire forming is simply loading and firing them in your rifle one time so that the case forms to the chamber under the pressure of firing after they've been fire formed I only use those cases for that specific rifle and I only use the next sizing die from that point on next sizing is a lot less stressful on the cases without the need for annealing or heat treating the neck and will result in a longer case life compared to full length sizing every single time also fire formed next sized brass tends to be more conducive to precision accuracy than full length sizing due to the tighter initial fitting in the chamber that said if you're using an autoloader full-length sizing is a safer bet to ensure good reliability all right so here's another group and that one's that's pretty nice that's under an inch right there so again just a tiny bit of vertical stacking which you know maybe again possibly barrel temperature-related definitely first couple of shots it's cold and that barrel is cold and it warms up very quick so that could be what you know causing that change and impact but overall I mean that is a real solid group when I'm good with that now let's talk bullets for a few bullet designs have gotten pretty evolved over the years in just a few decades we went from very basic soft points or hollow points to having electronically bonded cores with colorful polymer ballistic tips and even high-tech bullet coatings built right in one of my favorite big-game bullets is the Nosler Accu bond and it has most of these bells and whistles it is an excellent bullet by any standard and uh serve me very well on numerous hunts I've also tried a litany of other modern ballistic tip bullets from the likes of Hornet II Winchester Nosler etc after spending more than a decade in ballistic tip world I found myself drawn back to a cult classic no other than the legendary sierra matchking hollow-point boattail the match King number 22 75 is a 175 grand 308 bullet that has been the go-to bullet for long range competitive shooters for a very long time and for good reason complete and utter consistency this bullet is just boringly predictable and while the curse of boring predictability has been plaguing Hollywood movies since the Chinese government bought up all those big studios it is actually a good thing when it comes to bullets we want to know exactly what will happen with no surprises twists or turns in the plot as with the brass I like to weigh my bullets for consistency and I've noticed that the match king weight variance from one bullet to another is virtually non-existent furthermore the dimensional aspects of the match King such as the arc of the og of that's the forward-facing shoulders of the bullet tend to be more uniform resulting in more consistent bullets eating OAL and of course ballistic coefficients while it's in flight yeah I'll admit some of the fancy ballistic tips stuff does look better on paper with higher ballistic coefficients and impressive terminal ballistics but from what I've seen it's not all rainbows and unicorns they have some potential downsides when it comes to long-range precision shooting that you should be aware of first and foremost is the factor of tip deformation that's caused by supersonic friction if you've not heard about this I'd recommend you read up on the saga of the Hornady a Max somehow it was discovered maybe by Mighty Mouse flying next to a named accent flight that the a max tip was melting and deforming as a longtime user of the a max I was actually a bit relieved to hear this news as I always wondered how I could produce sub MOA groups at a hundred yards but it all went to Hades out past five or six hundred even on a calm day shooting off the lead sled it made sense to me that if the tip melted in flight that the farther it flew the more unstable the bullet would become now I applaud Hornady for coming out and admitting to this publicly as well as taking steps to reformulate the poly tip and remedy the situation they do appear to be a company that operates under principles of integrity however this left me to wonder what other bullet tips are melting in flight that we don't know about the next area of concern is weight consistency and as I mentioned before I weigh each bullet and I remove the outliers for serious precision loads what I've found is that I have to discard a lot more poly tip bullets than other standard designs like the match King due to them having a much wider extreme spread and weight as well as occasional visible inconsistencies in the tip the bottom line is that I now reserved my poly tip bullets for applications like big-game hunting in which I have a much larger target at much closer ranges let's move on to powder now I don't want to get too caught up in what the best powder is because it can vary greatly from one rifle and cartridge combo to another one thing I can say is don't assume that a powder that produces the highest velocities will necessarily be the best for precision long-range shooting that's the case with my 300 Weatherby Magnum powder of choice the IMR 4350 it is at least a hundred and fifty feet per second slower than I can get with some others but it is very accurate in my rifle and I'll take an accuracy increase over a power increase any day of the week especially when dealing with centerfire rifles that hit hard either way when you're choosing a powder it's good to pick one that's gonna give you good case fill on your chosen cartridge and bullet weight then I work my way up to a charge weight that yields the best accuracy I usually start about midway between the starting and the max load of a published load for load development I'll usually load at least five rounds of each charge weight and I'll move up in half grain increments up to the max load then I'll shoot those five round groups of each charge weight in a cold barrel to see which one produces the best groups of course I'm always looking for signs of excess pressure I'm also running some through the chrono so I can see where my velocities are at one thing that I've noticed over time is that running charge weights that are too extreme either too mild or too hot well negatively affect accuracy down on the low end of that you have to have enough powder in there to reach the cartridges proper operating pressure and in turn have a consistent starting pressure peak pressure an average pressure that produces consistent muzzle velocities conversely running loads that are too hot can also have negative effects on both accuracy and on barrel and brass longevity so take your time and try to find that sweet spot that your rifle likes best when weighing powder charges on my scale I like to start about a tenth or two under weight and use the powder trickler to slowly work my way up until I just tip the scale to my desired weight I find that this method delivers a more consistent powder charge than going over weight and then trying to scoop kernels out till I get down to my desired weight as a basic rule of thumb I generally try to avoid any volume based charge measuring like the scoops or the auto disk charger for precision loads floating by weight seems to be the way to go if you have a quality scale so bear in mind that we're not using anything fancy out here today we've got a bone stock savage model ten precision carbine and we also have a basically an entry-level long-range scope this is a vortex Diamondback tactical it's a six 24 by 15 and it's it's actually a really good scope up i've been happy with it so far so but basically I mean you know the rifle is under a grand and the scope is like four hundred bucks so this is not any kind of a fancy setup here by any means now let's talk about primers primers are pretty straightforward and aside from making sure that your primer pockets and flash holes are clean there are only a couple of added precautions that you need to take first and foremost is to buy premium match-grade primers if possible they're not that much more money and it tend to be a little bit more consistent beyond that you can also weigh your primers come up with an average and remove the extreme outliers as we did with the bullets and the brass and one final precaution with primers don't see them too hard and too deep primers prefer a gentle nurturing one might even say caring touch if your RAM it in there like an overzealous bull on a first date with a pretty young heifer you might pre compress or displace some of that priming compound which could result in slight ignition variances again affecting operating pressures and ultimately increasing the extreme spread of your muzzle velocities remember everything we're doing is to try and shave off tiny bits of each variable to make everything as uniform as possible so even though it might seem like too small of a variable to even matter it's the sum of all parts that come together and give you better consistency and improved long-range accuracy and with that we hope you enjoyed this video today please remember to give us a thumbs up and subscribe if you haven't already and we'll see you again next time at a dega Armory

Channel: Adiga Armory

Views: 6,677

Rating: 4.7018633 out of 5

Keywords: long range shooting techniques, long range reloading tips, long range reloading, long range reloading equipment, long range only reloading, long range rifle reloading, long range 308 loads, 175gr Sierra Match King, sierra matchking 308, sierra matchking 308 175, m118lr load data, m118lr accuracy, rifle reloading techniques, rifle reloading tips, sniper reloading, bolt action rifle reload

Id: jdv0J87R7YA

Length: 23min 15sec (1395 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 08 2020