Thread: 204 ruger speer data way off wack

So a few months back I brought a 204 i only got loading bits the other day and set about making some test loads for it
I found some data on the speer website that was useing the Particular projectile 39gn tnt and they had cfe223 in there which is what I wanted to use normally I would check a couple of manuals but this is the actual bullet im useing and the right powder so fuck it let’s go load some ammo
They showed a starting charge of 24.9 and a “recommended” max of 27.5

Well this is what the case ejected from my nice bolt action rifle 1st shot at 24.9....
From my experience this is Caused by low pressure
And the brass apart from being filthy looked fine
So I tried 25.2 (I always work in .3’s)
Same thing...
This continued slowly improving till i got to 27.4 where brass was now clean and normal

Puzzled when i got home I checked the Hodgdon data for the 40gn v-max there listed starting load was only 0.2gn under speers max at 27.3 gn and the max was listed at 29.0
That’s a fair amount of Difference no wonder i was seeing lower than normal pressure

Accuracy wasn’t bad at 0.5 inches average but not as good as im told this rifle is capable of
So back to square 1 with the hotter Hodgdon data this time bit of a waste of components but you get that