Righto. Got my reloading gear set up.
I'm keen on reloading a 35 grain varmint round for my 223 as a starter for 10.
Any advice on a good starting load ?
Tim
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Righto. Got my reloading gear set up.
I'm keen on reloading a 35 grain varmint round for my 223 as a starter for 10.
Any advice on a good starting load ?
Tim
35gn?
I assume they are V-Maxes?
ADI 2205, 2207 or Bench Mark would be fast powders.
Pretty sure it's a typo and he means 53gr. At least I hope so :)
Nup, I'm serious. Plenty of people doing these loads, just not a great amount of reliable load data.Quote:
Originally Posted by Proudkiwi
Tim
Yep, they're vmaxes.Quote:
Originally Posted by dogmatix
Tim
You should be fine using the starting powder charge for 40gn projectiles and work your way up, as its going to be conservative.
In fact, looking at the BC data, unless you are set on the 35s, 40gn seems a better pill. Almost double the BC (not hard).
Are you going for splat factor?
Splat factor ? Must be a technical term :D :DQuote:
Originally Posted by dogmatix
Most of the varmints will be under 200 yards ... The idea with 35 grain was faster = flatter ... And a little cheaper (less powder)
That said , I'm not looking for so fast as to burn out my barrel or pressure spike the chamber..
Thanks for the advice. Might indeed go with 40gn
Tim
I've been using the Nosler 40gn BT in my 223. Very happy with the results on hares, wallabies, goats and paper targets. :)
Velocity in the high 3k's and they are about as flat as you could hope for. Zeroed at 200 they're less than an inch high at their peak.
On the bigger animals, they punch clean for the first 10-15mm and then get pretty violent beyond that, turning a rockmelon-sized region of vitals into liquified mincemeat. Pulp is probably a good term for it. Consistent killer on everything sized up to some fairly large billies out to 200+ (haven't attempted any further than 230ish) and plenty further on roos. I don't tend to get any exits, although occasionally I'll find the base of the projectile in or around the offside shoulder somewhere when butchering. Only downside to the clean entry is that sometimes it can be tricky to find where you shot it.
Can't help with info on the 35's sorry, but thought you may be interested in my experiences with the 40's.
Hmmmm sounds like the 40 is the better way to go.Quote:
Originally Posted by StrikerNZ
What powder are you using ?
Tim
My uncle is brewing these up for me rather than loading them myself, but he was using N133 in them until supply ran low a little while ago at which point he loaded me up a couple of different powders to test. Luckily they both performed well too. They were N530 and H335.
Nice one , lucky you to have an uncle like that.
The hodgdon website seems to have good reliable data
http://data.hodgdon.com/cartridge_load.asp
T
Inside 200 meters I think you'll find that flatter isn't a real thing
There's no point in loading the 35s
Interesting point of view.
If I'm not wrong what you're say is that there's hardly any difference up or down inside 200 anyway .... And that the flatter shooting is to biggest advantage at 200 + yards ???
If you have a 1-12 twist I would use 35grain pills if its only a bunny buster out two 200 yards. Good splat factor. Not like 50 grain pills have much better bc and energy isnt an issue.
Saying theres no point in loading 35's is prettt stupid
35's will do the job and will be the flattest shooting pill out to 200m even if it is only by an inch or so.
Go for it
The 35s are going slower before 200 than a 55gr is, starting at 4000fps vs 3200 for 55 and only drop .3" of an inch less. They'll be significantly worse in any wind at all than even the shitty 52-55gr bullets and have less "splat factor" if you care about that since they are slower
they're a waste of time and really limit your capability, 10 seconds with a ballistic calculator would tell you this. I mean go for it if you want to select functionally the worst possible bullet for the cartridge
e: a 53gr vmax at 3200fps overtakes the 35gr at 4000fps at about 115 meters
"flat shooting" isn't a real advantage at any range as it's never a real functional difference
e: with modern bottleneck centrefires etc not .45/70 vs .22-250 or something retarded
Yeah pretty much except I get the 55vmax dropping about 1.5inches more at 200 than 35vmax.
Yip 35 will be going slower at that point and start dropping pretty quick after.
They will also be blown around roughly twice as much as well.
Still I wouldn't say they are useless, just limited. Each to there own aye gimp.
The 53gr Vmax is a much better bullet than the 55. 55 is a flatbase, 53 has a nice little boat-tail.
Yeah just ran it with litz and 53 and its about .3inch more drop at 200 as you say.
Basically nothing in it. What im trying to say is if you have a slow twist barrel which I assume kiwi has the difference between the theoretical worst pill (35) and theoretical best pill (53) is pretty insignificant and ranges under 200 it wont matter one little bit what your using.
The barrel is 1:12
I went for vmax 40's
As soon as I get time, powder and primers I'm into it
Hodgdon varget seems like a good starting point.
Tim
Varget/2208 is a bit slow burning for 40gr, better off with BM2 or AR2207
My point is that there's nothing in it inside 200 (except a 400fps speed advantage to the heavier bullet by 200 meters) but no real advantage to the lighter bullets at all and they're much much shitter past 200 so why use them? Use the best, heaviest bullet that your twist will stabilise.