Thread: Load ladder made

It's been years since I loaded .308 so I'm rattling some old braincells.
2208 is not a very efficient powder in the cartridge (but obviously if that's all you have, then use it!) but it's also generally one of the most forgiving powders in terms of performance and temperature so I'm surprised

Please, what is your "ladder test" method?
I always understood it to be one shot at each charge weight, shot over a chrony at 200+ meters, while watching for vertical so I'm not sure how you can have a "group" at one weight

I did 3 shots at each weight for accuracy rather than speed as didn't have access to a chrony at this point. Accuracy for me is the most important point, speed is secondary.

Greetings @11mms,
You are quite right. The ladder test is single shots of increasing charge weights fired at long range in calm conditions. The loads were not chronographed. The test was to determine sets of loads that were closer together than others due to a calm spot in the barrel vibration. Unfortunately "Ladder Test" has been applied to endless series of 3 shot groups with increasing powder charge at close range which tell the shooter little to nothing about the long range precision of the load. If you fire the same string again you can get completely different results.
Greetings @Happy Jack,
You seem to have reached a decent load which is not hard to do with the .308. I found while AR2208 shot well in my .308 rifles it was sometimes hard to get decent velocity before I ran out of space. These days I use AR2206H. Feel free to PM me if you want some of my chronographed .308 data.
Regards Grandpamac.
PS. I chronographed 44 grains of AR2208 in my 20 inch barrelled.308 using Winchester cases and 150 grain Hornady projectiles. It gave 2,560 fps. You may find that load shoots best in the Rossi with its break open action. I load 41 grains of AR2206H, a nice comfortable load in a suppressed rifle.
GPM.

Not sure where this 2208 being inefficient comes from.
The old rough rule of thumb for the 308W used to be up to 150gr use 2206H, greater than 150gr use 2208. The short barrel vogue may change that somewhat.
I shoot 180gr and 200gr (Berger 200.20x) in my 308W using 2208 very well. In fact, if you look at Hodgdon's loading data, they don't even list 2206H loads for these weights.

Originally Posted by rossi.45

what size were the worst groups and how many shots for each ?

All were 3 shot groups worst was 2.75 inches.

Thanks for the offer Grandpa Mac will see how we go, using 2208 as its what I have and I don't have money to keep burning so if something works for me I tend to keep using it.