Thread: Lower than expected velocities

I hear you on this one, my .308win is doing this too. For some reason it's way down on velocity and I've basically checked everything mechanical with it to ensure I'm not getting sucked into porkies somehow. Effectively the only thing that it can be that I can't eliminate is for some reason the barrel isn't hanging onto the pill long enough to generate enough kick to get the speed that it should.

Options are reloading with a faster powder, and seeing what that does as 2208 is rather disappointing and some factory loads are producing wildly different results. Win 150g powerpoint is on the box drops at 100 and 200m, but off at 50 and 150 and the bullet is rolling along the range floor at 275m (almost off the bottom of the 300m target backer). An old box of PMC is shooting a lot lower but flatter, I'd be happy to run with that but can't replace it - no longer imported. If I could get a small box of the Sako I'd try that, as I always like having an off-the-shelf backup even if I go for reloading for this one. Some of the upper end ammo shoots minute of barn door, it's not the rifle as such as subsonics are three-shots-touching at 50m and a nice regular less than 1" cloverleaf at 100m all day.

Just for whatever reason I can't get the expensive premium crap to run on a node on that rifle... I need to find a slightly faster powder than 2208 and some fancy pills and see what I can come up with for it.

As far as seating out, I would expect a few fps difference but not 300fps. That in itself would look to me that if the groups are either variable or unacceptably large that a change of powder is in order, or a change in pill. If you aren't planning on using the load at long range it's possibly fine as is depending on if the groups are OK, but like my experience with the .308 if you are finding the trajectory is more like a parabolic bell curve then it's just not worth fighting with the load as the drops aren't acceptable past about 300-350m.