Thread: Stupid Question. bare with me please

Originally Posted by Taranaki Shooter

To my mind this is exactly what forums are for. Ask away mate. better to be safe.

First question is what twist barrel have you got? The 147 is a heavy pill and likely needs an 8 twist.

If you are new to reloading I would not get too hung up on trimming cases. I personally never trim but I do use an M die. I have never had an issue with case necks hitting the back of the throat. I know they grow over time and if you don't use an M Die you may have inconsistent neck tension. For now I wouldn't worry about it. 90% of the crap we do makes little difference. The spec is 48.771mm

As for the COAL I generally ignore that altogether. In a factory hunting rifle the throat is generally long unless its a Howa. I have done loads for 2 of those recently and they were bloody good! Rem 700 are long. I seat a projectile progressively till it jams slightly in the lan's then set them back 10thou. Then check they fit your mag.

Run your powder up till it settles to a low ES on your chrony then adjust your seating depth to adjust your group size 3-5 thou steps. I only ever shoot 3 shot groups during this process. Without a crony you are flying blind and this system will not work well. EDIT: Powder selection is pretty critical! If you are reading this and think you can apply this to your loads and do as I say here you will get into trouble. I determine all my loads in QL before I do this. It has never failed me! Not once!!

I thinking you may have to stick with your 129 SST load.

if so a starting recommendation would be 129SST with 44grains of Reloader 17 and that will be somewhere close to max pressure. My experience with QL is you will find your ES will level out about 2% above that. If you feel more comfortable starting lower then by all means do so, but you will find primers wont start showing pressure till you are in the red zone. That said pressure shows up differently in every gun so if you are not sure what you are doing I would not recommend you go above the 44 Grains I have suggested here.

I hope this helps and keep me posted how you get on.

Edit I couldn't post QL data. Seriously questioning the wisdom of posting this. Its all easy in my head as I type it and happy to help but then you think of the wider implications and maybe this is not smart. Lets see how it goes. If I get flamed I'm out.

Standard twist rate for 6.5 Creedmoor is 1:8 so the 147 will be fine.

The Lyman M die is not necessary to get consistent neck tension. A standard set of reloading dies is fine.

10 thou back from being jammed into the rifling is a good way to get a pressure spike.

Needs a lot of rounds to give a good enough sample size to say with any certainty that a particular charge is giving a better ES than another. 3 rounds is not nearly enough. It probably won't make any meaningful difference. Same goes for grouping.

Adjusting seating depth is also not likely to make any noticeable difference with that bullet in a Creedmoor chamber.

Recommending that they START with what you think is a MAXIMUM load... of what is also an expensive and hard to get powder???