Thread: A superb article on why "node load deveopment" is toast

Originally Posted by 19Badger

Yes you can, I've proved it with multiple barrels and rifles, admittedly these rifle will shoot sub 0.300 aggs for 100 rounds at 100/200yds.

Gimp are you going to the Benchrest match at Labour weekend in Nelson?

Thank you but I won't make it to the match in Nelson - I'm committed to shooting a precision rifle match next month and while I am interested to learn more about the nuts and bolts of benchrest, it is largely from an interest perspective rather than practical application - as I am already achieving precision far beyond what I can practically apply in field shooting


However I am keen to make sure I understand how benchrest works - !


As I understand it - focussing on BR for Agg not score -

Within a weight class, shooters shoot 5 relays of 5 shots each at a distance for group size. The average of these group sizes is your "agg". 7 minutes per relay? Presumbly some sort of foulers or sighters permitted?

Is it safe to assume that all shooters are "tuning loads" for their rifles with powder charge and seating depth?

Are most shooters "tuning" during matches - or only some?


It looks like a "winning agg" at 100Y is about 0.3MOA and a "losing agg" is about 0.5MOA - although it is hard to find many results from NZ https://www.deerstalkers.org.nz/reso...g-champs-2024/. Is this about fair?

Does the same person win every match?

What does the total agg over a season or the good life of a barrel look like - not just the winning agg?

Originally Posted by Tahr

Ive mucked around with neck sizing but for hunting the security of knowing every round will fit the chamber is reassuring.

Yeah I had that happen once a few moons never made that mistake again.

Sent from my SM-S916B using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by Tentman

https://www.outdoorlife.com/guns/rifle-nodes/

For those especially too busy to watch Hornardy podcast #50 or requiring further evidence to lose an entrenched mindset!

Hey...

The "Your Groups Are Too Small" series really got me thinking and changed my way of load testing and development quite a bit.
I think it was well worth to watch the two main videos and invest that time.
Awesome info in it!
Even after taking into consideration that it is a Hornady marketing show after all!

@Tentman On a completely other note:

Thank you very much indeed, for that very generous offer via mail!
Awewome...
Somehow I just can not get my answer through to you.
Mail delivery error all the time.
And being a newb here, I can also not find the right button to send you a personal message or mail via the forum.
Maybe you or someone else can help me with that...
But again:
Really cool move and much appreciated!

Cheers
Ben

After neck sizing cases I run them through the rifle seems an easy way to avoid a round not chambering...

Mind you I do it when I fl as well...

Originally Posted by Ben_SK

Hey...

The "Your Groups Are Too Small" series really got me thinking and changed my way of load testing and development quite a bit.
I think it was well worth to watch the two main videos and invest that time.
Awesome info in it!
Even after taking into consideration that it is a Hornady marketing show after all!

@Tentman On a completely other note:

Thank you very much indeed, for that very generous offer via mail!
Awewome...
Somehow I just can not get my answer through to you.
Mail delivery error all the time.
And being a newb here, I can also not find the right button to send you a personal message or mail via the forum.
Maybe you or someone else can help me with that...
But again:
Really cool move and much appreciated!

Cheers
Ben

Your PMs should come on soon, we can do it then.

"Meaningfully different loads" with same components seems to me to be smoke filled debating chamber. I can well recall Mr Litz suggesting seating secant ogive bullets way back and then the devopement if hybrid ogive profiles. I write this simply to imply that the actual position of that component will alter MV and group size and pressure.
Bell curves exist but the steepness of the sides and the wide or narrow range of distributuon at the peak xemonsgrate differences in the interdependence of load components in any test. Fine tuning a load involves makinf only one change at a time unless your voodoo senses come into play. Eg knowing that increading ffeebore can reduce pressure but reducing case capacity may do the opposite. Then burn rate migjt change bbl harmonics. Ergo, bring in bbl tuners
It's a never ending story andoad developement and proving is a great sporting recreational activity IMO.

I can't put my hand on it, but somewhere I have a 20-round target which is basically two points of impact with two distinct groups, one of about 13 rounds the other 7. Each group is about an inch, but about 3 inches apart on the diagonal (shot at 100m, single point of aim roughly in the middle of the two points of impact). Ammo was a single packet of quality hunting ammo, .308 cal. Could find no reason to explain it as far as rifle or scope. Rifle was fine as a bush hunting piece, as far as I know it's still doing the job and still set up the same.

Mechanical precision? Or something else?

Perhaps bedding or action screws totque issue. Bbl heating can influence torques if bbl is not fully free floated too. Even a small obsttuction falling into gap betwwrn mag box and inlettong can cause issues. Same if bolt handle comes in contact with a swelling stock.

A wise man once said to me he picked a load between middle n hot in manual,loaded up rounds and went hunting...not a hell of a lot different to back when we just bought box of whatever was on shelf,fired a couple of shots into a pizza box to check zero and carried on. My days of firing fifteen into paper and five at animals are long over.

Originally Posted by gimp

Thank you but I won't make it to the match in Nelson - I'm committed to shooting a precision rifle match next month and while I am interested to learn more about the nuts and bolts of benchrest, it is largely from an interest perspective rather than practical application - as I am already achieving precision far beyond what I can practically apply in field shooting


However I am keen to make sure I understand how benchrest works - !


As I understand it - focussing on BR for Agg not score -

Within a weight class, shooters shoot 5 relays of 5 shots each at a distance for group size. The average of these group sizes is your "agg". 7 minutes per relay? Presumbly some sort of foulers or sighters permitted?

Correct, but during the 7 minutes they can fire as many sighters as they like this happens quite often when the condition changes

Is it safe to assume that all shooters are "tuning loads" for their rifles with powder charge and seating depth?

Yes this is how everyone tunes their load

Are most shooters "tuning" during matches - or only some?

Yes some change their load during the match


It looks like a "winning agg" at 100Y is about 0.3MOA and a "losing agg" is about 0.5MOA - although it is hard to find many results from NZ https://www.deerstalkers.org.nz/reso...g-champs-2024/. Is this about fair?

It is hard to find results from NZ matches, while NZDA "professes" to support shooting their actions do the opposite. Due to conditions those aggs were larger than some at the North Island Champs. I had this link sent to me recently which shows the regional and national records, but if I go and search for it on the website it doesn't exist as there is no link to it. A winning 2 gun agg can be from 0.1900" to 0.300" but it depends on how successfully the competitor tunes the rifle and judges the condition.
https://www.deerstalkers.org.nz/what...oting-records/

Does the same person win every match?

No, but some win more than others

What does the total agg over a season or the good life of a barrel look like - not just the winning agg?

I can't say I've worked that out but conditions play a part in the size of groups and aggregates, North Islands in 2023 were shot on the same weekend as the flooding in Auckland, the aggs were slightly larger than this year, yet the winning 2 gun agg at this years Nationals was 0.2139" and at the Zuppa it was 0.1925" so the conditions play a part in the results, but a good barrel would agg around the low 0.200's for it's useable life. Some change barrels before it starts shooting big groups. Saying that I've shot a barrel with more than 2000 rounds on it and shot a teen agg 0.1???"

Hope that answers some of your questions

The thing is that I'm really interested in the "average" numbers - not the winning numbers, or the records. The winners and records are by default outliers. The winner or record is the best - that excludes all of the other data from the sample. What does that tell us about the whole picture?

To test "whether load tuning works", you can't just cherry pick the absolute best results from a population of people that are all tuning and say look, good groups, it works, don't look at all the rest of the data. Those who are losing BR matches are also tuning - so therefore it doesn't work? Is it that only the "best at tuning" are doing it right and winning - so it's only worth doing if you're the best at it? But then they don't win every time. If benchrest competitors are losing because they're tuning wrong, how likely is it that it's worth a hunter bothering with it for a hunting rifle?

To prove there is a difference you actually need to try measure whether there is a difference - pick an "in-tune load" and shoot a meaningful sample,and pick an "out of tune load" and shoot a meaningful sample, and see if there's actually a significant difference.

We know that "agg" or average group size is not representative of the actual precision capability of the rifle. I have shot 4x or 5x 5-shot 100m group "aggs" of under 0.5MOA with my 8lb .223 hunting rifle, with un-tuned loads loaded in bulk 1x fired factory brass FL sized in cheap hornady dies with no special prep, with VLD type bullets seated a random distance off the lands, powder charge selected at random to be "about book max" , shooting prone off the ground with a hard hold from a bipod and bag, no wind flags, 2lb trigger, shooting on 15-18x mag, etc, more than once.

The actual precision of the rifle when the groups are overlaid is of course larger than 0.5moa, and the 0.5 moa agg doesn't tell us anything predictive about the precision of the rifle - it tells us it "shoots well" but isn't informative for understanding what size of target we might be able to expect to hit.

If everyone is tuning loads, then the value in it is only as good as the worst or average results - and it looks like I'm not that far different from the worst results without doing it - but I'm also shooting with a lot more uncontrolled variables so it's a pretty crap comparison. I'm not shooting BR winning group aggs... but I can sure shoot some BR losing group aggs !! It would be really interesting to see competitors shooting similar equipment, rests, loading process etc test the actual validity of the tuning process - is there a real gain to be made from tuning powder charge and seating depth? there might be - but it seems extremely likely that it might be something tiny and only able to be resolved with exceptionally precise equipment and technique.

Here's some randomly selected google results from some sort of BR nationals in the USA for the last 2 years - the losing aggs at the 100Y distances are around the high 0.4-0.5MOA range - mid pack looks around the high 0.2-0.3 range.

https://internationalbenchrest.com/a...0Nationals.pdf

https://internationalbenchrest.com/a...%20Results.pdf

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

A wise man once said to me he picked a load between middle n hot in manual,loaded up rounds and went hunting...not a hell of a lot different to back when we just bought box of whatever was on shelf,fired a couple of shots into a pizza box to check zero and carried on. My days of firing fifteen into paper and five at animals are long over.

Haha that's what I did for my 416 rem.
Some head scratching over powder (ended up with 2206 only because it could do lighter bullets-more useful for deer type animals here in nz). Started in the higher level of middle and had loads I reckoned to do 1"ish at a hundy. Only shot at 50 as it was handy and still had some ammo that it was sighted in to use up first.
A couple put over a mates chrony a while later showed very good velocity, actually very close to the full load specs from ADI.
Which is also a classic example of why you are meant to start low lol.
Fast forward to recently, an acquaintance put some down range with his batch of 2206 and went with a mid range load about a grain less than mine.
Applicable drop in speed by about 100-150fps but was shooting moa at a hundy.
Just a good mix of powder, projectiles, cases and rifle

So to summerise after watching the hornady podcast a couple of times and reading the link at the start of this thread then load development should go like this.
Correct me if I have this wrong please.

Select a bullet and powder you want to use and load enough to get the speed you want at some random distance from the lands.
Load up 20 rounds and shoot at one target,this may have to be slowly for barrel heat/suppressor heat.
If the dispersion is not to your liking don't bother changing powder weights or seating depths.
Change the powder type and re test.
If after trying a few types of powder dispersion is still not to your liking change the projectile and re test.
If after testing a few different projectile and powder combinations you cannot get dispersion you are happy with you may as well change the barrel because no amount of fafing around with seating depths or powder charges will turn a 2moa shooter into a 1moa shooter (for 20 round+ groups) ?

Originally Posted by Woody

If the tester is not using "perfect" bullets and 'perfect brass' and 'perfect ptimers', then they might have point; otherwise why do the worlds tip F class shooters take such care with their component selection and handloading precision!.
Quality of components is critical and that aspect is a moot point in podcadt and article. Get those right and thrn ladder and OCW and similar tests are valid and cheaper and do allow - achieve sub 1/2 moa groups at very
long range. Just look at the scores of NZ and international medium and long
range target shooters. Virtually nil random fliers by those winning people.

Yup, stuff you buy from the shop is going to be 100% perfect and it's just how you put it together with a magic touch that makes it super accurate

There is definitely a correlation between rifle weight and precision.

There is definitely a correlation between a robust sighting system and accuracy.

The bloke doing 'load development' every range trip is unlikely to get much better results due to constant changes.