Thread: Where to from here

I spent this afternoon out at the range with my 6.5mm SAUM.

The purpose of my range session was to play around with seating depth of the Hornady 143gr ELD-X projectiles.

My rifle likes 62grs H1000, so I loaded 3 rounds with the bullets touching the lands, then the next set of 3 at 5 thou off the lands, followed by the next set of 3 at 10 thou, then 15 thou. So on and so forth till I got to 45 thou.

The group I shot below is with the bullets 35 thou off the lands, and the group size is 0.7 MOA. This is the optimum seating depth as all the others were an inch or over.

My rifle incidentally loves the 140gr SST, it is punching sub 0.5 MOA groups, however I am more keen on the 143gr ELD-X.

I am guessing that the next stage is re-visiting powder charge weights again. I have ascertained that 62.5grs gives ejector marks on the case head and also group size is an well over an inch.

What would you all do as far as powder weight charges - half grain increments or smaller? or, should I really be concentrating on taking this load and trying it at longer ranges?