Ok as you know from reading my other posts I just got my savage ml and I have my first range report. It was cut quite short due to the bullets I had to try. i chose to use accurate 5744 as my powder according to savage a max charge is 44 grains so I made some tubes to hold charges and I measured out a bunch of 42 grain charges. Needless to say swampman you were absolutely right thatt he TC sabots wouldn't hold up to the 5744 not even in light charges. I found peices of the sabots all over and he FPB's on the other hand would stay within a 2 foot circle (hey improvement) Well to make a long story short I ended up shooting the 5 bullets that came with the gun and they grouped with in 2 inches granted this is after firing about 15 shockwaves so I don't know if the shockwave sabots left plastic in the barrel to hinder the accuracy of the MMPsabots and xtp's that came with the gun.
To my next part i've been trying to figure out a way to measure powdert charges in the feild without the use of a electric scale. I have some scoops but have had no luck in getting any consitancy out of the scooping. So my next that was I have a clear T/C powder horn/dispenser and normally the end holds 20 grains of blck powder so I emptied it and fillled it with 5744 and marked the hell out of the out side to make sure no one if that picked it up would comfuse it for being black powder. I filled the end up twice and measured it. (putting my thumb over the end) and was getting a consitant 37.5 grains +/- .2 grains out of ten trys. So that got me to think to machine out a aluuminum tube with the inside diameter thesame as the inside of the dispesnser and resccessed to accept the end of the dispenser. I just kept drilling it deeper till it held 44 grains (granted 4-5 weighings in between drillings) well I got it to 44 grains and did it 20 times to make sure and it was +/- .3 grains witihn all 20 times.
So now I have 200 MMP hph12 sabots (since MMP reccomends them for the hotter savage loads) on there way and I have a 100 round pack of 250 gr. XTP's and a 50 round pack of 300 gr. XTP's to see what it's going to shoot the best. then make another tube for that weight of powder.
