Made it to the range today, shot the 405 Winchester Target, first. Shoot and clean first 9 shots, never did get any copper fouling so I quit the cleaning between shots after that.
Up until then accuracy was not impressive, 1½"-2" groups at 100yds with velocities in the 2150-2175fps range, which isn't bad considering the tapered leade that Wayne cut for me is for the 350gr X bullet which will be loaded about an inch longer than the 300gr hornady bullets in the factory ammo that I'm using for the brass cuz no one has any brass for it.
The next 2 shots fired from a fouled bore looked like 1 hole from 100yds away looking thru a 25x spotting scope!! I shoot one more for a 3 shot group and the 3rd shot, fired about a minute after the first 2 in as much time hit ¾" above the first 2!!!
After that for the next 21 rounds, it was pretty much the same story, 1st 2 touching and a flyer with a warm barrel. This made me real happy and am hoping the 350gr X bullets will shoot as well. The last group was a 5 shot group that was about 1½"x2", fired as fast as I could load, if I ever get into a flock of elk, I should be good for 5 of em!!!! :-D
Next up was the .30-30 Handi and the Federal Fusion 150gr ammo, it shoots pretty darn good for the first 2 shots in less than ½", then the third is a flyer and inch away or so, need to work on the synthetic forend, tried an O-ring on it, but it didn't help or hurt. Velocity was around 2380fps.
Lastly was the .22-250 fluted Ultra, shooting the Remington 45gr JHP at about 3750 fps. It didn't shoot well off the bipod at all, finally removed the bipod and went to my Handi shooting rest which supports the front of the rifle under the hinge.
Much improved, 3 shot groups under 1" with the first 2 much closer than the third, as usual. Shot about a dozen of those, cleaning between shots, got no jacket fouling using Sweets, so I quit the cleaning, groups stayed the same.
Then I tried some handloads I brought with me, 50gr Vmax and BL-C(2) powder, start load is 31.5gr, max is 34.5gr. First shot velocity is 3014fps!!!! Extract spent case, it's all black like it'd been shot by some loose military firearm. Velocity should have been in the 3450-3500fps range.....What's up with that???
I checked with several other handloaders at the range and all agreed that I must have a bad batch of powder since the load density of this load is close to 90% and the powder level is at the shoulder. It's like a squib load, doesn't have enough pressure to form the case to the chamber wall and allows fouling back along the sides of the case.
I dumped a couple loads when I got home and weighed them on my Lyman beam scale and they were right on, so it's not a powder measurement error, the powder just doesn't perform right, or the load data from the Hodgdon 2004 Annual is wrong as well as the Hodgdon 25th that was at the range that showed the same data. Now if Hodgdon will help shed some light on this issue, I'll sure feel better.
Other than wasting some of my Vmax bullets, I was real happy with my range work... :wink:
Tim
