6.5x55SE 140 gr Accubonds - H4831SC - Fed 210 - Lapua

[azsixshooter]

I'll be testing my swede this week with 6.5 staball. It only has 25 rounds down the tube. Accuracy beats velocity every time.

That sounds like a good powder, it's on the short list of powders I will test next whenever I get around to tweaking this load further. If this next range trip proves consistent velocity and sub-MOA 5-shot groups I'll be sticking with it for this year's deer season.

 

[Ralt71]

I finally got another round of testing in today. I decided to take the best performing powder charge from last session - 48.0 gr H4831SC - and experiment with some longer jumps to the lands. Those of you who said Accubonds like a .050" jump were right on the money. I had 3 COAL's at this charge weight that gave sub-moa 3-shot groups at 100 yards today. Of those three the .050" jump (3.100" in my rifle) gave the best velocity. I'm going to call that my deer load for this season and go back to fire a few 5-shot strings to make sure it repeats. That will leave me enough ammo to get a good 280 yd MPBR zeroed in and to hunt with. When I raise enough money to get another pound of powder and more bullets I'll continue testing to see if I can tweak it in even better. My velocity is at an average of 2732 fps so I'm okay with that. I think closer to 2800 fps might be possible, but I'd rather not batter my rifle. I can live with 2732, but the bucks won't be able to!

If it's shooting great, you're where you need to be. I wouldn't get too hung up on trying to make it faster if its accurate now.

The only thing to keep in mind, your COAL technically has no correlation to your lands unless you know what the COAL is when touching the lands. OGIVE is what I prefer to use for my point of measurement. When most say .050 they mean ogive from the lands. This would be refered to as CBTO. Another thing to consider when using COAL is some soft tip or ballistic tips can show a variation in COAL because of deformation in the tip that could throw your measurements off ever so slightly. Ogive is consistent with each bullet type.

 

[azsixshooter]

If it's shooting great, you're where you need to be. I wouldn't get too hung up on trying to make it faster if its accurate now.

The only thing to keep in mind, your COAL technically has no correlation to your lands unless you know what the COAL is when touching the lands. OGIVE is what I prefer to use for my point of measurement. When most say .050 they mean ogive from the lands. This would be refered to as CBTO. Another thing to consider when using COAL is some soft tip or ballistic tips can show a variation in COAL because of deformation in the tip that could throw your measurements off ever so slightly. Ogive is consistent with each bullet type.

It's the first thing I measure when starting a load with new bullets. These 140 gr Accubonds are on-the-lands at 3.150" in my rifle. At 3.100" I'm .050" off the lands and getting the results I want, which correlates nicely with the expert advice I have received from other more-seasoned handloaders on this forum.