Can't get the 60 grain partition to shoot

corbin9191 · Mar 16, 2013

Have you tried to scrub all the fouling and copper out of your barrel? I use a ton of the cfe223 in our black rifles and the powder likes to leaving fouling just not in the terms of copper. Try to scrub your barrel with a good cleaner such as butches bore shine and a nylon brush. It sounds like the loads are fine just a dirty barrel.

Oldtrader3 · Mar 16, 2013

.224 CF's don't normally shoot 5 inch groups with anything! I agree with .300WSM that something else is going on? Did you say that these Nosler's were seconds? If so I would start by weighing the bullets and measuring them for diameter and length. Something is amiss?

nshunter · Mar 18, 2013

I am positive there is nothing wrong with the gun itself as everything else shoots fine! The barrel has been cleaned after every range session as well. The bullets are not seconds and shot well out of my old rifle which was a M77 II with a 12 twist. The new rifle is a model 77 predator which has a 9 twist.

Antelope_Sniper · Mar 26, 2013

shunter, you are discovering one of the frustrations with the NPT. Some rifles just don't like them....or at least don't like the with the powders we are acustomed to using with them.

If it doesn't like the stick powder, try a ball powder with a magnum primer of similar burn rate. Then as mentioned above go a little faster with you powder, and see if you can find something it likes. If not, you may have to switch to a different bullet, Maybe some of the 64gr BSB's if you can find them.

caribouhunter · Mar 29, 2013

in my limited experience coal seems to make the biggest difference in group size.
last week i decided to play with my wife's rifle. for this gun i only tried 1 bullet, 1 powder, 1 primer, 1 coal. my wife limit herself to 250 yard shooting so 1.5" group was good enough.
so i set the coal to 2.780" and shot from starting load to max load in .3 gr. increment. they all shot in the .80" to 1.5" range. so i settled on a near max load of 46.4 gr. and called it good.
it would sometime shoot .70" other times 1.2" for 3 shots and average around moa.
so like i said last week i picked up the small rifle and 5 round of the regular load i had already loaded. and load 5 round at 2.760" and 5 at 2.740". for those 2 last groups i put 45.5 gr of powder in case the shorter coal would raise pressures.
here's the target. it may be a fluke but i loaded more of the 45.5 gr at 2.760" that i will go shoot tomorrow to see if it holds.

260 rem. model 7
120 gr ballistic tip
cci br2 primer
the center group is the old load i used for reference

i experienced the same with my 300 rum, where changing coal changed groups from 1.5" with almost any charge of powder, to .4-.7" with same charges

nshunter · Mar 30, 2013

I haven't really played around with the COL that much, but maybe it is the solution. I am kind of frustrated with it for the time being so will leave things alone for now and try again later.

Larry in SD · Mar 30, 2013

A few years back I tried and tried and tried to get 60gr. Nosler Partitions to shoot out of a 1 in 9" Twist AR. After I burnt up 3 boxes of bullets with several different powders from Benchmark through Varget I phoned Nosler. I was told that due to the Partition design and the fact that the rear core of the Partition is quite hard the .22 Caliber can be the hardest of all the Partitions to get to shoot accurately (something about the hardness of the rear core and it's inability to conform to the rifling in .22 caliber vs Partitions of larger caliber).

The particular AR I was trying to get to shoot Partitions would consistantly put 5 - 55gr. Nosler Ballistic Tips into 1/2" to 5/8" groups at 100 yards. The very best group I ever obtained with the 60gr. Nosler Partitions in that 1 in 9" Twist AR was with Benchmark at 1 1/2".

Larry

Oldtrader3 · Mar 30, 2013

The Partition has that mechanical bulkhead in effect, right at the tangent ogive junction. This makes the bullet very difficult to mold down into to the rifling and swage at that tangent point. The smaller the caliber, the higher the compression stress forces required to size the bullet bulkhead, in effect, in the rifling. I am positive that Nosler gave you the straight story on this and some rifles work with these conditions and some don't.