Half a grain....

[Wincheringen]

I've seen plenty of changes in half a grain change in powder but never like today. I've been working on this .280 for a long time. I had a load worked up, but that was a few years and a few lots of Reloder 22 ago. I have quite a few guns and so sometimes they just don't get shot for a few years. That was the case with this .280 and I had robbed the scope off it a while back and it was just hanging around not doing anything. I started reading on here about giving it some more legs and got a little more interested in it.

I went back to the load that worked so well, a 54.0 grain charge of RE22 with the 150 grain E Tip. I was pretty surprised when it put a 3.5" group on the paper at 100 yards. By surprised I mean thoroughly disgruntled. Luckily I had brought along some more loads, 55, 55.5, & 56 grains. It was only 29 degrees today so it was easy to let the gun get cooled off between loads. I should have brought the cleaning stuff but left that with the chronograph at home.

55 grains was a little tighter group but still nearly 2.5" across. 55.5 was just under 3". 56 grains was slightly under 3/4" for 5 shots.

Dr. Mike did some QL for me and showed it safe up to 57.2 grains. I made sure the bore was spotless tonight and I'm going to put together some more of the 56 grain load and probably a 56.5 and 57 grain load. The bad news is I will be out of Re22 and will have to start over again, but I have some good numbers to work with now.

Luckily SPS has some over run 150 grain E Tips so I ordered up 5 boxes.

 

[remingtonman_25_06]

I"ve seen half a grain do the same thing in a couple rifles I've worked with over the years. A lot of times they proved to not be a very consistent load.

Makes me wonder how small the sweet spot is for the particular combo when it goes from 3" to under 1". I myself would work with another powder that had a little bigger sweet spot, and not something so picky.

RL22 seems to be one of those powders with lot to lot consistency as well, especially after a couple years, could also be part of the problem.

 

[DrMike]

On multiple occasions, I've had that extra 0.5 or 1.0 grain that changed the harmonics in such a way that the groups were tight. Small changes at the reloading bench can make major changes at the range. Glad its working out for you.

 

[Wincheringen]

As it is now, I'll just see what I can get out of it. If I can get it shooting consistently it'll go elk hunting in a week and half. If not I have plenty of backups including a very consistent shooting 7/08.

This particular rifle has been a challenge, it really hasn't shot well with any other bullet and I've tried a lot of them. I've used several different powders also. I have a lot of powders to work with but given Re22 worked so well in the past I am more inclined to stay with it.

 

[onesonek]

On multiple occasions, I've had that extra 0.5 or 1.0 grain that changed the harmonics in such a way that the groups were tight. Small changes at the reloading bench can make major changes at the range. Glad its working out for you.

This was my same thought when I read the OP.

 

[Oldtrader3]

I have had a serious issue with the .280 Remington and most published loading manuals. No wonder the caliber is not more popular. The published manuals are several grains of powder and several thousand pounds of pressure off the factory loads on the light side.

I went along for the first 5 years that I had a .280 Rem thinking that I could not reconcile the drops that I was getting with 140 Partitions at 200 and 300 yards and the ballistic charts published for my loads. There was several inches (plus) drop difference between published loading data and actual drop. This was not resolved until I got a chronograph and found out that published loads were 6% off from case capacity or about 200 fps! This 6% happens to be the amount of increased capacity due to moving the case shoulder .050 inch forward.

I can not comment regarding Quickload or Reloader 22 having not used either of these products. However, if you are using most reloading manuals, you may or may not be 6% off in your data! Hodgdon is the worst and least accurate! Once I was able to start using a chronograph and figured out what was going on with the loading manual issues, I was finally able to load decently performing ammo with the proper velocity and bullet drop for case and caliber.

 

[FOTIS]

With 243-30-06 cases I have seen that same thing. Now once you get into the big bees I go 1 gr.

 

[Oldtrader3]

I still went 1/2 grain increments for my .340 Weatherby, maybe one grain would be better for the bigger .378 cases?

 

[bullet]

Any cartridge using the 30-06 case and especially the 30-06 in a well made rifle will give you headaches at times. Sometimes making it very hard to find consistently accurate loads over repeated groups. When you change your lot of RL-22 expect to have a few headaches as you tweak it back in and don't be surprised if you don't get it shooting group after group consistently.

 

[PJGunner]

"Any cartridge using the 30-06 case and especially the 30-06 in a well made rifle will give you headaches at times."

I'll second that comment. With everyone saying the 4350s are so good with the 06 I decided to try it. So far, in 6 different 30-06 rifles including two Remington M700s, two FN mausers a Browning B78 that is a tackdriver with factory ammo and a Ruger #1B that is also accurate with factory ammo not only has accuracy been total crap but weight velocity changes and pressure spikes in all 6 rifles. Standard primers, magnum primer, I've even thought about sacrificing a goat at midnight on my loading bench. :roll: I always had better results using IMR4831.
So far, with what little load work I've done with my .280 Rem., accuracy has been quite good. Just have to make up my mind what bullet I want to work with in that rifle. I've been using WMR in that rifle though.
Paul B.

 

[Oldtrader3]

When all else fails with a .30-06, go back to 4895!

 

[elkeater2]

Based on some recent experience: Check the crown with a good magnifier/loupe!! I found problems recently on a couple well-traveled rifles of my own. Who knows how they get messed up. I'm certainly more careful now than I was a few years ago. I read that military armorers touched up crowns on match rifles nearly every time they came in for work of any kind. I'm beginning to think sometimes it's not only the easily visible, but also the squareness to the bore and the pure even-ness of the bore edge and chamfer (if it exists). I don't have a lathe nor the tools to check squareness - would like to know how to check squareness, any suggestions?
EE2
ps - one reason I mentioned the crown is I found that loads can be found for rifles with that problem which shoot pretty well, but 1/2 grain either way did make a big negative difference with them, more than you'd expect.

 

[Guest]

I've experienced this with a few rifles, though I generally find trends to be more linear and gradual than sudden in terms of accuracy. The one shining exception that comes to mind? Working with my 270Wby and 130gr Nosler E-Tips. I'm also working with a 300Wby and 180gr E-Tips and getting similar results so far. I have found the E-Tip to have a very narrow "sweet spot" for accuracy. That's in relation to both powder charge and seating depth. So maybe what you're seeing is more related to the bullet than the powder or rifle in this instance. Let us know how it all plays out.

 

[Antelope_Sniper]

Wincher, try some H4831sc.
IME it's not as sensitive to small changes as RL22, and is a top performer the .270 Win, the balistic twin of your .280.

 

[Horsethief]

I worked up loads with RL 22 and 150gn Sierra Game Kings, coming out with 59gns as the max load. The last two work ups were 2963 and 2962 in the chronograph. Great accuracy from a 24" barrel on a FN Mauser action.

 

[FOTIS]

I still went 1/2 grain increments for my .340 Weatherby, maybe one grain would be better for the bigger .378 cases?

YUP 30-378 378 416 460. The big ones.

 

[Wincheringen]

Well found some more interesting things. When I measured to the lands with the E Tip it showed 3.40". The little slip of paper in the box said to start at .1 off the lands so I did that.

When I was doing my load work this time around, I intended to have them all at 3.30" and then find one that was showing signs of accuracy. What I found out after I did all that was that my seating stem was wandering down and seating deeper as I went along.

Like usual I went right along and didn't check them so I have no idea where it ended up at. I was reading another thread about seating depth changing things up so today I loaded some 56.0 grain loads at 3.30, 3.285, and 3.25. I also loaded some at 56.5 and 57.0 grains but left them at 3.30". I have no specific reasoning for this.

The paper doesn't lie and it showed I need to be seating deeper. The 56.0 grain loads at 3.30 went into a 2.5" group, 3.285 went into 1.5" and the 3.25 went into 1.25".

Both the 56.5 and 57.0 grain loads went into large groups.

I looked at some of the load data I had worked up previously but somehow I didn't write down the COAL. Its been 5 years and a couple of moves since I had everything together.

I feel like I'm on the right track now, I'm confident that I find the accurate load for this gun again.

I will be working on this until I run out of RL 22 and then order a 5lb jug since I use it in other cartridges too.

 

[DrMike]

It does indeed sound as if you are on the right track. You'll find "the" load shortly, I do believe.

 

[Wincheringen]

I got to thinking about it and remeasured the distance to the lands again, this time several times. I came up with an average of 3.382".

Upon inspection of the 56.5 and 57.0 grain loads, the primers were slightly flattened so I decided to leave those and focus on 56.0 grain load. I also didn't think that seating deeper was the solution and went back to 3.330" COAL which would be .05" off the lands. I put together 15 and headed out to the range with my chronograph. Avg velocity was just shy of 2900 FPS which was right where I wanted to be. The Nosler manual shows 56.0 grains of RE22 delivering 2980 FPS out of a 26" tube and I have a 22" tube so that is right in line with expected velocities.

I shot 3 5 shot groups and all of them measured less than 1.125" with the tightest coming in at .697". My bullets showed from SPS today so I'll load up a few of those and head back out to the range. I'm pretty positive about the results now.

 

[DrMike]

Confidence in your load goes a long way toward comfort in the field.