.224 90gr bullets

[headhunter1111]

Has anybody had any firsthand experience with any .224 90 grainers? Particularly Berger VLD's, Sierra MK's, or JLKs?

 

[Tommy Leroy Johnson]

I built a very accurate .223 WSSM for one of my clients, using 90 Gr Berger VLD's he managed to hit several ground squirrels with it at 1095 yards at 5 Dogs Range in Bakersfield Ca.
Barrel life was short

 

[headhunter1111]

What kind of groups was it able to hold down range? I'm looking at building a long range varmint rifle but I also want it to be one seriously accurate rig.

 

[Laurie]

Headhunter1111,

you don't say in which cartridge! I and a few others have had very good results in .223 Rem in long-range F/TR competition shooting with excellent accuracy and MVs up to 2,900 fps (from suitably chambered / throated 30-31" barrels).

That is with the Berger 90gn VLD. The Berger 90gn BT will give very good results but at higher pressures and lower MVs. The 90gn Sierra MK has all sorts of problems unless restricted to very low velocities. Despite what Sierra says about 1-6.5" twists needed, a good 1-7" barrel gives very good 1,000yd results. You need to throat the barrel very long with these bullets to give a COAL around 2.7" in .223R.

Reloder 15 and Hodgdon VarGet give the best results in .223. Viht N550 gives high velocities as does Reloder 17, but not as good groups or small MV spreads in my rifle.

You ask what sort of downrange grouping. My last 600yd F-Class match gave me 99.11v (ex 100.20v, the 'Bull' counting 5 in the UK) on a target with a 0.95-MOA bull and 0.49-V-Bull in a squadded shoot over 40 minutes in a tricky wind in a North of England mountain range in moderate switching winds. That gave me an overall win, both F/TR and 'Open' class. The rifle has an off the shelf Savage 12 PT single-shot action, 31" 1-7" New Zealand True-Flite Heavy Palma profile barrel in a McRees MOD-MPSS modular stock and this was shot off a Versa-Pod tilting bi-pod and rear bag.


Laurie,
York, England

 

[headhunter1111]

Laurie, I was planning on using them in a 22-243 AI. I was just curious as to the bullets overall performance as i've heard that they can be a bit erratic at long range. Glad to here of your good results though!

 

[Tommy Leroy Johnson]

I only recall the client was very happy and described the rifle as extremely accurate, this rifle was later sold to another forum member named jeremy who goes by field rat sniper, Jeremy had me change out the bolt and rebarrel to 6mm BR he may remember the group sizes the original client shot with it. I have also built some 223's and 22 BR's and 22-250's that shot the 90 Gr Berger VLD's very well. I believe that forum member jadams won an Ojai NBRSA 600 yard match shooting a heavy 22 of some sort, maybe John will come on and tell about it.

 

[Matt Pitchon]

I shoot Berger 90VLDs in a Palma rifle at 1,000yds. Velocity is about 2850fps. Barrel is 30" with a 7 twist. With irons I can can shoot in the upper 190s with 8-12x, mostly due to my inability to read the wind. This bullet might be the most dificult to tune for accuracy. It is very sensitive to seating depth, and it is important to 'follow the lands' as the barrel ages. However, it has a higher BC than any 6mm bullet availabe. The Berger 90HPBT is different. It shoots well seemly regardless of jump. I shoot that in a spacegun with a 26" tube. The BC is this bullet is comparable to most 6mm 105-108s. As stated before the Sierra 90 has a tendancy to blowup after about 2750fps. I haven't tried the JLKs.

I use RL-15 exclusively, but its a 223.

 

[RDavies]

Ive used the 90gn Sierras and Bergers in both a 22/6mm imp and a 22BR. For the big case, no, no good, for the 22BR, yep they went well.
Your probably thinking you need a big boiler room for the 90gn needles, but when you combine 7" twist barrels with big velocities, you will blow a lot of bullets up.
When used in a 22BR, at either 2820 or 2950 fps node, they were great.
If you have an 8" twist, you most likely wont get very good accuracy with this length bullet, so you will have to go with the bullet wrecking 7" twist.

 

[Laurie]

I have a suspicion that the ideal twist rate may be somewhere around 1-7.25 - 1-7.5" for these bullets. If I were building a .22BR, .22X47L or similar for the 90gn VLD, I'd probably hazard the 7.5" twist rate, but reckoned it was better to play safe with 1-7" for the .223.

It may be the jackets are too thin and fragile for any cartridge with a much bigger case than the BR and that they won't work beyond a ceratin pressure and MV level irrespective of rifling twist rate. Eric Skennard in Florida tells me he started out with the older pre-Swampworks 90gn JLK VLD in .223R and blew them up regularly in a 6.5" twist barrel, the Bergers turning out to be far more robust.

 

[headhunter1111]

I'm not planning on smoking these things. I would like to push them at 3100 if the bullets will hold together. I like the VLD design so far and have enjoyed the 6mm 105s berger makes. Is there any advantage to polygonal rifling as far as jacket seperations are concerned? Just a thought.

Cr500, what were the velocities like in your 22/6?

Laurie, have you noticed seating depth preferences in the VLDs? I here they like to be just jumped but I'm always open to suggestions.

 

[headhunter1111]

Matt, i missed your post when i read down earlier. My apologies. I should have directed my last question at you. I'm interested to here what you have to say on the subject as well.

 

[Laurie]

I simply seated the VLDs 15 thou' 'in' and they worked straight off, so I've kept it at that increasing COAL a bit since to account for throat wear. This was a relief since I really didn't need any hassle in tuning this aspect. I'm also running with light neck tension, so while not quite soft-seated, they're getting close, and I suspect there will be a bit of COAL 'adjustment' as the cartridge is chambered.

I measured and batched both Berger 90s by BSL using two comparators and .22 cal inserts, but the VLDs are superb out of the box which helps here. As somebody else notes, the BT version is very jump tolerant. If you start out at 10 thou' jump you'll likely find this works fine.

 

[headhunter1111]

Thanks for the info. I had to play around quite a bit with the Berger 115 gr bullets in my .243 AI to get them to shoot worth a darn. Seams that they liked to be about .002 off the lands if I remember right. I'll try jamming these a touch to see how my rifle likes it.

 

[Matt Pitchon]

My experience on jump is similar to others. I tried numerous jump combinations with the 90VLDs, from .100" off to jamed .015". The only combination that would work was .010" to .015" into the lands. This was with a standard Wylde chamber. I think the lead on that chamber is 1.5 degrees, but I'm not completely sure.

Although I haven't tried softseating I suspect it would work. To reduce the amount chasing the lands, I had my barrel nitrided which increases the hardness from about R-38 to about R-63 (file hard).

 

[RDavies]

In the 22/6mm IMP, the 90gn pills were about 3400 fps. I could get up to the next node but just blew up more bullets. Even back to around 3200 I blew a few thick jacket ones, and the thin jackets occaisionaly went puff at about 3080 or so in a 7" twist. When they were shooting, they always prefered about .015" jam.

 

[headhunter1111]

Alright, keep it slow and push them into the lands. Got it. I suppose that due to the relative size of the meplat these things would benefit from pointing as well. Might give that a try when the barrel gets here. Again thanks for the help fellas and ladies.