just got back from the shooting range and am curious about some things. i bought a lb of h-380 a couple months ago to try out in my long range ar-15. i started with shooting 77 grain sierras out of weight sorted Lake City brass. wolf small rifle mag primers. i loaded 3 different loads with 2 shots each. 1st-23.5 h-380 @ 2.255", 2nd-24.0 @2.255", 3rd-24.5 @ 2.255. all of the loaded rounds had nice round primers with zero signs of pressure after firing. the 24.5 h-380 had a max velocity of 2402 fps (18", 7" twist barrel). next, i loaded 5 rounds of berger 90 vlds with weight sorted Lake City brass and wolf small rifle mag primers. again, nice, round primers with zero pressure. max velocity--2382 fps. (no keyholing with the 90s by the way, even at low velocity--i have yet to get a 90 vld to keyhole out of a 7"twist.) what i really liked about this load is that all the brass landed to my 5:00 10 feet away and all 5 pieces of brass were within an 8 inch circle. i then had 5 rounds of lake city weight sorted brass loaded with 26.0 grains of h-380 with a berger 70 vld @ 2.260. the h-380 was up to the neck shoulder junction. the 5 shots yielded a high velocity of 2584, low velocity of 2562 and sd-7, es-22.0. i usually don't worry about es/sd when shooting 5 shot groups as i do not believe this is enough shooting to show great consistency (usually 10-15 shots). but, i have never gotten below 10 on sd. this load showed no signs of pressure with nice round primers. by where the powder was inside the brass and seating a relatively long bullet, would i be okay to shoot a compressed load with this ball powder (abouve 26.0 grains)? i have never shot a compressed load with ball powders only with stick powders. this load also had a great group going.
You'll know you're sticking too much powder in when you start getting bullet seater rings. The velocities still seem modest to me, going up a little is worth a try. NOTE: the wolf primers will not flatten in an AR, they'll just fall out when you start blowing primer pockets. Keep an eye out for ejector marks. -Mark
thanks for the info. the velocity is a little low because of my 18" barrel. i wish i still had the 24" hart barrel on there to give a try, but i took it off and sold it. there were no ejector marks whatsoever on the fired brass. i'm going to keep trying h-380 to see what i come up with. especially if i keep getting the consistency. i hope to attain around 2700 fps with h-380, as the 77 sierras seem to like that velocity out of that barrel. right now, i am shooting ramshot tac, which i believe is too fast of a powder for the 77s.
