Sleepygator,Tax, and others, I love this thread.
Someone in another thread wrote that if I was a serious shooter that I could do bla...bla... bla... and see for myself. Well, I don't know if I'm serious or not, guess it depends on your definition. I'm shooting F-TR at Camp Perry this weekend. I may stink it up, but I'm going.
I think that many shooters who do not play in the BR game get wrapped up in trying to achieve a level of precision in their reloads that BR shooters strive for, but that will not yield any measurable, tangible or practical real world results. For instance Palma shooters shooting at a 1MOA X ring and a 2 MOA 10 ring, at what point will the accuracy of the reloaded round result in not loosing points to the bullets?
Here is an example..
I reload WW brass with CCI BR2 primers and shoot either 178BTHPs or 185LRBTs. My brass prep consists of uniforming pockets and flash holes on new brass, then trimming to 2.005 when it is once fired. I clean with an ultra sonic. To reload I use a Lee Collet sizer and a Forster seating die, I throw my charges with a RCBS Chargemaster, and I point my bullets with a Widden die.
I do not turn necks
I do not weigh brass
I do not weigh bullets
I do not sort bullets by ogive
I do not sift or sort powder
I do not weigh on a scale with .0000001 gn accuracy
Two weeks ago at 800 yards, shooting NEW brass I shot a 148 6 or 7X on my F class target, on a HP target that would have been a 150-13X. Both the dropped shots were left/right on the water line. The point being, I do minimum prep, if I shot Palma, and if I could hold shots with a sling as well as I can off of a pod and a bag then I'd shoot clean.
The rest of that story is that in that entire match at 800,900,1000 I did not throw a single 8, that means that on a HP target I would have cleaned the entire day.
To all of the palma shooters out there, I'm not saying I could sling up and shoot a Full Bore course clean. I'm not that silly, what I am saying is that the equipment could, so dropped points are probably not your bullets.
You don't need to spend huge amounts of time on prep if you do the things that matter, in the game we play it's not the bullets. Load more and shoot more. All the extra prep is just wasted time unless you just enjoy that kind of thing, and if you do you may want to consider getting into BR, it makes your work easier to see.
For BR shooters, I can understand some of the OCD, when you are trying to wring another 0.1 from an already tight rifle then yea, the tiny fractions may be necessary, but if you're not shooting BR and your rifle is shooting in the .5MOA or better range then I just don't get it, and if your hunting and it will shoot .75MOA, that means that if you do your part on a 600 yard shot your impact will be no more than 2.25 inches from your point of hold (for a max spread of 4.5), that's good enough to kill pretty much anything other than varmints. Hell, that's heart shots.
I love this thread.
