My .17 Remington with the #5 contour 26" stainless steel Lilja barrel,1 in 9" twist and 4 grooves) seems to work well with a number of powders. I use 25.0 gr. of Varget with the 20 gr. V-Max and get excellent accuracy and velocity at a bit over 4,000 fps.
The 25 gr. Hornady HP load I use is 23.0 gr. of Varget--again, very accurate, but the velocity is only 3,813 fps.
When I was shooting the 25 gr. Starke RPV bullets, I was using 23.0 gr. of H4895 and getting an average MV of 4,020 fps.
With the 25 gr. Hornady V-Max, I got nice groups using H4895, Varget, and H4198. Varget gave me the best ES & SD numbers as well as the best groups.
The 26 gr. Genco bullets worked pretty good with 23.3 gr. of H4895. The velocity was kind of erratic. One time I'd get 3,760, another tirp it would average 3,861, and on another range trip I got an average of 3,932 fps. Temperatures shouldn't have had a lot to do with these differences, but the temps ranged from about 65 degrees up to 82 degrees. The seating depth for the slower loads was .045" shorter than the fast loads. The bullets were not touching the lands with the longer loads though.
I also use the 30 gr. Starke Red Prairie Varmint bullets in this rifle as my coyote getter load. I use 24.6 gr. of N-540 and get 3,900 fps for muzzle velocity. I also use this bullet on prairie dogs on rare times and during the summer I use a load of 21.7 gr. of H4895. The muzzle velocity of this load is around 3,625 fps.
I tried AA2700 in this rifle with the 30 gr. Kindler Gold bullets and couldn't find a load I liked. As a matter of fact, my rifle didn't seem to like the 30 gr. Golds with any of the loads I tried.
[I took a break for supper so now I'm editing to add info about my other .17 Remington.] My .17 Remington with the #6 contour 24" stainless steel super match grade Pac-Nor barrel,1 in 9" twist and 3 grooves) also seems to work well with a number of powders. I had a reamer made by Dave Kiff at Pacific with .1945" neck, .064 freebore and 1º-30 leade. Of course, I have to turn the necks on my brass, but the accuracy I get seems to make the extra work worthwhile. This rifle has an HVR model Jewell trigger in it adjusted to 1 pound of pull and it sits in a H-S Precision Rem 700 SA BDL stock. I have a Sightron II 6.5-20x50mm side focus scope with the mildot reticle on it.
I began using N-135 with the 25 gr. Hornady V-Max and that seemed to shoot lights out. However, on July 2, 2006, I had a primer blow up and the casing head expanded to the point I couldn't get it out of the bolt face. I had to put the casing in a vise and put a lot of force on the bolt to get it to release. The load I was using WAS not supposed to be too hot, but I just got wary of the load and powder and pulled about 100 bullets out of loaded rounds. Now, I am using 23.1 gr. of N-540 with the 25 gr. V-Max bullets. Varget and H4895 also were pretty good with this bullet in this rifle.
I'm using 25.8 gr. of WW-760 with the 27.8 gr. BTHP Hammetts. That is the only powder I have tried with these bullets so far. I have tried both the Rem 7 1/2 primers and the Federal Gold 205 Match primers with this load and am currently using the Fed Gold 205M primers.
I shot 200 of the 25 gr. Nagel HP bullets mostly using a load of 21.8 gr. of N-135 with good success. I did try this bullet with H4895 and Varget and got some nice test results--accurate!!
