20 Practical fast twist
- Thread starter Skunce
- Start date
TAJ45
Silver $$ Contributor
From personal experience - I haven't the foggiest.
But imho . . . . the 32s would be most succeptable to going "poof" but thinking 39gr and above no problem.
The 35 Berger's?....Hmmmm. Of course a ruff bbl is a consideration unto itself. Only pure logic here, not much help - as jacket thickness trumps.
But imho . . . . the 32s would be most succeptable to going "poof" but thinking 39gr and above no problem.
The 35 Berger's?....Hmmmm. Of course a ruff bbl is a consideration unto itself. Only pure logic here, not much help - as jacket thickness trumps.
Light bullets such as 32's are going come apart when pushed at 4,000fps from an 8 twist barrel. I am currently running a 20-223ai with a 9 twist and it doesn't seem to be a problem with the 39 sierra blitzking. I can tell you from experience that you won't be very happy with the performance of the 55 berger on pdogs if you are looking for explosiveness. Also while you could stabilize a 55 berger in the 8 twist you give up so much speed that it's a net performance loss in my opinion versus the same 20 cal with a 39 sierra.
Skunce
Gold $$ Contributor
I have a used 1-8" Lilja barrel with a low round count that a friend gave to me and I'm trying to decide what to do with it. I've bore scoped it and it looks good and has plenty of length to rechamber. I have 20 Vartarg, 20 Practical, 204 and 20 Dasher reamers on hand. I don't want to go anything as big as a Dasher though because of the short barrel life.
I have a 20-223AI with a 1 in 7 twist. Anything less than a 40gr. bullet just comes a part, won't even make it to the target. 40gr or 55gr, performance is very good.
Skunce
Gold $$ Contributor
That's good to know. I've seen guys state that the higher RPM makes the bullets more explosive on prairie dogs also. It will be interesting to see if that is true or not. I'm tempted to order a 20/223AI reamer and go that route.
Jdne5b
Gold $$ Contributor
What kind of barrel life is a 20 Dasher?
B23
Gold $$ Contributor
Just curious here but if you already have a 20 Practical on hand why would you spend the extra money and wait time, waiting for a new reamer, to go 20-223ai? I have a 223ai and though it shoots extremely well, there is very little gain over a standard 223 and if I had it to do all over again I'd have just stayed with the standard 223.
Even if I had reamers for both the 20 Practical and 20-223ai on hand, I'd still go 20 Practical and be done. If slightly more case capacity is what you're looking for, get a 204 Ruger reamer or maybe look into doing a 20 Nosler from necked down 22 Nosler brass, it'll have the same bolt face. Also, it's rumored Nosler is coming out with a 20 Nosler sometime after the first of the year. I have a Rem 223 VS SF that is collecting dust that I want to do a 20 Nosler build with if they'd hurry up and start making brass for it.
searcher
Gold $$ Contributor
Don't overlook the lead-free bullets for light weight, sizzling velocities and staying intact.
Interesting observations. This past spring I used my .20P & .204R (1-11) on some prairie dogs and that lot of Hornady 40 gr. VMax bullets did not expand like expected - like zip, right through. My guess is that Hornady might have been concerned with bullet blow-ups and made that lot tougher. Controlled expansion is not needed on 1 pound rodents.
i use v max 40's in my bartlien 1-11 with very similar results to nmkid. very inpressive. the 32's are not as tight grouped but close. using benchmark and 8208 to keep pressure down. pdogs dont go far after being hit, but some make it 15 ft in the air.
Skunce
Gold $$ Contributor
I haven't shot any lead free bullets yet, do you have any favorites that you can recommend? How well do they perform on varmints? I ended up chambering my barrel with the 20 Practical reamer.
Skunce
Gold $$ Contributor
Looks like it would take about 500 yards for the 55 to match the velocity of the 40, but the 55 is much better in the wind. What about expansion? How do they do on prairie dogs? Have you tried the Black Hole 55?
I shot 40 Vmax at 3800 out of mine last summer and from 50-450 they exploded, they being the PDogs. 1-10 twist. Before I read the pinhole comments, I was doing to say that even though faster twist may be more explosive, I can't imagine how much more explosive they could get after seeing the ones I shot.
searcher
Gold $$ Contributor
in reply to Skunce - the lead-free bullets perform VERY well in the .20 Practical barrels i have used them in. The Nosler and Hornady are what I use. You can run them as fast as you can and they don't come apart. They do, because of their lower mass, tend to lose stability faster than lead-core bullets, though if shots are inside 400 yards or so - no problem. I did buy a bunch of Speer lead-free that were on sale somewhere - but avoid those because the hollow points are too large and they have a tendency to hang up while chambering in the A/R. They did explode well.
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