.223 Heavies

[kyotekiller25]

I shoot 75g ELDMs/80.5 Bergers at 3000 and 2950 with N540 from a 28" 8 twist Bartlein. They do pretty good out to 1040, which is as far as I've taken them. My last outing put 8 of 9 Bergers into like 9" group.

 

[CF Junkie]

Measured the BBTO with an old set of Spring HIll?? (I think that was the name) - a company that was bought by Hornady before they started to make their own versions. Mine were bought about 2006 to 2008 and are green.
They are about half-again longer than the red units that Hornady eventually replaced them with and I recently found that Hornady didn't drill out their units deep enough to take care of long heavy bullets- like the accurate shooting modern bullets. A buddy was having problems with his heavy bullet loads and I looked at his measured chamber data and it was all over the place. I took my old set over to him to do comparison measurements and it took about a minute to diagnose his problem. The Hornady tool was only drilled deep enough to handle shorter .223 bullets. The pointy new bullets were bumping against the rear of the Hornady tool and not measuring to the actual ogive.
I cannot say if all the Hornady units have the same problem, but this set clearly was too short for the purpose for which they were designed.
Mu buddy is a machinist and drilled out his Hornady tool to accommodate the modern bullets and now our measurements match.

 

[CF Junkie]

Charlie b,
I loaded the measured data early this morning from excel and somehow it got all messed up on the table.
I just noticed that the data was all messed up and lots of it was missing.

I moved it to Word and copied it and it seems to have transferred correctly this time.
Sorry I screwed up but I was rushing to get to the range this morning to help out with RSO duty and shoot one load of 25 73 gr Berger LTBs and 2 loads of 25 73 gr ELD-Ms each.

It was pleasantly cool in the low to mid 70s with almost no wind.
The Bergers and one load of the ELD-Ms had 4 groups each that averaged under 0.2 and one group of ELD-Ms had 4 groups that averaged 0.201. 7 of the 12 groups were under 0.2 with 6 of them under 0.175.
Today was an unusually good day for me, and only 2 groups that showed some shooter induced variations - only two groups over 0.205 and all 12 groups averaged 0.179.

 

[Bottom Fodder]

Unless you have achieved Master or High Master at 1000 yards, then you typically need to accept that there is another learning curve to get to the same level of shooting at 1000 as you had at 600. That said...

If you can get a VLD design to group in your rig, it will generally shoot inside a tangent bullet just based on the difference in the BC.

The challenge is to get that load development to produce a good group in your hands and your rig.

If your shooting isn't tight, then you can't take advantage of the BC or the economy. If you get a VLD to work, then you will shoot inside the others in wind.

To keep things simple, if I don't use heroic pressures, and just keep the kinetic energy level at 1300 ft*lbs to make them all equal, we can show a side-by-side. In reality, F-T/R folks push these all much harder than published pressure, so keep that in mind.

At 1000 yards from a 100 yard zero, at sea level.
Bullet, MV (fps), Elevation MOA, 10 MPH Wind MOA
77 SMK, 2760 , 45.8, 15.41
80 SMK, 2705 , 38.5, 11.39
88 ELDM, 2580 , 38.4, 10.22
90 SMK, 2550 , 41.3, 11.50
90 B VLD, 2550 , 39.7, 10.43

Now suppose we accept higher pressure and lower brass life. If we allow the energy level to hit 1400 ft*lbs in a 223, then the Berger 90 VLD will be going 2650, 36.2 up, 9.79 for wind.
The Hornady 88 ELDM at the same energy will be going 2680, 35.9 up, 10.04 for wind.

The trick is that those F-T/R folks run a long bbl and high pressure to get their speed up. When they can get a ELDM or VLD to shoot tight, they can beat you with their 223 while you are shooting a 308.

Thanks for your write up, I shoot monthly at 600 or 1k but not with my 223. The 223 is just a what ever gun but it holds 1/2 moa at 300 with the 80 SMK’s which is fine with me. For its purpose. Not to say that I won’t take it to 600 if I needed to. My post was just to heard what the feeling / findings was on the 88/90 vs. 80’s at longer ranges. After rereading most post I get the feeling maybe most think the 88 would/could be the better starting point. I do have some 88 so after reading I may just loads some up and give the a try.

 

[charlie b]

Thanks CFJ. If you're able to shoot those 'short' ones with the long freebore then I will go that route as well. I really do want to be able to shoot the 88ELDM's, but, still be able to shoot the smaller ones as well. You are really dialed into those rifles of yours

I really do want to shoot the 88's and 90's.

I used to not mind the recoil of heavy loads. Even did some longer distance muzzle load shooting (450gn slugs). Then got the .308 and migrated to 175's. But, enough of that and my age betrayed me I went to cast bullet shooting for a while, but, to get longer ranges it was still a healthy amount of recoil. Now days I don't even like shooting the 140gn 6.5CM loads that much. 6BR with heavy bullets seems to be my limit for fun shooting days. Hence my desire to get the most out of the .223. Also is a bit of a challenge, like the cast bullets.

 

[Hengehold]

Has anyone here used the 90 gr A-Tip with success?

 

[RegionRat]

Now days I don't even like shooting the 140gn 6.5CM loads that much. 6BR with heavy bullets seems to be my limit for fun shooting days. Hence my desire to get the most out of the .223. Also is a bit of a challenge, like the cast bullets.

Have you ever considered using a heavier rig or putting ballast in the stock?

Adding mass to the gun is a good way to reduce the amount of punishment you get.

Of course, it comes at the expense of humping the weight around but if it is just a range toy or you don't have to carry it far from the truck, it should be more fun to shoot with less punishment to your shoulder.

 

[CF Junkie]

At 82, I too have problems now with heavier recoil.
I never used to, but I have lost some weight and that and age seems to have changed some things.
When I shot my new 6.5mm CM barrel on break-in with 140 and 147 ELD-Ms, I was amazed how much I was impacted by what I always considered light recoil.
I don't seem to mind the heavy 80 to 90 gr .223 bullet recoil, but I am loading for OBT instead of near Pmax that I would be considering if I was reloading for hunting.
I used a .223 session with the 88s two weeks ago to firm up my set-up for the recoil of the 6.5mm CMs. I might have been a bit overzealous.
It seemed to work for the 6.5mm CM and the new barrel averaged in the mid-0.250s for the first session.
But the overtight hold to overcome recoil did cause some problems during the session with the .223.
For this week's session with the .223, I kept the best of the lesson on recoil, but didn't get as overzealous and it worked out great.

 

[Laurie]

Measured the BBTO with an old set of Spring HIll?? (I think that was the name) - a company that was bought by Hornady before they started to make their own versions

Stoney-Point was the outfit. It's a long time since Hornady bought their designs, but some of my comparator inserts came from this company as did my original COAL Gauge tool. IME, some of the Hornady L-N-L versions have significantly different size holes.

 

[charlie b]

Have you ever considered using a heavier rig or putting ballast in the stock?

Adding mass to the gun is a good way to reduce the amount of punishment you get.

Of course, it comes at the expense of humping the weight around but if it is just a range toy or you don't have to carry it far from the truck, it should be more fun to shoot with less punishment to your shoulder.

Yes, I have. The 6.5 rig already weighs in at 16-17lb. It will soon become my 6BR gun so it is a moot point.

 

[CF Junkie]

I just received my first 85.5 Berger Long Range Hybrid bullets.

This is a strange bullet.
The BBTT measures 1.172.
The BBTO measures 0.496
The Boat Tail looks like it is 0.165.
That only leaves 0.311 bullet body to touch the neck.

With the bullet touching the lands in my new barrel, there is only 0.009 of the body available to touch the neck.
Sort of like the light bullets under 55 grs in most of my .223 rifles.
All my other Berger bullets have from 0.137 to 0.207 body available to touch the neck with the bullet in the lands, so setting the jump is easy.

The minimum jump to allow 1/2 caliber of the bullet body to touch the neck will be 0.103 with these Berger 85.5 grs in my new barrel. Even then, the OAL will still be 2.645 in my rifle so I will have to single load them because the bullet has a lot of bullet (0.676) from ogive to tip.

This bullet may be hard to tune.
Not chance to get close to the favorite jumps that the other Berger bullets that I have loaded seem to like.
Most like their jumps in the range of 0.012 to 0.019.
The 90 VLDs like around 0.006.

 

[CharlieNC]

In Fclass I assessed a number of bullets over the years, and two stood out for their superior performance:

= The Berger 80.5 is the most inheriently accurate, and stands out at 300yd

= At 500-600yd the 90 VLD is substantially better due to wind sensitivity and scores better than the 80.5

End of story........

 

[CF Junkie]

Not sure the difference in design between the Berger 80.5 Fullbore Target bullet #22427 and the Berger 85.5 Long Range Hybrid Target # 22485, other than the obvious difference in weight. I haven't shot either yet.
The LR Hybrids just arrived.

Seems like from the title, they have different purposes.
Does anyone have any information on the differences between a Fullbore target bullet and a Long Range Hybrid Target bullet design?

I have had great accuracy results with the 90 VLD, but I don't have enough samples with my new barrel to claim any big difference in performance over any other bullets.

 

[RegionRat]

Not sure the difference in design between the Berger 80.5 Fullbore Target bullet #22427 and the Berger 85.5 Long Range Hybrid Target # 22485, other than the obvious difference in weight. I haven't shot either yet.
The LR Hybrids just arrived.

Seems like from the title, they have different purposes.
Does anyone have any information on the differences between a Fullbore target bullet and a Long Range Hybrid Target bullet design?

I have had great accuracy results with the 90 VLD, but I don't have enough samples with my new barrel to claim any big difference in performance over any other bullets.

Here is an easy way to keep a perspective on the Berger bullets in one glance.

 

[CharlieNC]

Based on the specs the 85.5 look great, but they were not very accurate for me. From the reports I've read the results are about 50:50 across shooters, which is a bit unusual for the Berger lineup.

 

[CF Junkie]

I'll see at my next session, probably on Monday morning.
As I said, I am concerned that, at least in my barrel, I will have to manage less than 0.029 bullet body in the neck if I try to achieve a 0.020 jump. Looks like the best jump I can reliably use is 0.103 if I want to maintain consistent neck tension. After the next session, I may attempt to do better than 1/2 caliber in the neck.

 

[charlie b]

The Fullbore is a tangent design, more like the SMK's. The hybrids seem to be a Litz design. I believe he used a tangent at the ogive to get the 'forgiving nature' of that design, then a secant curve to the nose for better drag numbers. So seating depth for the Fullbore and Hybrids should be similar, but, don't take my word for it.

I used the 155.5 fullbore in the .308 and it was fairly sensitive to jump. Liked to be jammed a bit. But, that may have just been that 'weird' barrel I had.

 

[Laurie]

I used the 155.5 fullbore in the .308 and it was fairly sensitive to jump. Liked to be jammed a bit. But, that may have just been that 'weird' barrel I had.

Yes, I'd say so (re a weird barrel/chamber). The 155.5 308 BT Fullbore is one of the most jump tolerant designs around - like the original 155gn SMK (#2155).

Both the 80.5 BT Fullbore and 85gn LRHT are Bryan Litz designs as are nearly all Bergers introduced in recent years. The 80.5 is a very tolerant near-tangent design (Rt/R = 0.85 while a true tangent is 1.000). As with other Litz LRHT models in different calibres, the 85gn model has a long secant nose to reduce drag which transitions into a tangent-like curve at the shank/nose junction thereby combining low drag / high BC with a traditional tangent design's jump tolerance. Well, in theory anyway! I've not found the few Hybrids I've used to produce the claimed jump tolerance, but others have in calibres / models I've not loaded. My limited experiments to date with the 85 LRHT didn't give disastrous results, but wouldn't produce the very small groups the rifle is well capable of. As with some other Hybrids I've loaded over the years, it looks like I'm going to have to spend time, components costs, and range visits on doing seating depth checks which I'd much rather not have to do.

 

[charlie b]

...As with some other Hybrids I've loaded over the years, it looks like I'm going to have to spend time, components costs, and range visits on doing seating depth checks which I'd much rather not have to do.

LOL I share your pain