When Shiraz announced the release of Norma 6 Dasher brass with long neck, I reached out to Tim Claunch to help design a reamer to take advantage of the new longer neck. I wanted a 7.5 twist to take advantage of the 115g DTACs that had recently been announced/released. I wanted a tuner on this rifle as well and had an Ezell tuner, so Tim planned to turn the barrel for that as well. We then worked with JGS and got our reamer ordered.
Fast forward, Tim got the barrel chambered and threaded for my Panda F-class action and it was time to get started on development.
Having already shot Varget and IMR 4451 in my other Dasher barrel, those were the powders I wanted to use/try.
I started with an OAL test to see if I could figure out where the DTACs like to shoot. I loaded a light charge of Varget at 31.8g and loaded starting at 15 past touch (10 off jam) in virgin brass.
It flattened out nicely at 9-12 thousand off touch, so decided to use that as OAL to test powder ladders.
For 4451, I loaded from 32.6g to 34.7g in 0.3g increments to shoot at 600 yards. The picture did not turn out great, but 32.6-32.9g and 34.4-34.7g both leveled out nicely, but the 32.6-9 node was too slow to use, so upper node was used for further testing.
The other 34.4g hole was just left of the picture and velocity of those four shots ranged between 2858-2867 fps with Labradar.
I was unable to shoot ladder with Varget, but was able to shoot 300 yard groups with increasing charges to see where leveled out.
As you can see, Varget leveled out at 31.6-31.9g.
So it was time for a shoot out. I wanted to shoot at 600y to get a better feel for what would shoot better, but due to work had to have a 300 yard shootout, so I loaded up 10 of each charge and headed to the range.
34.6g of 4451
31.8g of Varget
So without seeing a clear winner and still not honing groups down with my tuner, I loaded rounds to do a tuner test. After luckily finding the best tuner setting was the same for each load, I loaded up 22 rounds with each to shoot a our club's 600y Fclass match.
Will keep going (only attach 5 pictures so will make another post)
Fast forward, Tim got the barrel chambered and threaded for my Panda F-class action and it was time to get started on development.
Having already shot Varget and IMR 4451 in my other Dasher barrel, those were the powders I wanted to use/try.
I started with an OAL test to see if I could figure out where the DTACs like to shoot. I loaded a light charge of Varget at 31.8g and loaded starting at 15 past touch (10 off jam) in virgin brass.
It flattened out nicely at 9-12 thousand off touch, so decided to use that as OAL to test powder ladders.
For 4451, I loaded from 32.6g to 34.7g in 0.3g increments to shoot at 600 yards. The picture did not turn out great, but 32.6-32.9g and 34.4-34.7g both leveled out nicely, but the 32.6-9 node was too slow to use, so upper node was used for further testing.
The other 34.4g hole was just left of the picture and velocity of those four shots ranged between 2858-2867 fps with Labradar.
I was unable to shoot ladder with Varget, but was able to shoot 300 yard groups with increasing charges to see where leveled out.
As you can see, Varget leveled out at 31.6-31.9g.
So it was time for a shoot out. I wanted to shoot at 600y to get a better feel for what would shoot better, but due to work had to have a 300 yard shootout, so I loaded up 10 of each charge and headed to the range.
34.6g of 4451
31.8g of Varget
So without seeing a clear winner and still not honing groups down with my tuner, I loaded rounds to do a tuner test. After luckily finding the best tuner setting was the same for each load, I loaded up 22 rounds with each to shoot a our club's 600y Fclass match.
Will keep going (only attach 5 pictures so will make another post)
