17cal Fan
Silver $$ Contributor
On our annual Prairie Dog trip this year I thought my brother was going to throw his Savage Model 12 223 from a top the ladder rack. He could not hit with it and we couldn't come up with a reason why. Shooting reloads that had worked in the past and had tested them prior to the trip. Nothing amazing but minute of PD.
He switched to his Marlin XS7 223 and proceeded to eliminate dozens of dogs with the same load.
In my mind, the only purpose for the 223 is to build other cartridges that actually work but that's a different story.
But in cussing and discussing this Savage rifle we came to the conclusion that it was possible the barrel was shot out. He bought it from me out of my shop used in 2014. It has always shot well but no real clue on number of rounds. It's a VFFSSXYZ or whatever BS that Savage decided to call that particular model. It is stainless and has a 26" fluted barrel. It wears a Boyds thumbhole stock and looks as good as any Savage can.
So 4 months later I get my hands on the gun to see if it needs a barrel or determine the problem. With the bore scope, I found a dead alligator in front of the chamber but I've seen and shoot a lot worse. I went to work cleaning the copper out with Sharp Shoot R WIPE-OUT. After letting it set for 3 or 4 hours I pushed blue ink from the barrel. Gave the barrel another dose and let it set for a while. Got a little more blue but not much. I cleaned it up the rest of the way and turned to my loading bench. I had a pile of his brass that had been resized already so I pulled out 20 pieces of brass and grabbed a Speer loading manual because were using 50 TNT's in this gun.
The original load was
26.2 gr H335 (max in book was 27.0)
CCI 400
Loaded 5 of those and noticed the manual specified CCI 450 with this powder. OK, let's try 5 of those too. Then, because I can I loaded:
5 - 27.0 BLC-(2)
CCI 450
and
5 - 25.8 H322
CCI 400
Headed down to my range and flung them at targets.
For starters, why are we hitting to the right? It was on before the trip but was at least part of the problem in the field.
Well the primer made little difference but H322 was interesting. However, the 322 is from my stash and I'm not sharing that. So I grabbed a couple more manuals and not too surprisingly they showed a different (i.e. LOWER) max charge of H335. Normally I work my way up towards max but seldom if ever need to run max to get happy with a load. My intention was to push the load higher and check results. In finding lower max loads I decided to drop the load down some, which I may have done at some point in the last 50 years but don't recall it off the top of my head.
Now seeing 26.0 as a max charge, OK let's try that and 25.8. And back down to the range we have a winner.
Accuracy over velocity any day.
Had I pushed on up towards the max listed in the Speer manual the groups might have improved, as they often do, but another day maybe.
He switched to his Marlin XS7 223 and proceeded to eliminate dozens of dogs with the same load.
In my mind, the only purpose for the 223 is to build other cartridges that actually work but that's a different story.
But in cussing and discussing this Savage rifle we came to the conclusion that it was possible the barrel was shot out. He bought it from me out of my shop used in 2014. It has always shot well but no real clue on number of rounds. It's a VFFSSXYZ or whatever BS that Savage decided to call that particular model. It is stainless and has a 26" fluted barrel. It wears a Boyds thumbhole stock and looks as good as any Savage can.
So 4 months later I get my hands on the gun to see if it needs a barrel or determine the problem. With the bore scope, I found a dead alligator in front of the chamber but I've seen and shoot a lot worse. I went to work cleaning the copper out with Sharp Shoot R WIPE-OUT. After letting it set for 3 or 4 hours I pushed blue ink from the barrel. Gave the barrel another dose and let it set for a while. Got a little more blue but not much. I cleaned it up the rest of the way and turned to my loading bench. I had a pile of his brass that had been resized already so I pulled out 20 pieces of brass and grabbed a Speer loading manual because were using 50 TNT's in this gun.
The original load was
26.2 gr H335 (max in book was 27.0)
CCI 400
Loaded 5 of those and noticed the manual specified CCI 450 with this powder. OK, let's try 5 of those too. Then, because I can I loaded:
5 - 27.0 BLC-(2)
CCI 450
and
5 - 25.8 H322
CCI 400
Headed down to my range and flung them at targets.
For starters, why are we hitting to the right? It was on before the trip but was at least part of the problem in the field.
Well the primer made little difference but H322 was interesting. However, the 322 is from my stash and I'm not sharing that. So I grabbed a couple more manuals and not too surprisingly they showed a different (i.e. LOWER) max charge of H335. Normally I work my way up towards max but seldom if ever need to run max to get happy with a load. My intention was to push the load higher and check results. In finding lower max loads I decided to drop the load down some, which I may have done at some point in the last 50 years but don't recall it off the top of my head.
Now seeing 26.0 as a max charge, OK let's try that and 25.8. And back down to the range we have a winner.
Accuracy over velocity any day.
Had I pushed on up towards the max listed in the Speer manual the groups might have improved, as they often do, but another day maybe.
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