Hi Everyone,
Thanks for all the advice and thank you to the many supporting me with my rifle. A few misconceptions I should lay to rest. I am not new to shooting long range and have built many fantastic rifles over the years. I have a 6mm Dasher I built that is a tack driver and shoots without issue at very long ranges. I built a 20 Practical, 223AI, 220 SwiftAI, 22Br Pistol, 6BR and several others, all very accurate. Most of my rifles are not of the norm... no fun if you ask me to replicate what everyone else has already accomplished. My Dasher is built from a Browning B78 falling block, 22BR is built from a Striker pistol.
I'm also an avid reloader and have been reloading for the past 36 years, and I reload for over 10 different rile cartridges, 12 different handguns and 3 different shotgun calibers, I even wrote an article for Accurate Shooter many years ago about fire forming 6BR brass for the Dasher (longest single shot Prairie Dog was 890 yards with my Dasher.)
So this build is no different than my others, in the fact I could have gone with a Surgeon or GAP Action, 26" barrel Shilen Select Match or Bartlien barrel, Manner/McMillan stock... etc, but i ran across a factory Remington 5R MilSpec rifle at a very good price and decided I could use it to bang steel at a grand if I did my part. Not looking to shoot competition, benchrest or anything, just wanted to test my ability in building a rifle that shoots sub .1 groups at 100 and can hit steel plates at a grand. All from a factory rifle.
That said, here is where I am at. Did some more homework on the cartridge and decided on the 175 SMK (non tipped). My rifle has a lot of freebore (COAL to Lands 2.905"), thats about .095" of jump to the lands over SAAMI Specs. Therefore I needed a bullet with a little longer ogive to get me close enough to the lands and still retain as much bullet necessary in the case mouth. The 175 SMK works. I can get a good seat with .015" off the lands and the BT is not into the shoulder region when seated. I loaded up 30 test rounds moving my powder from 42.2gr RL15 up to 44.4gr all in .2 gr increments. I shot each of them through my chronograph and checked for signs of pressure. I did not hit signs of pressure until I got over the 44 gr mark and the most I received was slightly flattened primer and light bolt stiffness to open.
I decided on the 43.8gr RL15 and it registered at 2563'/sec out of my 20" barrel. Per my calculations this will keep me above subsonic all the way out to 1100 yards and the 175 SMK does not have the inherent bad traits with the Transonic region as the 168 SMK. I'm giving up a little on the 100 yard accuracy as it shoots shoots .3 MOA but not as consistent as the 168's but should really come to life after 600 yards. Best group to date with the 168 SMK's was .062" 3 shot at 100 yards.
Bullet Trajectory
Range (yards) Drop(in) Drop (moa) Wind.(in) Wind. (moa) Veloc. (fps) Energy (ft-lbs) Time(sec)
0 ↓ -1.50 0.00 0.00 0.00 2569 2563 0.00
50 -0.04 -0.08 0.00 0.00 2484 2398 0.06
100 ⊕ 0.01 0.01 0.00 0.00 2402 2241 0.12
150 -1.45 -0.92 0.00 0.00 2321 2092 0.18
200 -4.52 -2.16 0.00 0.00 2241 1951 0.25
205 ↑ -5.00 -2.32 0.00 0.00 2233 1935 0.26
250 -9.32 -3.56 0.00 0.00 2163 1817 0.32
300 -15.98 -5.09 0.00 0.00 2086 1691 0.39
350 -24.64 -6.72 0.00 0.00 2011 1572 0.46
400 -35.45 -8.46 0.00 0.00 1938 1459 0.54
450 -48.57 -10.31 0.00 0.00 1866 1353 0.62
500 -64.18 -12.26 0.00 0.00 1796 1254 0.70
550 -82.49 -14.32 0.00 0.00 1728 1161 0.78
600 -103.71 -16.51 0.00 0.00 1662 1074 0.87
650 -128.07 -18.82 0.00 0.00 1599 993 0.96
700 -155.84 -21.26 0.00 0.00 1537 918 1.06
750 -187.28 -23.85 0.00 0.00 1478 848 1.16
800 -222.71 -26.58 0.00 0.00 1421 785 1.26
850 -262.44 -29.48 0.00 0.00 1367 726 1.37
900 -306.82 -32.56 0.00 0.00 1316 673 1.48
950 -356.22 -35.81 0.00 0.00 1269 625 1.60
1000 -411.02 -39.25 0.00 0.00 1225 583 1.72
1050 -471.62 -42.89 0.00 0.00 1184 545 1.84
1100 -538.43 -46.74 0.00 0.00 1147 511 1.97
Im hoping to get out to the range to test them out within the coming weeks. I'll continue to work on the loads out to 300 yards with seating depth and other tweaks, but I'm pretty confident I can get these to hit at a grand. Thanks everyone for all you good advice and other information. I will keep you informed.
Pictures of the rifle in case anyone is interested.
