New Guy. why am I here??

[Dux-R-Us]

Dear shooters;

I have been home sick the last 2 days which absolutely drives me crazy, because I cannot stand to sit still. Anyways, I came across this forum and it interests me.

I am not a precision shooter. I am first a hunter and I hand load all my ammunition. I am interested in producing the most "precise" loads possible in my rifles. And I simply enjoy all shooting sports.

I think I can learn alot from you guys. Having written that, you can probably expect from me freshman questions. I am not afraid to ask even if it may seem dumbe to the more experienced shooters and handloaders.

Below are the calibres I own, and all are Ruger M77s (save the .303 ). I never planned on getting all Rugers, it just turned out that way and I like them all. Some I have found the honey load for, and others I am still searching.

I thought I was done with the need to purchase more equipment, but I probably do need a chronograph and a concentricity guage.

Can you make a recommnedation on both?

You may be interested in that my loading press is an ancient Herter's C shaped press I inherited from my Grandfather. It must be from the 1950's or 60's. It is a beast and probably could keep the USS Missouri anchored down in a typhoon.

These are my rilfes

.243 win MkII All Weather SS Barrel and Black stock (an ugly thing really)
.308 win International (18.5" barrel)
.30-06
.375 H&H Magnum
.303 Lee Enfield No.4 Mk 1 (which I have not yet handloaded for).

So that is me and you'll here from me as I get more into the finer points of handloading. BTW I loaded my first rounds at age 16 back in 1976, so you can do the math and figure out how long I have been tinkering with this stuff.

I am a research scientist by trade (Entomology) so I understand statistics and this is partly why I desire to go at this in a more structured fashion than I have in the past.

Tally ho!

Kevin

 

[ollie]

Welcome. Feel free to ask anything here. There is a lot of very experianced shooters and reloaders on this forum that will help you out with your questions.

 

[1000yardstare]

Dux.....welcome aboard. I took a post graduate Entomology course to further my background as a high school Biology teacher. Retired now but can still remember some of our field trips 40 years later.

When I was a much younger Canadian University student, I owned a couple of .303 Smellys. Have to keep the loads mild or over time the stretchy one lug rear lockup will give head separations. In the 1950s I saw CIL .303 180 grain factory loads take their fair share of deer and moose in Northern Ontario. Don`t see .303s anymore on a hunt.

My personal opinion is the .243 stainless/synthetic is the best rifle you own. Mild recoil and can take abuse on a hunt. Who cares what it looks like.

 

[15Tango]

I'd place the chronograph on the top of the list for equipment. Concentricity gauges aren't really a must-have, at least not in the stage I'm seeing you at right now, plus, good dies will really take care of most of your issues on that end and load pretty darn straight. It's also a tad moot if you aren't turning necks.

My idea of cheap must-haves:

Flash hole uniformer
Primer pocket uniformer
Case trimmer
Neck turning setup eventually

I don't know if you're just looking to make better hunting ammo or get into target/competition stuff or if you're just the type of person that's into learning and you enjoy being precise with things - the latter is what it sounds like. If so, and you hang around this site enough you'll get addicted and be ordering all kinds of expensive stuff from companies like BAT, Krieger, Broughton ect . . . I don't know which model your .243 is exactly, if it's the VT those things straight up shoot, I have one in .243 and it shot in the .3s to high .2s, if it's a field model you'll probably end up getting something that's able to show you the money in regards to your labor with precision loading.

You won't find the pissing contests on this forum that is all too frequent on the other firearms forums. You'll notice almost everybody uses their real name in their posts and don't try to hide behind internet anonymity. Almost everybody on this forum is a gentleman or lady and totally open to helping each other out. You'll see a lot of the top names from the shooting sports from competitors to vendors and manufactures on this forum.

That being said, welcome and good luck,

Wayne

 

[fdshuster]

Kevin: I'm not real big on chronograph's, have one, but seldom use it, so cannot comment. I'm sure others with more experience there will chime in. However, concentricity gauges are another matter. First bought the RCBS, multiple purpose and used it almost exclusively to check runout of the loaded rounds, and it was "OK". Then bought the Sinclair and it quickly became my favorite: a real quality tool, as are most of the Sinclair products, so my #1 choice there would be the Sinclair/ #09-150 w/o the dial indicator for $85.50, or #09-175 with for $99.95.

 

[fdshuster]

Wayne: Absolutely agree with you concerning the chronograph, and if I had a more reliable one, I'd probably use it more than I do the one I have. The concentricity gauge can also be valuable in determining if there is a problem with the chamber of a rifle, the quality of the brass, the methods used in prepping, the quality of the loading dies, press, etc. And if all else fails & runout continues to be a problem, whatever the cause, the ammo can be segregated keeping the "straight" loads for the serious work, and those that have excess (over .002"?) for basic sight-in, first round foulers, and the closer distances. At least those methods work for me.

 

[necchi]

"concentricity gauge."
In my book this come before the chrono. While I also can not denie the value of the chrony, As a hunter, being able to identify and correct all the runout issues listed above by fdshuster leads to almost immediate favorable results, sometimes dramatic results.
It's nice to know your rounds are consistantly clocking 2950 with low ES, but it does little good if their coming out of a crooked neck and angled wrong at the leape.
A Chronograph is on the list for me, actually been putting out plenty of hints for Christmas, but the concentricity gauge I got myself this last spring made some vast improvments with my equipment and techniques.

 

[15Tango]

Necchi & fdshuster,

Don't get me wrong, I run a concentricity gauge, it's a must-have when you're at that point in your loading skills, knowledge, equipment and componants, but if the others parts aren't up to that point then I don't see that it's going to give you huge gains.

Running out of the box XYZ brass that's not weighed or prepped in any way other than FLS with none-weighed charges and dime store factory second bullets [but] making sure its run-out is under .002" is kind of silly. If neck run-out is .003" because necks aren't turned how can you have truly straight rounds?

As far as a chrono goes this stage where the OP's at, at least he'll really know what his rounds are doing.

I don't know, that's what I was thinking anyway. Maybe Santa will bless him this year with everything.

Wayne

 

[fdshuster]

Wayne: believe me, I'm not using XYZ brass (Lapua), and "dime store bullets" (Berger & Sierra MatchKings), doing everything humanly possible to prevent runout, including outside neck turning (Sinclair NT-4000) and can still get what I consider unacceptable runout, and for these rare occassions, I have to write them off as defective from the time the brass was drawn. For these times alone, the gauge is valuable giving me a reliable method of segregating the good from the not-so-good. As I said, my chronograph (shall remain nameless, but a well known brand) has let me down so many times, usually in the middle of testing, and after spending a lot of time setting it up, that it usually sits on the shelf, unused. The purchase of a better one may be in the future, and I honestly hope I can get a good one, since the present chronograph has left me with a lot of bad experiences. The Sinclair gauge, on the other hand just sits there doing its thing.

 

[Dux-R-Us]

Thank you everyone for the warm welcome. I did notice there was not any of the BS, flaminng and chest pumping in posts, as so prevalent on other forums. This made me want to join your forum.

I do trim my brass and measure it.

I am toally anal when measuring powder. I don't use a dispenser and measure each load individually on a digital scale. Have written that, I would think that my MV would be pretty consistent for each load. But I don't know what other factors can cause significant (in the statistical sense, P < 0.05) variation in MV on any particular day (I am aware of temperature and altitude affects). But what about different brands of cases, the primer pockets, flash holes, bullet seating depth, etc?

Somebody made references to "good dies". Not sure what that means yet, but I suspect the concentricity guage may help me define it in my situation.

What are my handloading goals in terms of precision? I'd like all my rifles to consistently shoot 1 MOA (or less) at 100 yards. I think this is adequate for 99.0% of the big hame hunting I do. The exception is my .243 Win, which I have been using to hunt coyotes and bobcat. I need less than 1 MOA precision in my .243 Win so I can be confident taking longer shots at these smaller animals. I am always up for attempting a challenging shot, and sometimes one needs to make that long (200+ yd) neck shot on a crippled deer. BTW my M77 MkII. 243 sports a standard barrel.

I do not size my brass to Full Length. I followed the instructions from RCBS to do this. I also have dies from Herters and Lee, and a Pacific to load my Pap's .270. I have questions about this, but will save them for another post.

We'll I am feeling better today and must set off for the Lab. I look forward to being a part of your community.

Cheers

Kevin

 

[15Tango]

fdshuster,

You're not getting what I'm saying here. I'm not talking about [you] or me here, I'm talking about the OP; Somebody who doesn't appear to be doing all those things yet. In that case a concentricity gauge is quite moot.

Kevin,

Weighing all the loads is good. One of the biggest determining factors in getting a small ES/SD is neck tension - whatever it is, high or low, it needs to be consistent. That's where neck turning really comes in. The other big factors are primer pocket depths being all the same and flash holes all being uniform and bullet distance to lands in terms of seating - you'll notice a lot of guys, for competition use usually, load the bullet out long enough so that it actually jams into the rifling upon chambering. To fix all those things you'll need a primer pocket uniformer, flash hole cutter and neck turning equipment - the same things I said in my first post on this thread. Brass annealing will also come into play eventually.

Good dies meaning one that seats bullets concentrically in the first place, generally floating seater dies do the best at this, at least from my experience. Redding and Hornady both have floating seaters. Eventually you'll want a Redding bushing die setup for resizing as well to give you control over neck tension.

Your goal should be quite attainable, the average hand loads will are going to be better than most factory loads. If you're only looking for 100-yard accuracy you'll probably find that flat base bullets will work better as they stabilize sooner than boat tail and VLD designs, they often don't stabilize until well after 100 yards. Flat base often need to be jumped to the rifling for best accuracy.

Any idea what twist your .243 is? Once you get to the point where you think the rifle's shooting the best it can you can try to alter a few things such as changing the stock (you said you think the current one's ugly anyway), better bedding, better trigger, maybe a better scope or mounting setup - who knows. I know Boyd's has some good deals on stocks and have a few different economical choices for Rugers: http://www.boydsgunstocks.com/ROSS-FT-RUGER-77-MKII-p/500-082-ft.htm

There are differing opinions on brass sizing in regards to neck only, partial with a FLS (sounds like that's what you're doing) die or full length sizing. Which one's right? I don't think anyone's really wrong anyway . . . Here's an article from German Salazar on the subject if interested: http://riflemansjournal.blogspot.com/2010/06/basics-resizing-case-dimension-changes.html

Anyway, there's some stuff for you.

Wayne

 

[BoydAllen]

From time to time, at the range, I see someone "evaluating" loads. Often, he is shooting off of a rest/sandbag setup that does not give the best results with any load, and invariably he has no way to see what the wind is doing. Beyond that, there is a general lack of understanding of parallax, and he is generally resting the rifle incorrectly on whatever rest setup that he has, and will sit and study each shot after he makes it. With all of these problems, he is probably paying too much attention to powder weight, and too little to seating depth. Many times nothing has been done to remedy inadequate factory action bedding. My point is not to belittle the average shooter's efforts, but to suggest areas that usually need attention. On the other hand, if you are being safe and having fun, carry on. One of the great things about hobbies is that you get to do them whatever way that you like.

Sinclair makes a good concentricity gauge. If you have the budget for it, Oehler makes one of the best chronographs. I understand that they have committed to making a special run of their 35P.

 

[Kenny474]

For a long time I was without a chrono, or even a concentricity gauge. But I still managed decent accuracy with my rifles, just by paying a lot of attention to the measurements I could take and control.

Let's face it, you don't need bushing dies or inline seaters to get 1MOA, you just don't. 1MOA is accurate for the average hunting rifle, but if many members had that kind of accuracy from their high dollar bench rigs, they would be in a total state of distress looking for the problem. The OP is not looking for the kind of competition winning accuracy most here are, he just wants a consistent 1MOA, and a bit better from his .243.

I have attained 1MOA from several rifles with nothing more than Lee FL or Collet dies, as they are plenty adequate and of basically good design. I have even attained .25MOA from my .222 with Collet dies as well, though it was after attaining a run-out gauge and a chrono.

To the OP: I think you are definitely on the right track. But I don't feel a bushing neck die or a competition micrometer seat die is quite what you need for "hunting rifle accuracy". What you should look into, are Lee collet dies. By design, they will help reduce run-out on cases without turned necks. Lee also makes one of the better "standard" FL dies, as the design of the expander is much better than a spherical expander which most other companies provide or use. Their seat dies also have a floating seat stem, and have worked fine for me in the past, and still do to this day. RCBS dies however, have given me issues since day 1 of my reloading career, and I no longer own any RCBS dies.

No amount of precision reloading equipment will do a bit of good without a properly built rifle. The bedding needs to be solid, barrel either free-floated or properly bedded, and the trigger needs to be light enough to break accurate shots. The scope also needs to be a quality unit, capable of holding zero and solidly mounted to the action.

Yes, a chrono and a run-out gauge are good tools, but should come after other areas have been addressed, such a action and barrel bedding, and dies that work properly for the type of shooting the OP is doing.

And let's face it, who wants to lose a piece of neck turned Lapua brass while hunting? I know I don't. Even Winchester brass with a ton of prep involved sucks to lose. I don't think neck turning is the answer here either. Just a good set of dies that will work well with standard, out of the box brass, such as the Lee collet die.

Good luck on your path to accuracy, just don't get hung up on total precision, as it's not truly necessary to achieve your goals. Just good, solid loading technique combined with equipment designed for the task at hand will be enough.

Kenny

 

[40X Guy]

Excellent post Kenny!

 

[fdshuster]

15tango: The original question from Dux-R-Us/ Kevin was, " But I probably need a chronograph and a concentricity guage. Can you make a recommendation on both?" I passed on the chronograph issue, left the door open for others more knowledgable than I about chronographs, and provided Kevin with my information about the RCBS & the Sinclair---- at least one of the answers he was looking for. You turned it around into a "discussion" concerning which is the most valuable tool to have, not at all what Keven, (the OP) was asking. I've still not seen any information answering one of the original questions from Kevin about which chronograph he might want to consider buying.

 

[necchi]

I'm almost embarrassed, (on this forum) to recomend the RCBS Case Master tool I have.
http://www.midwayusa.com/viewproduct/?productnumber=310955

It's a multi function tool that some will say doesn't do ANY of the tasks well.
I use it primarily for checking case runout and bullet runout. The long rod adjusts to read case internals but in my opinion it does not give enough detail for those that are a counting on consistant case measurement for perfection. It will very readily indicate any case that has signs of head seperation.

There are several specialty tools out there that will do each individual job/measurement better. This tool is NOT recomended for the BR crowd, but serves well a hunter looking to improve his accuracy by identifying basic case and bullet imperfections that can and do affect accuracy and help perfect technique. You can "Cherry pick" your cartridges.
I think it does a great job, and I believe if well cared for it's an investment that would retain much of it's value if one decides to sell and upgrade at a later date.
I haven't seen any other tool that will do what this does for the money.

If your into concentricity, a Neck Turning set-up goes hand-in-hand with thing.

 

[15Tango]

15tango: The original question from Dux-R-Us/ Kevin was, " But I probably need a chronograph and a concentricity guage. Can you make a recommendation on both?" I passed on the chronograph issue, left the door open for others more knowledgable than I about chronographs, and provided Kevin with my information about the RCBS & the Sinclair---- at least one of the answers he was looking for. You turned it around into a "discussion" concerning which is the most valuable tool to have, not at all what Keven, (the OP) was asking. I've still not seen any information answering one of the original questions from Kevin about which chronograph he might want to consider buying.

Oops. A little communication mix up, my apologies.

Okay, uh. I've got a Beta Chrony Master, I think they're around $120. It works well enough, I don't know how to use any function other than on and off, I've always just wrote the numbers down and did what I wanted with it when I got home. It's sensitive to light conditions but I hear most chronos are. I will say this about the thing - on the first day I had it, I accidentally shot one of the sensors with a CB out of one of my .22s, it cracked the housing of the sensor but it still works just fine to this day.

Don't forget to get yourself a decent tripod, I use one meant for cameras, and the higher it goes the better oftentimes. Decent as in somewhat sturdy construction and having a good foot print, you'd be surprised how much muzzle blast really exists directly in front of those rifles. I couldn't even tell you how many times my chrono took a dive from my .243 shooting Retumbo.

Wayne

 

[TheBlueEyedBear]

Chronograph:
I think I have owned most of the Chrony's offered on the market. The one before my current model was the Oehler 35P which was a good unit. But then I bought the PVM-21. Without a doubt the BEST chrony out there. The cons; PRICE!!
I forget where I've seen this quote on the forum,,, but, "buy the best and cry once".

It's worth the money if it's in your budget. And, it comes with QuickLoad.
The thing I also like about the PVM-21 is that it connects directly to my laptop while at the range and records data. ALMOST all shots I take at the range go through the PVM-21. It's a habit now.

 

[Kenny474]

For a chrono for use by someone just tuning a hunting rifle, a basic unit from Cabela's such as the Shooting Chrony Beta or F-1 will be fine. The Beta Master is nice as well, but you don't need to spend a ton to get a decent unit. The lesser units have their quirks, like needing proper lighting and such, but they do work and work well for what the OP needs. I have a Beta and my Father has my old F-1, both did the job just fine. I believe I picked up the Beta on sale foe $90, maybe a bit more.
http://www.cabelas.com/product/Shooting-Beta-Chronograph/739857.uts?Ntk=AllProducts&searchPath=%2Fcatalog%2Fsearch%2F%3FN%3D%26Ntk%3DAllProducts%26Ntt%3Dchronograph%26Ntx%3Dmode%252Bmatchall%26form_state%3DsearchForm%26recordsPerPage%3D80%26search%3Dchronograph&Ntt=chronograph

As for a concentricity gauge, I have both a NECO and a copy of the older Sinclair V-block unit that I made, and I had an H&H unit that "corrected" run-out as well, but I sold it to a friend. The NECO is awesome, but is a bit more comlicated than the Sinclair. I would recommend about any of the available models, with the exception of the lathe style units, such as the Hornady, as I am not at all impressed with the measurements it gives, nor it's claim to "fix" ammo.

For general use in making accurate hunting ammo, a Sinclair style tool will be fine.

But I still feel there are other areas that wil provide more benefit for the hunter looking to improve accuracy, such as rifle improvements and better designed dies than concentricity gauge. The Chrony will be a sound investment.

 

[Dux-R-Us]

Thanks for the suggestions and the running off topic discussion was informative. I believe the chronograph and concentricity guage are tools I need and want now. Hey, for all you guys know I could be totally wealthy, but I believe I have already shown my cards and let out that I'm an academic, so you know I don't fall into the idle rich category. I'm just rich in character and blessings.

Someone asked about the twist on my M77 .243 Win. The Ruger website lists it as 1 in 9" RH. I'm guessing this middle of road and should stabilize bullets in a wide range of weights, but I am not likely to load 100 gr. bullets. I have only had the rifle 1 year and not loaded too much for it. I bought some 62 gr. Barnes Varmint Grenades last January and killed two coyotes with the bullet. Aptly named product. The carcasses were all icky inside. I need to work up a decent load for that bullet.

So I will be in the market for a Sinclair guage and sounds like the Beta Chrony will meet my needs.

All my rifles have had trigger jobs and are break crisp with no discernable creep. They break anywhere from 2 3/4 lbs to 3.5 lbs (the exception is the Lee Enfield which is my newest purchase). I put a Timney trigger in my .243 this summer and suspect that will improve my shooting with it. I missed two coyotes last winter that I attribute to the crappy factory trigger.

Thanks again and I will be posting again soon as I plan what I want rifle and loads I want to tackle first (probably the .243).

Tally ho!

Kevin