New to 1000 yard shooting. Need guidance!

[HPMike800]

Marine:
Sorry I've been away. I handload same as above -- just good solid handloading practices. If your using Lapua, Varget and SMK/Berger's that's 1/2 the battle. I use Fed 210 primers. When I shot 175's it was out of a 26" Kreiger on an AR-10 and my load was 42.5gr. Don't try to push the velocity to much or you will lose accuracy over long strings of fire. As long as you have a good barrel on the smokepole you should be fine. The most important thing is to get out and shoot at 1,000 for some experience.

Mike

 

[Rust]

A few other thoughts:

If you ever rebarrel, have Dave Kiff set you up with a reamer that is sized to work with a Redding full length die, it really helps cut down on the amount the brass gets worked. Go with a no-turn tight neck, about .004" over loaded neck diameter is a decent compromise. And if you single load you can leave magazine length behind, have the reamer set up to seat the bullet out of the neck/shoulder junction and leave a bit more room for powder,better velocity at the same pressures most the time with an appropriate powder choice.

Annealing works, it helps produce consistant neck tension. Zephyr has an ad on the sight somewhere with a video of their annealing rig that you might want to check out. Even if you can't spring the bucks it is interesting.

Things not mentioned previously concern the rifle. A solid bedding job,even in any aftermarket stock, while the stock might be good to go the receiver may be less than perfect and Remington has been known to put out receivers that are NOT perfectly cylindrical). A decent trigger,I have just about everything and I prefer a rather more heavy pull as long as it is CRISP). Scope mounting is something a lot of folks ignore to one degree or another. I ALWAYS hit a new mount with a lapping bar which proves for a fact whether the mounts and rings are true. Scope repeatability is not helped if the scope has mount induced stress and I've seen plenty of rifles that the receiver mount holes were seriously off on and others that the dimesnions of the receiver were as much as .117" off in height from what the front was in relation to the rear of the receiver.

It's a never ending job of fine tuning the process. Keep in mind a few other things too.

Many a pretty rifle has been smoked by an ugly one.

You can't buy your way to a win.

If it sounds stupid and it works, it ain't stupid.

Murphy shows up at every match for someone.

If anyone starts to excessively pontificate on the "one true path to accuracy" find someone more fun to hang with. I know I wouldn't bother if I didn't get to hang out with a bunch of good old boys.

And my .308 goal is to win the class at a match with a box stock 700P. It shows some promise, it's a Wednesday rifle.