michaelnel
Old and In The Way
Yesterday I received my new/used 6 Dasher rifle. I bought it from Alex (zfastmalibu) here. It's a beautiful gun, and the action works smoother than anything I could have imagined. It shot great for Alex, now I have to get it to shoot great for me.
I did an OCW test yesterday, and it seemed to point to 32.2gr of RL15 as being the center of a node. I loaded up 50 rounds this morning with that, CCI 450 primers, 105 VLDs jammed 0.015".
I shot them at 200 yards and they / I really didn't do very well. Some of it is me, but I really think some of it is that the rifle didn't much care for that load. I shot some pretty small groups (3/4" five shot groups at 200 yards, which isn't too bad), but there were also some crazy ones and the POI was kind of jumping around.
I thought I saw a second node up around 32.7gr so I might try that next.
I also kind of suspect I may be over-annealing. I anneal after each firing, using a Benchsource annealing machine and have been running them until they get a dark red glow (not orange, and you cannot see it with the lights on) on the inside of the neck with the lights off.
The reason I suspect this is too much is that this morning when I was working up the seating depth with the Wilson seater and shims, I seated one too deep and had to pull the bullet. It came out really easy with the inertial bullet puller. After pulling the bullet I found there was almost no tension, ie: I reseated the bullet and went to measure it with the comparator and the act of measuring it seated the bullet deeper! I could push it in with my fingers.
I figure if I over annealed them, then they don't have much springback, and hence not much grip on the bullet. I suspect this may have something to do with the sloppy groups this morning. I am thinking to not anneal them before the next loading and let them harden up some to get some springback to return.
What do you think?
I did an OCW test yesterday, and it seemed to point to 32.2gr of RL15 as being the center of a node. I loaded up 50 rounds this morning with that, CCI 450 primers, 105 VLDs jammed 0.015".
I shot them at 200 yards and they / I really didn't do very well. Some of it is me, but I really think some of it is that the rifle didn't much care for that load. I shot some pretty small groups (3/4" five shot groups at 200 yards, which isn't too bad), but there were also some crazy ones and the POI was kind of jumping around.
I thought I saw a second node up around 32.7gr so I might try that next.
I also kind of suspect I may be over-annealing. I anneal after each firing, using a Benchsource annealing machine and have been running them until they get a dark red glow (not orange, and you cannot see it with the lights on) on the inside of the neck with the lights off.
The reason I suspect this is too much is that this morning when I was working up the seating depth with the Wilson seater and shims, I seated one too deep and had to pull the bullet. It came out really easy with the inertial bullet puller. After pulling the bullet I found there was almost no tension, ie: I reseated the bullet and went to measure it with the comparator and the act of measuring it seated the bullet deeper! I could push it in with my fingers.
I figure if I over annealed them, then they don't have much springback, and hence not much grip on the bullet. I suspect this may have something to do with the sloppy groups this morning. I am thinking to not anneal them before the next loading and let them harden up some to get some springback to return.
What do you think?
