Faced with more time at home and less at the range for a few weeks, decided to get all my components ready for the 2020 shooting season. I know I should have done that last winter... I didn't.
I have tested all three and can measure good improvement from all at 600 yards on target.
I hope to start shooting 1000 yard BR this year. Is there more or different sorting that I should consider for the 1000 yard venue?
I sort
Primers by weight
Bullets by BTO and/or OAL depending on what testing teaches me
brass by weight or volume, again depending on testing.
Thanks
CW
Welcome to the dark side! We LR BR shooters sort many things many different ways and each person does things a little differently. Here are some of the sorting options.
- Primers: Sort by weight then sort cases by primer seating depth or use a tool that measures primer crush
- Bullets: Sort by seating ogive and chamber ogive, though many only sort base to ogive as defined by the a Hornady or similar tool. Many sort them on a Juenke or a Bullet Genie as well. Custom bullets like Bart's are more consistent that mass produced bullets like Bergers
- Brass: Some sort into 1 grain groups, some sort into .1 grain groups, some sort by internal volume (very hard to do well), some don't worry about it since internal volumes are usually very consistent. One highly competitive shooter I know weight sorts after every firing. Another top shooter I know pin gauges the necks before seating bullets and sorts them that way.
- Sizing: I measure every case shoulder after sizing and will sort them that way. The way I set up my die I can usually get them all within .001", that is assuming I am consistent enough in my measuring feel to have that level of accuracy. I don't know if everyone else does it that way.
- Seating pressure: Many if not most use a Hydro Seater and sort rounds based on seating pressure. A variance in seating pressure often changes seating depth slightly. I also measure every bullet after seating. I don't know if everyone else measures each bullet after seating.
- Most of us have a powder scale that can measure to the kernel of powder. That is more important for a 6 BRA than a 300 WSM.
Realize that the wind can overwhelm any of the sorting we do, and much of this sorting will only show up in very good conditions--which might be 10-20% of the time.
For perspective, when I competed in 1000 yd BR from 2005-2007, I didn't sort primers or check primer seating. I didn't measure seating force. I didn't sort bullets in any way. I measured powder on an RCBS 10-10 which was only accurate to .1 grains, which was fine for a 300 WSM, but not so great for a 6 BRA. I did separate brass into 1 grain sorts. With that level of sorting I manged to shoot 5 groups between 3.5" and 4" one year. Those were considered screamer groups then but don't make the cut now. My best three 5-shot group LG aggs were 4.71 and 4.91 back then, which were club records in Tucson at the time. Those groups and aggs would win many matches nowadays, but aren't so spectacular anymore.
