I have had a favorite load for my .338-06 for years. Recently the load is starting to open up quite a bit. Anyone else had a sim. experience w/ a favorite load just not shooting well anymore? It's not the scope, action screws, etc. other loads are doing well.

Fred, Not from experience just from what I read, but, you may need to seat your bullets out a wee bit further to get back to your former level of accuracy. Jay

Hey Fred, Perhaps it is as simple as needing to "lengthen" your Seating Depth just a bit. As we shoot, the distance to the "Lead" begins to move forward slightly in every rifle. This changes the Harmonic and we occasionally have to compensate for it.

Might be a slight Powder or Primer variance in their burn rate and/or duration from back when you started. Perhaps the Internal Volume of the Cases is slightly different. All of these will also cause a Harmonic shift.

But, it might be as simple as the old faithful Bullet Profile might have changed a bit. As the Dies wear out and are replaced, the new Dies just don't produce a Bullet exactly like the original Dies. Sometimes it is just due to a slight variance in the manufacture of the Die and then again it can be that the Bullet manufacturer decided to "enhance" the old Bullet Design just a bit.

I like the check the "Kiss-the-Lands" distance every time I open a new box of Bullets with one Bullet from that box. Then I compare it to the same distance that I wrote on the old box. Normally it will be a bit longer, but I also have a separate Bullet I keep in the Die Box just to check the movement of the Throat from when it was new.

could be such a thing as clean the barrel up good

I vote for 1) clean the barrel with a copper solvent and if the patches come out blue-green, keep on cleaning until they are clean. 2) seat the bullets out closer to the lands, but only slightly-say .002" and .004" and reevaluate accuracy.

Other things keep changing too as mentioned. I have shot rifles chambered for the .358 Win a lot. Most of the shooting was with full charge 180 and 200 gr bullets so you would think that I have nailed a perfect load that stayed for years. Not so.

Just one of the things that happened is the neck wore out in my RCBS FL die to the point that a FL sized case would not even hold a bullet to finger pressure. I wonder how many changes I made in loads before this was discovered? RCBS provided a new die by the way free on exchange.

Then there is "new information". I finally read the Speer manual for the bullet we shoot the most which is the 180 and it lists a COL of 2.680" This is seating the bullets way out there and it does not look right as it's a short bullet. Much experimenting found that a similar long COL does indeed shoot best in my guns! Now if I had only read the manual first.

I kept a 243 for thousands of shots. You could see inches of erosion with just a glance at the throat. Since it always seemed to shoot some load or the other I kept going. Finally the only load that would shoot was with the 100 gr Sierra SPT. Now it's rebarreled with a orginal but new Win. barrel.

Some 358's.

No guys, the barrel gets thoroughly cleaned after each shooting sesion. My fav. load has been the 210grNP under 54gr RL15. The same bullet under H4350 (just this weekend) same OAL, is shooting well under 1moa. THe old fav. used to do this but now I can't get it to concistently beat 1.5moa. I guess it could be a powder lot change but I wouldn't think it that far off. I'll try changing OAL & see if it comes back in line. thanks

quote:

Originally posted by fredj338:
,,,RL15. ...

Hey Fred, I've burned a lot of "RL" powders trying to get them to shoot well for me and just never could get consistent Pressure Indications. I believe I tried 15, 19, 21, 22 and maybe a bit of 25. Burned at least 3 pounds each of the 15, 19 and 21 and ended up just giving what I had left away.

I know a whole lot of folks have absolutely outstanding performance with the RL powders, but they are just a bit too erratic for me.

Hotcore, I have had great resukts w/ RL15, but I only buy in 1# containers because of the chance I'll get a bad lot. RL19 has been great in my .404 so I hope it doesn't change.

Throat erosion possibly try adjusting the OAL to compensate for wear.

No Swede, I ma getting sub moa w/ the same bullet & OAL except diff. powder. The only thing I can think of is the lot is diff. enough to cause some variation in bbl. vibration.