Anybody know which powder manufactures claim low velocity deviations, or have had any good experiances? Right now Iam using 43grs of RL 15 in my .308Win with 165gr Speer Hot-Cor, but Iam getting as much as 100fps spreads. Any opinions on technique or other powder choices?....thanks

Don't put too much money and effort into the lowest velocity spread that you can find. It won't pay until you get out to 500 yards or so, and then the game won't know anyway. Most shots over 150 yards are taken with typewriters and most of the for real ones are misses anyway.

Seriously, put more effort into small groups at, say, 200 yards. That is all you really need for hunting.

For target work, work up a load specific to the known range.

Geo.

whiplash, i havn't used RL15 in a .308 yet but i did just work up some loads for my buddys 9.3x62 with it and only had an extreme spread of 18fps for 12 rounds. Maybe try some Varget, i here it really works well in the .308 Good luck

that was one of two of my next options...Varget and BLC-2.....right now Iam getting 3/4 to and inch groups with my current load. I think with some more consistant velocities that group my shrink a little...

The quickest way to reduce spread is to seat the bullets deeper, go to a milder primer, or a faster powder. I went from 125 fps extreme spread to 30 in my Whelen just by seating the bullets deeper by .1". Couldn't tell the difference in group sizes..... HTH, Dutch.

I know I sound like a broken record with this, but the Lee Factory Crimp Die can improve the velocity consistency.

Whether extremely low velocity variations will give very good accuracy, or vice versa, is another question. Sometimes there seems to be little correlation between velocity statistics and group sizes.

Ive found that I get better results from my powder measure (Lee) with finer powders as opposed to the longer stick types. By weighing each charge of IMR 4350 I found a overall variation of nearly .4 grs of powder! But with something like ball powder or short stick it is a whole lot better.

I havent chronographed the scaled loads yet but I expect the SD to improve when I do.

There's plenty of data going WAY back of loads developing fine accuracy with bigger powder weight variations than that. Gen. Hatcher in his "notebook" relates a story, tinged with some residual anger, of a National Match way back in the '20s. Some self-appointed expert had pulled the bullets from several of the supplied cartridges and was telling everyone that the arsenal folks were incompetent because of the much wider variation in powder weights from the year before. Well, the arsenal crew had done extensive load testing and found that they got the best accuracy results with this particular powder despite its rather wide weight variation when measured volumetrically in a loading machine.