Gentlemen,

We have a Steyer Scout, in 308 Winchester. It has a barrel of about 19 1/4" long.

We will start developing some loads for it, and will keep you all posted on the results.

Nice rifle, I have .308's with barrels from 18" to 22"'s. I lose about 90fps going to the 18" barrel.

Saeed,

If you have time and material, you may want to try the 175 grain Sierra Matchking and 45.0 grains of Varget, this with the obligatory CCI BR-2 primer.

Believe it or not, this load recipe has yet to exceed MOA in any decently constructed .308 rifle I'm familiar with.

I developed this load using a load development method I've described here and elsewhere, and it does work well.

If you're going to test 180 grain bullets, try 44.0 grains of Varget for those, as that recipe has done well with 180 grain Sierra Gamekings and 180 grian Sierra Matchkings.

We're interested in your results.

What has happened with the McMillan rifle to date?

Take care,

Dan

Dan,

The McMillan rifle broke its stock. We are trying to find a way of fixing it, but that has to wait until at least early next month, as we have quite a few things going right now.

One thing which might be of interest to some of you is that we have obtained an attachement we can fit to a bore scope, and take digital photos of the bore.

The thing is we need one of those tiny lights one can insert into the barrel to light up the area, and that has not arrived yet.

I have some barrels that are absolutely facsinating to look at.

Saeed,

My wifes .308 has a 20" barrel, the velocities I've achieved have been within 100 fps of published 22" barrel data. As a ball park figure, I've gotten 150 gr @2800, 165 gr @2700, 180 gr @2600 and 220 gr @2150. Powders that have worked well are RL 15, Varget and VV N 550.

I even made the mistake of carelessly following a recipe in Handloader for VV N-550 and 165 gr bullets, but didn't think about the fact that the article didn't mention what brand of bullets they used. I managed to get 2850 fps, but the primers fell out of the case I've since learned to take a bit more care when approaching max loads, especially those not tested in a lab.