I built a 308 Winchester rifle on a Remington 40X action for a friend.

Loaded him a 100 rounds and off he went.

That was years ago.

A few days ago he called that the rifle does not shot so well any more.

After a bit of discussion, I found out that his son has been shooting the rifle, with reloads he has loaded himself.

I asked him to bring the rifle, together with the ammo his son has loaded.

The original ammo I gave him were loaded in Lapua brass, and Sierra 168 Match King bullets.

The rifle shot extremely accurate with these.

He brought the rifle, together with one box of loaded ammo.

One look at these, and I knew what was wrong.

Brass was ex military, no 3 are the same make, and the length of the cases was all over the place.

Bullets were soft points of unknown origin.

First thing to do was clean the barrel, which was fouled quite a bit.

While this was being done, I made a few more of our 157 Walterhog bullets I am using for our 308 Winchester test.

I pulled the bullets out of 5 rounds he had loaded, each case was of different manufacturer!!

Once we had everything ready, I loaded 5 rounds in the RWS brass I am using for our test, and the 5 cases I pulled the bullets out of.

Loaded all with 46 grains of VARGET, and fired them.

The RWS loads went into 0.320"

The 5 rounds in military brass went into 1.867"

His son turned up for lunch, and I loaded the same cases again, and he shot them.

Our RWS loads went into 0.510"

The military brass went into 2.213"

We pulled the bullets out of the rest of his ammo.

Found 5 cases of the same make, and trimmed them to length.

Loaded them all with our load and shot them, several times, with our load of 46 grains of VARGET and our 157 Walterhogs.

Best we could get was 1.200"

Saeed: That is a great illustration of how important individual components can be to accuracy. I have had similar problems over the years, sometimes by changing primers accuracy goes away. Keeping records and being consistent is important.

I have seen similar results from sloppy loading. I like to use range rats from off the ground but I prep them as though I were going to a match then plink with them. any serious chooting, hunting, will be done with good brass all from one manufacturer. Be Well, Packy.