Has anyone loaded the 190 gn. Sierra MatchKing Moly Coated. Have had great results with the non-moly, but just bought a 500 unit box of the moly to promote barrel life and easier cleaning. Looking for a stating point. I've always used RL-25 or RL-22, but am open to suggestions.

Sorry, I guess I should have started my last post by telling you that I can't help you with the 220 gn. loads. Never experimented with anything over 190 gn in a match load for the 300 RUM. Wish I could help.

CJ

One three shot group of each load isn't going to tell you much. You need to shoot five- five shot groups of each load and you will have a much more consistent illustration of what each load will do.

I haven't used bullets heavier than 180gr in my 300ultramags but I am getting the best accuracy with r-25 and fed 215 primers.

Oscar,

With rounds like this I have to respectfully disagree with your comments of shooting five-5 shot groups for accuracy.

If a group is shooting 1.5 to 2" with three shots, this flat out tells me that the load is not real great and why waste the componants on another two rounds.

If the three shot groups are running well under an inch then I would recommend selecting those that looked the best and shoot a few five shot groups with those but only with the promising loads.

Shooting 25 rounds with a single load will burn the barrel out of a 300 RUM in very short order, better get a good load on the first or second try.

Also, with the RUM class of rounds, barrel heat will usually cause a flier with the third shot of the group and from there out as well. Every group listed but hte last one showed this behavor. TO shoot 5 accurate rounds, one would have to spend alot of time sitting to let the barrel cool after and between shots.

For case with 30-50 grains per case, your methods are right on cue. For case with 20-35 grains, 10 shot strings would be even better. For cases with +90 gr capacities, three shots is all I could recommend until the list of possible loads has been trimmed to only a few. Then I would only recommend three five shot groups. Again, if a load will not shoot two good groups out of a total of three, either the shooter has a problem, the load is poor or the rifle has a mechanical problem.

As a gunsmith, I wish all shooters tested 25 rounds per load in their 300 RUMS, I would be livign life high off the hog from all the barrel replacements.

Good SHooting!!!

50

Rem. 25 06,

First off when your shooting these long VLD bullets, do not expect 1/2" groups at 100 yards. Sometimes it happens but not very often.

The problem is that these long bullets take some time to fight off the effects of the rifling. They acually wobble slightly after leaving the muzzle. Somewhere between 75 and 150 yards the bullets will "go to sleep" if you will and fly stable until their velocity drops below super sonic speeds.

I tell my customers to look for loads in teh 3/4" to 1" range at 100 yards and them quickly step back to at least 300 yards. At this range the VLD bullets will show their true colors. A 1" group at 100 yards will often be only slightly larger then that at 300 yards because they have fallen asleep at around 100 yards an fly more consistantly.

DO not discard a load that prints even 1 1/4" at 100 yards until you put them on paper at 300 yards.

To be honest, I would only use the 100 yard target to get sighted in for 300 yards and them move back. If you do not have access to 300 yards, 200 is still much better then 100 for evaluating these bullets.

With a VLD design, testing at longer ranges will give much more informative results then any 100 yard group will. Even five 100 yard groups averaged out.

Stretch it out a little and let the bullets and rifle talk clearer to you.

Good Shooting!!!

50

Fifty Driver,

Normally I would not impose, but since you offered the information of being a gunsmith....you opened the door.
I have had pretty good accuracy with my Rem. Sendero 300 RUM and have had it pillar bedded, and blueprinted w/ trigger work as well. My question to you is this; is there any other steps I can take to get improve the accuracy to the next level Match Shilen Barrel? Titanium Firing Pin?

I have had great luck with handloaded SMK's and am just now getting into reloading myself, so my efforts just got a lot less expensive. My targets are good, don't get me wrong, but I was just wondering if you had a secret "last step" that I was missing. Thanks for your input.

Incidentally, and I know I have not earned my stripes in reference to handloading yet, but I tend to agree with the 3 shot group theory. If I can't get 3 loads to pattern well, I move on to the next. I usually start at, say 90 gns. of RL-22 and then 91.5, then 93.0 Once I find a stepping stone for improvement, I start working b/w them. Besides the waste of ammunition and money, lets not forget the recoil. I don't care who you are, if you shoot 5, 5 shot groups with this gun, your last 10-15 rounds are tainted by anticipation of recoil and fatigue.

Just my opinion, which I'll grant you is still in the learning stages of the reloading game.

C. Johnson

1/2 Moa,

Welcome to the board, one thing you really need to remember, the number of posts under your name has nothing to do with the right to post or the level of knowledge you have.

Feel free to offer any thoughts on any subject, I for one am interested to read anyones post, does not matter if I agree or disagree, everyone has their own experiences and they are all valuable.

Now for your question. Here is what I would tell a customer that came in with your question.

First off, I will admit to being very conservative with a customers hard earned money. There are alot of high dollar proceedures that may or just as easily may not improve the accuracy of the rifle in question.

If a rifle came to me that shot well but the owner was just wanting to see if it was possible to get the rifle to really shine here are the things I would look at.

My first thought would be what was exactly done in the blue-printing procedure? Blue-printing is a vague term that varies from truing the face of the receiver to a full blown accuracy machining job on the action.

First I need to know what was done and with a couple minutes looking at the action I can easily tell.

After I have determined that the action has been fully blue-printed and is an accurate condition meaning everything is square and true and ready to produce fine accuracy, I will them look at the barrel.

The most often over looked and just as often culprit in poor or inconsistant accuracy is the muzzle crown. Many home gunsmiths will chuck a barrel up in the lathe and even dial indicate the barrel true but because the bore is seldom in the center of a barrel, when they recut the crown with a conventional lathe bit, the crown will be uneven.

Suprisingly, alot of factory crowns are in pretty poor condition. I charge $12.00 to recrown a M700 barrel and use live pilot crowning tools to recut the crown. These live pilots come in a set of nine for each caliber. Each 0.0002" larger in diameter then the one before.

These pilots are installed on teh nose of the cutter and freely spin so that they will not leave any mark on the rifling while the cut is being made.

With these interchangable pilots, I can match the pilot to within 0.0002" of the bore for basically a perfect crown. Just this step alone generally will impreove accuracy and for the $12.00 I charge for it, I highly recommend it.

If your action was truely blue-printed, the smith should have recrowned the barrel while the barrel was off. Should just be a given.

Once that is done, the next thing I would do as far as the action and barrel work are concerned would be to replace the factory recoil lug, which is quite flimsy with a Holland Competition Recoil lug. This lug is nearly twice as thick as the factory lug and has much greater surface area to transfer energy from the barreled action to the stock. Also, they are surface ground and are within 0.002" uniform in thickness, far better then the factory lugs. Some factory lugs are pretty good, but alot of them are quite bad as well.

I charge $125 to blue-print an action. If I am fitting a new barrel, the installation of this recoil lug is included in that price. If the customer just wants the lug installed the price is $60.00 installed($30 for the lug and $30 to install it).

From there if the rifle is still having problems there are a couple things I could do.

First off, the barrel can be set back .600" of an inch and refitted and rechambered with a much improved thread fit and a match quality chamber. I like to shorten the barrel this much so that I can cut a new set of threads to fit the receiver better. Also, it will allow the old chamber along with .600" of the throat, which is the section which will erode the fastest to be cleaned out giving the customer basically a new match grade chamber.

Problem here is that I charge $125.00 for this proceedure plus half the cost of the reamer if I do not have it in stock. I feel I can help my customers out by at least paying for half the reamer that I will be keeping. Alot of smiths charge the customer full price and then some.

So in total, this step could run over $200. We know have a match grade barrel fit to the receiver, a match grade chamber and a match grade crown. Only problem is that we still ahve a factory quality barrel doing the real work.

Its kind of like putting $2000 cylinder heads on an old chevy 350 that has 300,000 miles on it, will they give the engine new life, probably not.

Generally in this case, I will recommend the customer get a quality barrel and I fully recommend Lilja barrels and feel they are second to none.

The Shilen Select Match barrel is also a fine barrel so if you get a Shilen, be sure it is a "Select Match" and not just a "Match" barrel.

Now the customer will have to come up with another $250-$270 for the barrel on top of the other costs but I have yet to have a customer complain about the accuracy of a quality barrel that they take home.

Point being, if your rifle is shooting well as is, I would not invest much into it besides perhaps a crowning job if it did not get one already. They shoot it until the barrel is used up and then invest in a quality barrel and have it fitted properly.

Now I have taken factory rifles and tuned them up and gotten very good results. One example is a Rem M700 in 338 RUM. The rifle was a synthetic/stainless and was kicking the hell out of its owner.

He also said the rifel was not shooting very well either.

I fitted and pillar bedded a new Laminated thumbhole stock the rifle as the customer instructed and then blueprinted the action, installed a new comp. recoil lug and recrowned the muzzle.

I also installed a Holland Quick Discharge muzzle brake and a Kick-Eez recoil pad to the stock. When the owner picked up the rifle we tried it at the range and his first three rounds cut a jagged hole. We moved back to 300 yards and we both shot groups under 1 1/4" for three rounds.

The next week he had ne order him two Rem 22-250 laminated varminters and tuned them the same way but rechambered them the the improved version. Those two rifles now group in the 1/4" range.

Still with every rifle and customer I warn that there may not be much improvement by stickling with the factory barrel. I have seen more then a couple that showed little improvement after several hundred dollars of work done to them. I like to tell my customers this before I take their money because then its their choice and they have been worned.

As far as the 300 RUM and its brothers throwing the third round of a group. I will say not all do this. That 338 RUM I spoke of dropped three rounds very close to each other most of the time.

Still, when loaded with top handloads in factory sporter weight barrels, I would say 75-80% of the rifles with this size case and up will show this behavor.

My personal 300 RUM will drop two shots on top of each other but the third will open the group to 3/4". If I shoot two then wait till the barrel cools, and shoot two more, the rifle will land those two on top of the others.

This is with factory rifles, custom rifles I have tested did not have this problem nearly as bad. I have my theorys on this but thats another novel.

Your load developement steps look good to me, 1.5 gr increases are just about right for a case in the 90-100 gr capacity.

I use 100.0 gr of H-1000 in my 300 RUM under either the 180 gr Accubond or the Partition. This is a top load and will probably be very hot in some rifle so start at 90 gr and go up if you want to try another load.

If you have any more questions on accuracy tips I will try to help if I have the answers, if I do not, I will get them for you.

Good Shooting!!!

50

Fiftydriver, I find there is too much chance of operator error, wind, etc., causing a single 3 shot group to be larger than it would normally , and vice versa its too easy for three shots to accidently group very close together giving a false reading of a rifles actual potential. I've seen lots of guys load 3 of each load and get one load with 3 shots touching while the other loads are all an inch and a half or bigger, go and load up a whole batch of that load only to find they can never duplicate that lucky group.(they usually carry around that group in their wallet and claim their rifle shoots 1/4" groups even though they can never duplicate it I shoot 5-5 shot groups(our range isn't busy and I have lots of time to play) to reduce the chance of error and give an aggregate of the rifles performance with a certain load. I let the barrel cool well between shots. I invariably find during this I will get a group that is larger than average and a group that is also smaller than the average, but the agregate of all these groups tells me what the load is averageing. I wouldn't discount a load based on one three shot group. I would at least shoot 3-3 shot or 2-5 shot groups at a bare minimum. If you don't regularly overheat your barrel excessively your RUM should last at least a couple thousand rounds before any noticible loss in accuracy. You can burn up any caliber barrel prematurely by shooting without cooling. That said, once i've found a load with potential I will then shoot five shots quickly over a couple of minutes to make sure it maintains it's point of impact even though the barrel gets mighty warm after the first couple of rounds. If the rounds start to wander around on the target as the barrel heats up then I look for a bedding problem. A decent rifle and load should be able to shoot 5 rounds in short order and maintain the same point of impact. Even my pencil barrelled rifles will do that,or they get traded off if it cannot be remedied. If everythings ok and I think I got a good load then I will test it at 2-3-400 yds. After all thats done then I'll try another bullet and start all over again just for something to do.

Oscar,

Again, I have no problem testing a certain load extensively, but why put the wear on the barrel from every load you test instead of quickly weeding out the ones that do not perform up to your standards.

I also have found that it is much easier to get three good quality shots off then it is to get five. If your going to test loads, do it when the wind is not a factor and make sure you as a shooter are prepared for accuracy testing.

By that I mean, do not go out drinking the night before your testing, make sure you have eaten a few hours before testing to settle any shakiness that will effect shot quality. Use the proper shooting accesseries to remove as much human error as possible.

If you use a good front bag designed to fit your forend close and a good rabbit ear rear bag, even sporter rifles will sit dead steady in the bags.

Further more, I know full well that for unexperienced shooters, or those that do not shoot often, it can be very difficult to shoot even three rounds with rifles of this power. The best thing for them to do would be to scale down to a smaller rifle but that seldom happens today.

When I develope loads for a customers rifle, they pay me for my time and componants used. Because of that, I need to find a the right load as quickly as possible. If I shoot three shot groups to weed out the lower quality loads I can quickly settle on 2 or 3 specific loads in usually under 20 rounds fired. Remember, alot of load work can be figured out on paper with the proper experience and knowledge of burn rates, powder charge density and such.

Once I get those 2 or 3 loads, I will then shoot three, 3shot groups for average. As a gunsmith and a custom ammo maker, if I can not hold the shots steady, I really need to be in different work.

Once I find the load that I will send home to my customer, I will load up 10 rounds of that load and shoot then over the chrono. for a velocity average along with a 10 shot group which I provide to the customer.

With this procedure, I usually have 22 rounds of the final load that have been fired along with 18-27 of the other finalist loads. Uaually, the initial batch of test loads will cover 15-21 rounds in three shot groups. This brings the total rounds fired for testing to under 75 rounds total and usually less then this.

I have also found that with factory barrels, sometimes it is the bedding that is causing the groups to open when the barrel heats up and sometimes it is the factory barrel itself.

If you have ever rechambered or worked on many factory barrels on a lathe, you will quickly realize that very few factory barrels actually have the bore anywhere near the center of the barrel.

What this does, as the barrel heats up cause the barrel to worp slightly because the thicker steel on one side of the barrel will expand differently then the thinner side will causing the group to open up.

Factory heavy barrels are usually the same, only that the thicker steel deminishes the results to a degree.

This will occur even if the barrel is totally stress free and has only to do with the expansion rate of the different thickness of steel.

TO be honest, I would recommend all load testing be done at 300 yards from the start but this is not practical for most shooters and most shooters are intimidated by the range and do not shoot well. Still this is a much more accurate predictor of a good load.

Good Shooting!!!

50

I agree with much of what you say for all practical purposes. I get a little anal as I shoot benchrest and a three shot group tells me nothing, somehow I've carried this habit over into my hunting rifles. About barrels, yes, It's amazing how factory barrels shoot as well as they do with all the defects they have. A borescope and measuring tools are a scary thing when you look at a factory barrel and some aftermarket barrels also. Even some premium competitive benchrest barrels made by the finest barrelmakers can be pretty scary looking under magnification. I'm always on a search for a load that can give a 0.05" tighter group agg. can make a real difference in competition, but you couldn't begin to notice it in a hunting rifle. Thats why a person has to pay attention to his windflags and shooting technique and to fire many groups to find something that gives the tinyiest advantage.

Oscar,

I do not compete in teh BR circuits but the sport of extreme range varmint hunting is nearly the same came, just that there are no wind flags and the ranges are yet to be determined.

I would aslo agree with you on your last comment. The way I see things. If three long range varminters have rifles that will all shoot into 1/2 moa out to 1000 yards. The difference in hitting and nearly hitting a rockchuck will be the shooter who dopes the wind the best.

If you can't read the wind, if you can't develope an accurate drop chart, if you can not determine an accurate range to target, even a rifle and load that will run in the 1/5 moa will do you little good once ranges get past 300 yards.

One example is my fast twist 6mm-284. ITs favorite load drives teh 107 gr Sierra MK at 3550 fps and at 500 yards on a calm day WILL shoot into 1/5 moa. IT has shot several three shot groups at sub 1" spreads, even a few sub 3/4" groups.

It has even hammered a few 5 shot groups into those same ranges but it is admittedly harder to do so with ever changing conditions.

Still the rifle/drop chart/load combo is accurate enough to have scored dozens of one shot kills from 600 to 1055 yards just last summer on chucks. Of course there were more misses then hits but at these ranges, even a near miss at a 6" target area is a success.

This rifle will out shoot me as will many of my other varminters. That being they will show my imperfections instantly and I have no need to worry if it is me or the rifle, it is always my problem if I miss.

Good Shooting!!!

50

Thanks 50.

I had forgotten about this one. That's a very good description of VLD's by 50. I do disagree on one point, however.

The 30 Cal SMK's aren't all that aggressive in the nose having somewhere around an 8 caliber tangent ogive--very similar to Nosler's. They have a bigger boattail but that's not as important as the tip and won't make up for the larger hollow point. I'd bet money that weight for weight, the Nosler BT/AccuBonds will beat the Sierras when measured for BC side by side.

If you want a higher BC than the 200 Accubond, you need to step up to a 220 or 240 SMK (or one of the lower volume custom bullets).

The Swift and Hornady plastic tipped bullets actually have a much more aggressive secant ogive than either the Sierra or Nosler. Add the plastic tips and that's why they are unbeatable for BC's amoung "common" bullets weight for weight. Some disadvantages to that nose are that sometimes they are a bit pickier about seating depths/throat angles, etc for best accuracy and it increases the length. Since they both use thick pure copper jackets, reducing their densities, they get a double-whammy on the length which is why you'll probably never see either of them in 200 grains. Too bad, because with their more efficient shapes they would have higher BC's than the AccuBond if they were only heavy enough.