I was down in the city on the weekend and brought my rifle so a friend and I could do some shooting. We don't get to much together since I moved to the interior.

I have just recieved some 100gr. 25cal XLC BT from the classifieds. It looked like a all right deal so I went for it. I allready have my 100gr. Partition loads for my 25/06 so this was purely curiosity.

The majority of what I hear is that these bullets are hard to get sucesss with. Alot of people give up on them because there rifle don't like em. Well, my first group was under an inch. That was with Barnes max using IMR 4350. On friday I fired off three rounds to test pressure. They were all in one grain increments and my group was still close to a inch. I even screwed up the seating depth on the first one terribly.

Now I have a dilema of what my deer load will be.

[ 06-25-2003, 06:54: Message edited by: boilerroom ]

My experience with them in one cartridge (6.5X55) is much like yours. I'm definitely going to give them a shot in my .338.

Like most other bullets, some guns shoot the Barnes monometal bullet well and others poorly. The problem is that with this particular bullet, the "poors" seem to outnumber the "wells" by a rather lopsided percentage. You are fortunate to have one of the "wells".

Does the Barnes XLC require that it sit off the lands, more so than with others??
Seems like I read where it was beneficial to seat it at about .050 off the lands....sakofan..
Thanks>

Sakofan

quote:

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Seems like I read where it was beneficial to seat it at about .050 off the lands....sakofan..
Thanks>

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Thats exactly what I've done.

Today I tried them with RL19 and the groups were poor. I tried the same bullet uncoated a couple of months ago and they were nothing impressive. As good as they group I'm going to stick with my partition load. Today I was talking with some one at the range and he said he had the same bullet pass clean through a deer and he never recovered the deer. This is a story I've heard before. Iffy on expansion. None the less it's fun to discover another load my rifle likes.

I have my XLC's for my 30-06 seated .040 off the lands and grooves and put a healthy dose of RL-22 behind a 168 grain bullet. I get very good results from my Sako L-61R. I will be getting expansion results if all goes well in Vandenberg during the labor day weekend.

I've been "lucky" with them in over 40 seperate barrels.

My preference is being closer to the lands,than previously mentioned.

Your mileage may vary................

I tried the 223 VLC with moderate results. Nothing better than 1" @100yds. I emailed Barnes and they said they use Benchmark to test all their bullets for accuracy and sent me a spread sheet with all the loads for 223. Loaded up some test loads of 25grn of Benchmark, 50 VLC and Fed 205 GM primers. Set the bullet .050 off the lands. The first group was .126 and the second was .426. Way better than I expected. I used a 1-9 twist Savage. H.H.

I avoided using the Barnes bullets, because of sooo many people saying that they pulled their hair out trying to get them to shoot.
My first time out, using IMR 4831, I shot a .374 5 shot group, with my ever fickle Sako 300WM!!
I am really liking this bullet. I just wanted to know about the bullet seating.
I will use the XLC 180gr. version next, set .050 off the lands....Thanks, guys...sakofan..

[ 06-25-2003, 15:33: Message edited by: sakofan ]

Some rifles like them, some don't. In my 270 Win, I get tiny little clover leafs with the 130 gr X in front of 59 gr of RL22. In some of my other rifles though, I end up with patterns, not groups. My buddie's 30-06 that I load for is another rifle that loves the X bullet, just not at max velocity. As with most bullets, there is a certain amount of luck involved. - Dan

Barnes does recommend that they be seated .050" off the lands, but my Sako 6.5X55 likes them about .005" off the lands. It likes them even better when they're just slightly touching the lands, but I'm not too fond of that for a hunting load. I backed them out a bit and although my accuracy dropped slightly, it's nothing a critter will notice.

Will, good luck with your expansion results - I've yet to recover an XLC from an animal.

My thoughts are, try the X bullets first and if they don't shoot well try something else. If they do well use them for everything. My 30-06 will shoot the 180gr bt no matter what. My .338wm NEEDs to be cleaned first after standard jacketed bullets but when clean does a fine job with the 225gr X.