Gentlemen,

I'm trying to work up a load for the 150grs. TSX in .308.

My magazine limits the COAL to 2.850". For the specific rifle this is .065 off the lands.

Last night I tested a charge of 44.0 grs. Varget and it gave me 2MOA groups. The rifle (and me) usually shoots groups around 0.6 MOA.

Should I seat the bullet even deeper? Or play around with the charge weight?

Maybe one of you has experience with the combination of 150TSX/.308/Varget.

I am loading almost exclusively Barnes now for hunting.

I have adopted the following procedure for ascertaining where to seat the bullets:

First: Try three of them at .010 off the lands.

If they do not group there back off to .050 off.

Second: Since you have not gotten lucky at .010 do the chicken feet and blood thing out in the parking lot (or make offerings to your favorite deity). Then keep baking off in .010 increments.

Some guns require one hell of a lot of jump. I think the most I have seen is like .170. If they need to be way off it gets expensive to find out what they like. That's why you make the offerings before you start. I have seen very narrow windows (.010) where .010 too much or too little can produce groups as large as eight inches, and when you get into the middle of the sweet spot you get dime size groups.

Some guns just do not seem to care much. I have a 760 that shoots them into an inch with a three grain range on the powder charge and it's not picky about the depth. Some guns you swear will never shoot them well, and look like shotgun patterns until it comes together. I had one that was so bad I was going to throw the girl in the volcano, but when I finally got they the gatekeeper said she had to be a virgin, so I sold the gun.

Oh! The other thing is that out of a sample of four .308s I have found that a range of from 44-46 grains of Varget was necessary to check out.

All the .308s eventually came around though.

Thanks, Miles.

One thing I forgot to mention. In total made 15 shots. Five of 'em went into one hole (not consecutively). The others then went up to 2" to the right or low/right.

My first thouhgt was that something was wrong with my scope or mounting. But double checking with a proven load, I could exclude that possibility.

So it looks like there is some sort of pattern. I just need to find out which setting to tweak.

I have a 25-06 that does that. That's the rifle the gatekeeper at the volcano sent me away until I brought a proper girl to throw in.

The gun will shoot one hole groups with 75 grain VMaxs, and it's not all that picky about how much Varget it needs to do that. Put in an 80 grain TTSX or a 100 grain TSX and I get groups that are two tight and one an inch and a half to 2 inches away for typical groups. n For some reason I just have not tried them up close in this gun. I guess it's probably because I want to be shooting the 80 grain TTSXs out of it at 3600 and the gun has a very long throat so I cannot get the 80s close. Not a reason not to try with the 100s up close, but I just never got there with about 75 rounds of each down range so far.

Any more suggestions or concrete recommendations?

McFox,

While I have never experienced the problem, others on this forum have stated that Barnes bullets are very sensitive to barrel fouling.

I suggest de-fouling your barrel and starting over. After you get all the copper/metal fouling out, then fire 3 to 5 barnes rounds to re-foul the barrel. Then start you work to find best seating depth etc etc.

My 7mm rem 700 needs several barnes rounds after a good cleaning to settle down again.

Hope this helps! Good luck.

kreyten,

my barrel was clean down to bare steel (borescope inspected).

Mostly I luck into good loads. With TSX the lucky loads have more to do with being seated to near the cannelure -- lots of jump. 721 in .300 H&H, .270 Wby Mark V, CZ 550 in .416 Rigby all good and none of 'em anywhere near the lands.

I load the TSX in 2-243's, a 270, 30-06, 300Winmag, 300Weatherby and a 300WSM. All shoot outstanding.

You may have to try another powder. In my 270, I wanted to use RL22 under a 130gr TSX, but I got horizontal stringing. Switched to H3831SC, and all is good.

The TSX are not as sensitive to all the variables as the old X was.

there is a work-up method somewhere on here (creighton something-or-other)...

do it with every new load you work up. takes about 20-25 rounds to finalize a load, but you just burned up 15 that didn't work at all.

I did it with a 30-06 with that exact same bullet, and it worked great.