Hey All-
I took my Savage 10FP out yesterday to try out some loads, but I wanted to do it differently. I wanted to do it kind of fast - what I might see in a tactical/steel style match scenario where you would fire multiple shots fairly quickly. Basically, I fired 4 fouling/sighting rounds and then got into the loads. I used 175SMKs, WIN 07 Brass, CCI BR-2 Primers and Varget charges of 44, 44.3, 44.5, & 44.8. Each charge had 10 rounds. The sets were fired every 10 minutes and all shots in each charge were fired within 4 minutes, letting the barrel cool for the other 6 minutes. The barrel got good and warm through it all. Here are the results:
Each square is 1/2" done in AutoCAD.
78 F, 30.02 inHg, and negligible wind. Each group is 10 rounds at 100 yards. POA is center of the darker squares.
Is there any useful info to this test, or did I just waste 40 SMKs? To me, it looks like 44.3 is a good charge, but the heat of the barrel may have messed up 44.5 and maybe 44.8 to skew the results. Let me know if you need more info from the day to give advice. I am wondering if I shouldn't dial it down to 5 shots for each charge and try it again to make sure I have the best charge weight.
Thank you
I took my Savage 10FP out yesterday to try out some loads, but I wanted to do it differently. I wanted to do it kind of fast - what I might see in a tactical/steel style match scenario where you would fire multiple shots fairly quickly. Basically, I fired 4 fouling/sighting rounds and then got into the loads. I used 175SMKs, WIN 07 Brass, CCI BR-2 Primers and Varget charges of 44, 44.3, 44.5, & 44.8. Each charge had 10 rounds. The sets were fired every 10 minutes and all shots in each charge were fired within 4 minutes, letting the barrel cool for the other 6 minutes. The barrel got good and warm through it all. Here are the results:
Each square is 1/2" done in AutoCAD.
78 F, 30.02 inHg, and negligible wind. Each group is 10 rounds at 100 yards. POA is center of the darker squares.
Is there any useful info to this test, or did I just waste 40 SMKs? To me, it looks like 44.3 is a good charge, but the heat of the barrel may have messed up 44.5 and maybe 44.8 to skew the results. Let me know if you need more info from the day to give advice. I am wondering if I shouldn't dial it down to 5 shots for each charge and try it again to make sure I have the best charge weight.
Thank you
