I'm experiencing SD's of up to 56 fps. I'm thinking it's because I haven't annealed these cases for a while. Is there something else I should be looking at? My powder has proven to be very stable and there are no other variables to this hand load. It just seems like a big SD
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Anealing vs. neck tension vs. SD
- Thread starter jambau
- Start date
my es and sd was getting like that, i had 3 to 4 firings on the lapua brass. a buddy told me i need to anneal so i bought an amp. i went and shot 2- 5 rd groups the es on my last one was 14. shooting a 260
Definitely other issues here. My 18 times fired, never annealed 6.5x47 brass just gave a 10 shot sd of 4. Same type of story with my Lapua .308, 6br, and 6.5 Swede brass.
My my guess is your charge weight isn't optimal. I'd go up and down a grain (assuming it's safe) in probably 1/2 grain increments, depending on your caliber, and see if your numbers improve. Or, you could always redo your load development using OCW or Ladder methods.
My my guess is your charge weight isn't optimal. I'd go up and down a grain (assuming it's safe) in probably 1/2 grain increments, depending on your caliber, and see if your numbers improve. Or, you could always redo your load development using OCW or Ladder methods.
Update: Annealed and went to range yesterday. Ran a spread of 40 fps and an SD of 15.67 fps.for 25 rounds. If I take out the first round, which I think was one of my left overs from the last batch and was 26 fps above the average, it looks like I may be back in business. I just never imagined annealing was going to make that much difference.
That's still a very high SD, I expect 20 shot strings to be in the 6-8 range, without annealing, counting every shot, and starting from a cold bore.
How long were the old rounds loaded? Was there a pop when you pulled the bullets? If the bullets cold welded to the inside of the neck it would cause erratic numbers
While annealing and ultrasonic case cleaning improved my ES and SD values, I don't see annealing by itself solving all of your high ES and SD values. Improvement yes - but not getting you to single digit SDs considering where you are starting from.
That's an awful high variance in SD. how many rounds do you have on your barrel. has your barrel sped up at all?
There are 827 rds. through the barrel. I can't speak to the variation in barrel speed as I was without a chronograph till about the 700 rd. mark. A friend of mine was nice enough to shoot my old one. There are two other factors I'm considering: A possible bad lot of primers which I think was purchased about the time things went hay wire. And second, and this is a stretch, after finding my pet load, which uses copper erasing technology, my barrel got defouled enough to play with internal pressure. I'm going to buy some new primers and run a string of 20 and see what happens. If that doesn't work I'll try loading up and down by 2 tenths and see if I can find the sweet spot again. If that doesn't work I'm going to blow it up and start from scratch.
Good idea on the tweak, I do a lot of load dev for people and can tell you, unless your load is in a zone your platform like, es & sd numbers will never come together, not even charging cases to .00001gr, or uniform seat depth, or neck tension, etc...
Proper load development seems to be in order here. Do a from scratch OCW test in .3g increments forgetting your current load and use a chrono if you can. Those SD's are screaming not being in the center of a node and no way in hell does annealing cause those numbers in all my experience.
Are you aren't familiar with Dan Newberry's OCW method check out his site. Find those charges with similar POI and then tweak seating depth. Remember, you arent looking for the smallest groups.
Are you aren't familiar with Dan Newberry's OCW method check out his site. Find those charges with similar POI and then tweak seating depth. Remember, you arent looking for the smallest groups.
Agree 100% with Milo & Padom. Its a load problem.
With that being said, I used to use the Anneal-rite system to anneal every 2-3 firings. My ES would typically range between 10-15 fps, and single digit SDs. Was very happy with that.
I then picked up an AMP and annealed every firing. I definitely saw an overall improvement with the average. Some pretty phenomenal results at times.
Below is a string with 180 flatlines after exhaustive load development. Yes its only a 4 shot string (those damn bullets are expensive!) and possibly a fluke that I would be hard pressed to repeat, BUT I never got similar results using my old method.
With that being said, I used to use the Anneal-rite system to anneal every 2-3 firings. My ES would typically range between 10-15 fps, and single digit SDs. Was very happy with that.
I then picked up an AMP and annealed every firing. I definitely saw an overall improvement with the average. Some pretty phenomenal results at times.
Below is a string with 180 flatlines after exhaustive load development. Yes its only a 4 shot string (those damn bullets are expensive!) and possibly a fluke that I would be hard pressed to repeat, BUT I never got similar results using my old method.
Here's what I do:
Dan Newberry's OCW. I usually start .015 off the lands. I also use Quickload as well, so I don't have to run the entire gamut of charges, I pretty much know where I want to be, so its either 5 or 6 charge weights, 3 shots each, in .3 increments. I find the middle node of consistent poi.
Seating depth test @ 300-500 yards - test between .005 off lands to .025. I don't like jamming. 95% of the time seems to be between .015 to .020 off lands where I end up.
Go back and go down .1 grains, same charge from step 1, and up .1 grains. (so if your OCW is 42.5, test 42.4, 42.5, & 42.6) Run at least 6-7 shots per charge over chronograph and choose smallest ES/SD. You would think these small differences wouldn't make a difference, but in some cases, I've seen quite a variation.
Gets me a solid load in roughly 50 shots. You can even take it further and run seating depth tests in smaller increments.
Dan Newberry's OCW. I usually start .015 off the lands. I also use Quickload as well, so I don't have to run the entire gamut of charges, I pretty much know where I want to be, so its either 5 or 6 charge weights, 3 shots each, in .3 increments. I find the middle node of consistent poi.
Seating depth test @ 300-500 yards - test between .005 off lands to .025. I don't like jamming. 95% of the time seems to be between .015 to .020 off lands where I end up.
Go back and go down .1 grains, same charge from step 1, and up .1 grains. (so if your OCW is 42.5, test 42.4, 42.5, & 42.6) Run at least 6-7 shots per charge over chronograph and choose smallest ES/SD. You would think these small differences wouldn't make a difference, but in some cases, I've seen quite a variation.
Gets me a solid load in roughly 50 shots. You can even take it further and run seating depth tests in smaller increments.
I'm not a fan of single feeding and mag length doesn't get me anywhere near the lands. Everything loaded for this gun is mag length. I understand it may limit me somewhat but it's also a variable I don't have to experiment with. I guess we'll see what surfaces.
