Spent the day at the (crowded) range and was hoping to work up a load for my .223AI using Lapua brass. I've been playing with loads in LC brass and haven't gotten great numbers so far. Unfortunately there wasn't enough room to set up my equipment so I ended up going with the best LC brass load I had tried in the past which is a 205M, 26.3gr RE15 & Hornady 75gr BTHP. I shot it out to 1K and was pleased with the results considering the pretty inconsistent numbers I've had with it through the Oehler.
I needed to fireform the Lapua brass that I had so I had loaded up 24gr RE15 with a 205M and 75gr AMAX, 75gr BTHP & 77gr SMK bullets. Since I had a mix of bullets and no velocity info for them I stuck with 100-500 yards with them and pretty much plinked. I did shoot a couple of groups on paper at 100 yards and was very pleased with them:
The top group is 10 rounds of 75gr AMAX, the bottom is 10 rounds of 77gr SMK. I was shooting from an elevated deck which was not the steadiest base to shoot from and I adjusted the trigger on the rifle yesterday so I'm not quite used to it yet but I sure can't complain about how the rifle was shooting. .472" & .479" 10 round groups are definitely what I'd consider sufficient to get the job done.
The bad news is that this rifle does not like having a suppressor hanging on the end of the barrel, at all. POI shift wasn't too bad but the groups open up significantly with the can on there. Not sure what to make of that but it's not a big issue I guess. My 5.56 can has quite a few rounds through it from a 10" SBR, maybe the blast baffle is chewed up enough to be impacting the accuracy? I dunno...
Hoping to get back out this week with the Lapua brass now that it's blown out and see if the rifle likes it any better. I'll probably start playing with seating depths a bit and fine tune the LC brass load also. All in all I think it's looking pretty promising. AJ Brown did a bang up job building this one for me.
I needed to fireform the Lapua brass that I had so I had loaded up 24gr RE15 with a 205M and 75gr AMAX, 75gr BTHP & 77gr SMK bullets. Since I had a mix of bullets and no velocity info for them I stuck with 100-500 yards with them and pretty much plinked. I did shoot a couple of groups on paper at 100 yards and was very pleased with them:
The top group is 10 rounds of 75gr AMAX, the bottom is 10 rounds of 77gr SMK. I was shooting from an elevated deck which was not the steadiest base to shoot from and I adjusted the trigger on the rifle yesterday so I'm not quite used to it yet but I sure can't complain about how the rifle was shooting. .472" & .479" 10 round groups are definitely what I'd consider sufficient to get the job done.
The bad news is that this rifle does not like having a suppressor hanging on the end of the barrel, at all. POI shift wasn't too bad but the groups open up significantly with the can on there. Not sure what to make of that but it's not a big issue I guess. My 5.56 can has quite a few rounds through it from a 10" SBR, maybe the blast baffle is chewed up enough to be impacting the accuracy? I dunno...
Hoping to get back out this week with the Lapua brass now that it's blown out and see if the rifle likes it any better. I'll probably start playing with seating depths a bit and fine tune the LC brass load also. All in all I think it's looking pretty promising. AJ Brown did a bang up job building this one for me.
