F T/R Competition F/TR load development advise needed

[diego-ted]

I am picking up a Savage FTR to shoot in F/TR. I am not a novice reloader but far from being an expert. I have in the past developed loads for a couple of rifles based on common agreed upon components. However, developing a load specifically for this discipline has me a little concerned. First off should I just develop one load for the rifle and shoot it both at 1K and mid-range or do I need a specific load for each distance?

Secondly, for this rifle when it first came out everyone was shooting some type of 155gr projectile and saying this was the best. Lately others have been gravitating towards heaver choices. Which is better, a heaver bullet that will buck the wind or a lighter bullet with a better BC and MV?

Lastly, I have always worked up a load by developing one that shoots the best at 100 yards, first by amount of powder then seating depth. Once I came across a load that would shoot less than .5 MOA I was good, is there a better way to do this?
Thanks for all the help

Diego

 

[Jedi]

Load work @ 100yds is all but pointless

http://www.6mmbr.com/laddertest.html
pert much how i do it

Use whatever bullet performs best in your rig, that means you have some work to do testing various combos of bullet and powder
My preference is 155 vs heavier bullets in 308, thou i no longer shoot 308 period.

 

[J-ROD]

I'm still a sudo-newb but have a few matches under my belt and 1,000yd range trips thanks to Jeff Rorer.
I also have the same gun, although am using a 1:10 barrel versus the 1:12 you have (assuming it's factory).

I've had A LOT of help from so many people on here and I ended up figuring out what they were saying is true.

155's are easier to get good vertical (biggie at 1K) and less recoil so if your form needs work, it won't beat you out of position as much.
Berger 168 Hybrids shot great in my factory barrel and are a good compromise however the 185BTLR is still my preferred bullet (as for many others here) with a 1:12.
I tried a bunch of powders looking for speed but end up coming crawling back to Varget for temperature stability.
I did, and still do all of my load testing at 250yds (all I have access to) and look for 3/4" to 1"max vertical groups and watch my ES & SD's. Agreed about 100yds, even when I started out my groups with FGMM 168's were miniature cloverleafs -> one-ish holers for 5 rounds. Once I stretched them out to even 600yds, the vertical dispersion was unusable. Last time at 1K, my loads did great, much better than I did at reading the wind.

I bought the 1:10 so I could shoot the 200's from Berger. I found a really accurate loads for them at 2650 and 2750 depending on powder/primer. Problem was/is, after 10-15 rounds, me and my rear bag are so out of wack that my accuracy starts to suffer. When I get my form figured out, I will revisit. Until then, the Berger 185 Hybrids (need 1:11 min) are the cat's roar in my gun, going 2810fps with Varget. Now if I could just read the wind, even a little bit lol.

FYI, make sure you THOROUGHLY clean the barrel/action if buying new. Mine was a hammer out of the box but had shavings in the chamber/barrel...no biggie, just don't unwrap and shoot.

 

[gstaylorg]

Ted,
You know what the wind is like out here. If (and of course that is the real question, "If") you can get decent velocity and the chamber on your rifle can accommodate the longer projectiles like 175s or 185s, you will be better off going that route over the 155s. People mentioned the 155s in the other thread primarily because of what the likely chamber specs and twist rate of your rifle are. Until you know those specs on your rifle, all the discussion of what projectile is best is pretty much hand-waving. If you can't accurately determine your chamber specs, ultimately, you may have to do some test loads with several different projectiles to see what kind of velocity and dispersion they give you. Twist rate should be pretty simple, you either have a 1:12 or 1:10 if I understand correctly. As I mentioned before, I'll talk to you more about it next Saturday, but I think you need to find out the specs on your rifle as best you can first. That will give you a much better idea where to focus your reloading efforts.

Along the same lines, if you want a rough idea of how different projectiles might perform at 1000 yd, you can plug in different ones using a ballistic calculator such as JBM along with your best estimate of the MV you think you could get with each one. That ought to give you some idea of how each might behave in terms of windage. You can also use this approach to get a rough estimate of how fast you would need to push a given projectile to outperform another. As they're only "paper" exercises, you have to take these kind of results with a grain of salt. However, they can be informative in some cases, for example, if the calculator tells you you need to push 155s at 1000 fps faster to match the performance of a heavier projectile, it probably isn't going to happen. Of course, none of that matters if if your rifle simply won't work with longer (heavier) projectiles, but I think you get the idea. BTW: although you can push it faster, the lighter projectile will almost never have a higher BC than the heavier one. In the case of 185s vs 155s, it's not even close. But you can get an idea of how their wind resistances compare by doing the exercise I mentioned above. What you're going to find is that on paper, the heavier projectile with the higher BC will usually equal or outperform the lighter in terms of windage, unless the heavy one is really, really slow. Again, that doesn't matter much if your rifle won't shoot them well due to a short throat, or you can't push them very fast, etc. Anyhow, I'll talk with you about it more detail next weekend.

See you next Saturday.

 

[40xs]

I've noticed that by and large there is a geographical difference of opinions over light vs. heavy projectiles. It seems that a lot of shooters west of the mississippi and especially in western higher elevations prefer the 155 variant bullets. Here in the east, in lower to sea level regions most of the match winners are opting for the 185 group, even after trying the lighter bullets, they go back to the heavier ones because their scores went up. I can't speak for winds west of here, but the fickle winds here in the east will blow your mind( no pun intended). Especially head on or tail wind, as it never blows directly straight. the heavier bullets allow a slight forgiving in that regard, not much, but a lttle. So the mindset is if I can get a 9 or a 10 with a heavier bullet where a 155 would get me a 8 or a 9 then I'm going with the heavy. In a 20 round string that could be the difference between 3 to 4 places in the lineup. A lot of times the x count determins the winner. that could be a one shot difference.

 

[XTR]

I won or lost 3 matches last yr on X count. The last match I shot one point and X count was the difference in 1st and 3rd. I'll take 'em any way I can get them.

 

[40xs]

Amen to that, XTR.

 

[lawrence97]

My f-class matches are 800-1000 and I go straight to 800 to develop a load. I usually shoot several ladders, study them, make changes, and settle for the load with least amount of vertical. I try to be meticulous in brass prep and make sure everything is as concentric as I can make it. Eliminate as many variables as possible, trust your equipment and learn to read wind flags.
I think that to develop a long range load you need to shoot from at least 400 yds on back.

Heavy or light? I always go as heavy as I can. The wind is always present so I cannot risk it with lighter bullets.

For my loads I test different powder charges and back off when I see pressure signs, pick the best charge, fine tune my seating depths and sometimes I will switch up primers for further testing. I usually like to run a tad slower since I do not want to tear up my brass and would rather have more accuracy to get them x's than to have very high velocities and not so great accuracy.