Hornady on Load Development
- Thread starter mrcheesemoose
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Let me guess, you now need to do a 40 shot group to get a statistically significant group size and you need to measure it with a special tool and app Hornady just so happen to be selling?
Why does every company now need its own influencers, a podcast and a YouTube channel?
I would say just make the damn product but they probably earn just as much from the smooth brains on Instagram that follow this shit.
Why does every company now need its own influencers, a podcast and a YouTube channel?
I would say just make the damn product but they probably earn just as much from the smooth brains on Instagram that follow this shit.
Wow. Just as informative as the last. I made it about 2/3 of the way through as I had it on as background noise while I was reloading some 6.5x47.
I will continue to let them do things their way. I have zero interest in picking an arbitrary seating depth for the life of my barrel on day 1, and doing charge weight testing in .7gr increments.
YMMV
I will continue to let them do things their way. I have zero interest in picking an arbitrary seating depth for the life of my barrel on day 1, and doing charge weight testing in .7gr increments.
YMMV
We all will continue with what we find that works for us.. I think they even say that. But I think the info they are sharing with these podcast’s is valuable and at least has data to back it up unlike all the other stuff we see and hear online and elsewhere.
Coming up on 50 years of making my own ammo and I still learn new and interesting things all the time.
Coming up on 50 years of making my own ammo and I still learn new and interesting things all the time.
Shots per group makes sense, you can get that from a high school stats class. But I think what’s more valuable is the testing they’ve done, like brass prep or lot to lot variation, to see how much it affects dispersion. I’ve seen some of what they’re saying already in my own testing, such as bullet weight not mattering until you get to ranges around 1000 yards, or seating depth really not mattering as much either. But I don’t have to waste the time and barrel life to figure some of these things out on my own.
I hope they didn’t use any of their own brass to make those determinations……..
People so badly want reloading to be some type of incredibly hard Vudoo magic to figure out.
My shooting experience got so much better when I stopped caring about all the reloading minutia and started just pumping out ammo with a decent bullet close to book max at a normal overall length.
Sometimes the dichotomy of high end lr shooters/buyers either sorting projectiles by ogive length or shooting box ammo through a TacOps cracks me up
My shooting experience got so much better when I stopped caring about all the reloading minutia and started just pumping out ammo with a decent bullet close to book max at a normal overall length.
Sometimes the dichotomy of high end lr shooters/buyers either sorting projectiles by ogive length or shooting box ammo through a TacOps cracks me up
Agreed. The bro-science is there.
However, not disparaging Hornady, I take Applied Ballistics' research first. They discuss a lot of this stuff and shows the data to back up his findings. Until Hornady is more transparent with their testing, I put them in the bro-science and marketing bucket.
I haven’t seen any data from Litz that is contrary to Hornady information?
There could be and I just missed it.
There could be and I just missed it.
Eh... I enjoyed it. For my hunting/plinking/tacticool guns, it's about where I've ended up at, after going down pretty much all the same rabbit holes. I'm maybe not all the way there as far as being *quite* so minimalistic in the approach, but close. Turn the big knobs, find a 'good enough' load, and go shoot.
Still not going there for my match F-class guns, though.
One thing that stood out to me was they talked about pick a powder, pick a bullet, do the testing, cull the worst, re-test, pick the best of the lot. If nothing stands out, either switch the bullet or switch the powder - or both. If the load is just a bit on the edge, maybe tweak the powder load, again in larger steps than traditionally accepted. Okay, got it... but what about primers? Never mentioned, that I heard. What say ye, @Ledzep - where do they fall on your range of knobs to turn?
Still not going there for my match F-class guns, though.
One thing that stood out to me was they talked about pick a powder, pick a bullet, do the testing, cull the worst, re-test, pick the best of the lot. If nothing stands out, either switch the bullet or switch the powder - or both. If the load is just a bit on the edge, maybe tweak the powder load, again in larger steps than traditionally accepted. Okay, got it... but what about primers? Never mentioned, that I heard. What say ye, @Ledzep - where do they fall on your range of knobs to turn?
The TLDR of primers is most of the time if it ignites the powder column it's doing what it's going to do.
BUT..... you can mismatch the volume and burn rate of powder with too strong or weak of a primer and run into issues. Personally I'd generally stop using a SR primer somewhere around x47 or GT sized cases in 22-6.5mm bores. The opposite can also be true, too, however. If you use especially powerful primers in something like .223/5.56 you can get nasty MV spreads. Then there's extreme temperatures and that's a whole nother ball of wax.
Anything beyond that is going to take more testing than I'm aware we've done collectively. We've definitely seen bad primers before... Or at least bad application of primers (maybe they'd be fine in a different use case) but I don't have really any real concise way to say what makes good good and bad bad and what the end user can do about it. At this point I'd say if you're getting what you think is undue excessive ES, try a different primer if you think it's worth your time.
I've only personally tested it in 6mm ARC and saw shifts in the average MV but no change in SD's or dispersion. I know the lab guys have done more testing and that .223, 7.62x39, and the .30-06 family are common cartridges that can run into issues. We've done the 6.5 creedmoor SR vs LR test probably 6 different times now and never found anything conclusive other than SR sometimes sucks in extreme cold. But sometimes it doesn't suck, also.
I haven't come across a stark difference that I could directly relate to primers, personally. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but it's kind of like brass prep for me. Buy as many of the same lot/type as I can and seat them to the bottom of the pocket.
BUT..... you can mismatch the volume and burn rate of powder with too strong or weak of a primer and run into issues. Personally I'd generally stop using a SR primer somewhere around x47 or GT sized cases in 22-6.5mm bores. The opposite can also be true, too, however. If you use especially powerful primers in something like .223/5.56 you can get nasty MV spreads. Then there's extreme temperatures and that's a whole nother ball of wax.
Anything beyond that is going to take more testing than I'm aware we've done collectively. We've definitely seen bad primers before... Or at least bad application of primers (maybe they'd be fine in a different use case) but I don't have really any real concise way to say what makes good good and bad bad and what the end user can do about it. At this point I'd say if you're getting what you think is undue excessive ES, try a different primer if you think it's worth your time.
I've only personally tested it in 6mm ARC and saw shifts in the average MV but no change in SD's or dispersion. I know the lab guys have done more testing and that .223, 7.62x39, and the .30-06 family are common cartridges that can run into issues. We've done the 6.5 creedmoor SR vs LR test probably 6 different times now and never found anything conclusive other than SR sometimes sucks in extreme cold. But sometimes it doesn't suck, also.
I haven't come across a stark difference that I could directly relate to primers, personally. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but it's kind of like brass prep for me. Buy as many of the same lot/type as I can and seat them to the bottom of the pocket.
ehehehehhehehe, ledzep stir the pot again !!
he just cant help himselfDDDD
did you get AMP press jet?
he just cant help himself
DDDDdid you get AMP press jet?
ledzep; why do you allways stick to your inferior cartridges designs like 6 ARC and 6.5 CreedMoor for the most precise testings?
there are better cartridges and better bullets to get better velocity spread and better precision on target... ;(
there are better cartridges and better bullets to get better velocity spread and better precision on target... ;(
Have you shot the "good" cartridges against the "bad" cartridges with a statistically valid sample size?
An old colleague of mine used to say ... "Remember, it's not about truth, justice, and the American way. It's about MARKETING."
Following the conventional wisdom I learned over 30 years ago, and trying to load close to the lands has caused me more wasted time, money, ammo, and effort than perhaps any other "rule" in reloading.
Sometimes I think I just persisted long enough (like 300 rounds) that I eroded my throat and got the jump that the bullet wanted.
Even this past week, I was loading 10 thou off for 2 new barrels and wondering why accuracy and SD sucked. Old habits die hard. Gee, maybe I should push them in there 25 thou more?
My 375 CT (3 different barrels) likes .100" jump. My 50BMG with a 750 AMAX likes a 1/4" jump - that's right, 0.250". Here are the results
Sometimes I think I just persisted long enough (like 300 rounds) that I eroded my throat and got the jump that the bullet wanted.
Even this past week, I was loading 10 thou off for 2 new barrels and wondering why accuracy and SD sucked. Old habits die hard. Gee, maybe I should push them in there 25 thou more?
My 375 CT (3 different barrels) likes .100" jump. My 50BMG with a 750 AMAX likes a 1/4" jump - that's right, 0.250". Here are the results
50-BMG .... eh? Of course you need to give that big-boy room to breath in the chamber. It's why real men don't wear tightie-whities.
you have inferior cartridge designs and excelent ones.
those who are excelent are the most popular in precision disciplines and are ''inherently'' better, and others are good only for PRS and hunting...
there is THE REASON why some cartridges dominate in BR, long range etc...
“The Reason” could be marketing, especially since very few people actually test with statistically valid sample size, how can you trust that those cartridges are in fact better? If the majority of competitive shooters just listened to the marketing and got the “good” cartridges, then that could skew everyone into thinking their actually better, when they *may* not be or may be just as good as the so called bad ones. Ultimately we don’t know until someone actually goes out and does testing with valid sample sizes and publishes their results.
I don't want to start a war here but I think it's improper to use the term "inferior design" when referring to different cartridges but it is important to understand that different cartridges were designed to have certain requirements, accuracy being among them but certainly not the primary concern in every case. For a military cartridge like the 30-06 (designed over 110 years ago) pinpoint accuracy was not a requirement, but barrel life, reliability, and ease and cost of manufacturing were probably higher on the list. The 308 Winchester/7.62x51 NATO was a compromise of the 30-06 designed to be just as good as the 30-06 out to around 600yds and weigh less.
Many cartridges had to deal with the limitations of metallurgy and manufacturing capabilities when they were designed around the bullet that the state of aerodynamics thought optimum and was capable of being mass manufacturing.
Today we have many cartridges that have been developed with accuracy as the primary goal. They benefit from state of the art aerodynamically designed bullets, improved powders, and advances in metallurgy and manufacturing techniques.
guys, with snarkysnark everything is a pissing match
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We've done small tests with tens of different combinations but the one with the most data points was a 140gr ELD-M in 6.5 Creedmoor that I took from .015 jammed out to .050-.060ish jump every .015". The best groups were in the .020-.035" jump range but the worst and best groups were still pretty close to each other. Close enough that I'd like to see the test repeated to see if it's an actual trend or just noise, and also close enough that I don't ever adjust seating depth looking for more precision
I think there are bullets out there that are jump sensitive, and there are throat/freebore designs that might benefit from some testing, but as we said in the podcast, it's typically a "fine tune" knob that isn't likely to make huge swings in performance.
I think there are bullets out there that are jump sensitive, and there are throat/freebore designs that might benefit from some testing, but as we said in the podcast, it's typically a "fine tune" knob that isn't likely to make huge swings in performance.
@Ledzep, I'll tell you how to make the Hornydaddy reloading manual the most popular one in the world - do like Nosler, and publish "most accurate powder tested" but publish average group size and velocity SD for each powder/charge. I mean, you have the data, right? Those data collated in one source would make it a go-to
They’ve said in their podcast that barrels are finicky, and that an accurate load for one barrel might not be an accurate load in another barrel. I’ve also seen this in my own testing. So really the books that say “most accurate load” are kinda misleading, since you probably don’t have the same barrel they tested with.
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