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Which caliber is better
- Thread starter Aidenhicks
- Start date
CE laser gen 2 have the most consistent performance currently. Doppler is pretty clear on that (first time AB ran the gen 2s they were stunned) and the downrange performance backs it up. The bullets with higher BCs are the best choice if you want to miss your target with the highest retained energy. Trading stability for lower drag is a loosing game.
Randy O is a great shot and there are two possibilities with his performance using badlands. Either they are great bullets and they help him shoot well or they are the weakest link in his shooting and he would do better with a different bullet. A sample size of 1 means exactly fuck all.
Everyone that has won Ko2M since I started tracking equipment used CE. Does that mean that others are likely to just go to them? Sure. Most shooters play around with different bullets though. The guys at the top certainly do. The fact that they choose CE in matches is not because it is the only thing they have tried.
Somebody will eventually make a better bullet. Maybe someone already has. I don't see any data to support that conclusion currently.
-Alex
Randy O is a great shot and there are two possibilities with his performance using badlands. Either they are great bullets and they help him shoot well or they are the weakest link in his shooting and he would do better with a different bullet. A sample size of 1 means exactly fuck all.
Everyone that has won Ko2M since I started tracking equipment used CE. Does that mean that others are likely to just go to them? Sure. Most shooters play around with different bullets though. The guys at the top certainly do. The fact that they choose CE in matches is not because it is the only thing they have tried.
Somebody will eventually make a better bullet. Maybe someone already has. I don't see any data to support that conclusion currently.
-Alex
My first post, usually just listen and learn, but you guys didn't rip him!!!??? Proud of y'all for supporting a fellow shooter. Just my 2 cents.
Question, I'm not playing with anything in the horsepower range being discussed here but when I do my load development I usually start at .010" under mag length and shoot for sd then I start playing with seating depth to fine tune as most do.
When I start pushing the bullet deeper it affects sd. Sometimes worse than others. Do you drop the powder charge to chase the sd or worry more about seating depth then fine tune the charge later ?
In my experience one directly effects the other. May not be as much of an issue in bigger cases. I'm only jacking with 300winmag and 308 mostly.
I drive myself nuts going after single digit sd. Sometimes I just have to say it's good enough for my use and go with it. If not I end up burning up all my components in development
It's not uncommon for my winmag to have an SD of 2-4. One time I touched off three in a row at 2929fps according to my magnetospeed with a 208amax, 71.0gr of imr4831 and fed.215m's.
Barrel is a 9 twist lilja finished at 26"
In my 308 I'm usually just happy as long as it's single digit sd's.
For the guys that recommended 20mm necked down, does that still qualify as a destructive device and come with all the associated headaches?
Buy a 300wm or 338 lm/edge/rum and learn to reload and start shooting long range to hone skills/get experience.
Not much has been said about optics.
Buy a 300wm or 338 lm/edge/rum and learn to reload and start shooting long range to hone skills/get experience.
Not much has been said about optics.
Almost nothing i own is box feed with the few excepitions of 6.5 wsm imp and 300 wsm hunting rifles in long actions for hunting i dont need to worry about box leingth ever .i seat bullets to to apex or foward at .010 off do ladder then adjust tuner for accuracyQuestion, I'm not playing with anything in the horsepower range being discussed here but when I do my load development I usually start at .010" under mag length and shoot for sd then I start playing with seating depth to fine tune as most do.
When I start pushing the bullet deeper it affects sd. Sometimes worse than others. Do you drop the powder charge to chase the sd or worry more about seating depth then fine tune the charge later ?
In my experience one directly effects the other. May not be as much of an issue in bigger cases. I'm only jacking with 300winmag and 308 mostly.
I drive myself nuts going after single digit sd. Sometimes I just have to say it's good enough for my use and go with it. If not I end up burning up all my components in development
It's not uncommon for my winmag to have an SD of 2-4. One time I touched off three in a row at 2929fps according to my magnetospeed with a 208amax, 71.0gr of imr4831 and fed.215m's.
Barrel is a 9 twist lilja finished at 26"
In my 308 I'm usually just happy as long as it's single digit sd's.
Yes and no, and this is going to be largely up to the manufacturer trying to get a sporting use clause. Hence why the 950 JDJ as example isn't a DD, yet a 20mm Anzio is. If I recall correctly the 20/50 from Anzio was still a DD. Given the current climate, I would just expect it to be a DD. I still don't quite understand how some can get certain things approved under sporting use like the 950 jdj, 700 WTF, etc, and others are still a DD.
Let my pull out a Reagan quote and a Despair.com quote to help explain this for you...
"The scariest thing I ever heard was, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help""
"If you think our problems are bad, wait and see our solutions"
I hope that clarifies things for you
-Alex
Honestly, I don't get your point of view.
Sounds like you have something against high BC bullets.
Bullets that strive uncompromisingly for the highest BC possible do so at the expense of low dynamic stability. It isn't a zero sum game so there are definitely better and worse ways to make compromises but they do need to be made. Simply spinning a bullet faster doesn't get you past an intrinsically bad design and bullets that experience moments of instability are inaccurate. Moments of instability will cause deviations in direction and you will get bullets that shoot great up to a point and then open up. Often the transition to subsonic is where this is most obvious but as the CP moves up and down the bullet this can happen at other velocities too. I'm not talking about instability that causes tumbling, just a bit of wobble that damps out with semi random vector afterwards.
Don't get me wrong, a low BC doesn't mean a more stable bullet necessarily as you can easily have drag in a place that makes a bullet less stable. It is also still important to have as low of drag as you can but if you look at BC as a marketing tool rather than some mark of a bullets quality, you will be a lot better off. In any particular bullet diameter and weight, the bullet with the highest BC on the market is probably going to be a bullet you want to avoid. Step back just a bit from BC at all costs and you find the sweet spot of lowest drag in a stable bullet.
-Alex
some of what you are stating may be somewhat true for some ultra-high BC designs. However we are not experiencing any of those issues with the Badlands ICBM projectiles. In fact even Applied Ballistics themselves stated they are not seeing those issues with Badlands bullets.
It will be interesting to see what they shoot at CtC next month then. All of them but Chase shot Berger at King last year and he shot CE. Didn't think they were still obligated to use them so it was a bit surprising. Not sure if they had a hand in developing it or not. CE laser for comparison has about a 15% lower BC than the badlands or Berger which are pretty close to each other. Funny to see a primitive nose cone design like the Berger perform as well as it does. Would have thought ogive nose cones would have died the second people started turning bullets...
-Alex
The current trend is that shooters are moving from 375s to 416s or 460s. The trend towards bigger has been happening for years. The exception is the guys who were using 50 BMGs to start with who have mostly moved down to 416 or 460. That would seem to be the best choice given the available powders. Better performance than 375s and a bigger splash when you miss, better velocities than a 50.
-Alex
The trend is going to the 308/30-06 of elr calibers; 416 bullet in a Cheytac type case. Lots of fat, sorta slow, and consistent. Longer barrel life and more forgiving loads. I think for our current elr match distances, it’s looking to be a good combination.
Seem that where is going. I personally want it all performance , splash, velocity. Consistant, transitions , and accurate.
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uh... no. That is not the overall trend in competition. Adoption of the slower 416s has been, well, slow in most of the country. Far more are going from 375 to a high velocity 416s. Particularly in the winners circle. Yup barrel life is crap on many of those but it is still what people are going to.
-Alex
A lot of your information cones from your circle of information but out side of the k02m we are seeing 416 stroker based on cheytac case and the 416 hellfire based on cheytac cylinder growing in the ranks . And there both slower then the barret and varients. So your ideas and facts are limited to your scope .
My scope is every match in the world since they all submit result to me...
-Alex
So you’re not seeing all the guys around the top, and a lot of winners, shooting the 416 stroker or Snipetac or whatever anyone wants to call them? Curtis Roman, Joe, David, Jesse, Ream, now some of the white shirt cutting edge guys…?
Your view is the slice of shooters in Kansas which is significant and talented for sure, but is also a fairly insular group. The slower wildcats have caught on there but not so much elsewhere. We will see what happens time goes, it is an attractive solution to rebarrel a 375 when the barrel is trashed. It is slightly amusing to me that this is in some ways reinventing the 408 CT with a more available bullet. On a wider view of trends, even for a complete custom gun there is a psychological threshold that needs to be crossed going to a wildcat. That and people that want every FPS they can get will continue with barrel burning speeds regardless of the costs.
-Alex
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1 at UA according to my records. Zero at MVP. 375 CT is the most common choice there still.
-Alex
-Alex
Perhaps a few for sure due to robert vestal pushing the cheytac cylinder builds. What alex fails to understand is the limits with available cases to wildcat on and the issues with the barrett case it only makes sence to use existing
proven cases to improve end results. The only other option is to do what i have done but poses a problem with obtaining brass and if its made to order properly. The stroker and hellfire is only slower due to capacity and pressure limits it just happend to work out that way if they could reliability run higher velocity consistant they would. Its just limits of the case size and design. Slower being better is just a convenient excuse cause it cant reliability be done.
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I wouldn't spend the cake on WTC matching dies till I was durn sure what cartridge I was going to use and stick with. Too much money to tie up, if you don't even know what caliber you're going to be shooting yet.
For what Chris Kyle Jr wants to do, I'd use 416B; RWS brass (barrett head stamp) is available, and plenty of projectiles. He wants to focus on shooting, not hunting down wildcat components and fireforming and trying to find load data and all that. Of course, gonna have to call Dale Arenson at Ten-X and get a couple thousand RWS 50 BMG primers, cuz CCI #35 aint gonna slice it wrt vertical dispersion.
I'd also consider building it on a switch barrel rig like DT or AI, so that if I changed my mind I could just have a new barrel spun up and not have to sell off the entire rig. Because of this modularity, I'm guessing resale will be better too, if college or other things displace this project.
You seem to think I'm making an overall judgement about the right choice. I'm simply stating the trends according to the data.
Personally I look at the 460 steyr as the best current choice for a heavy gun but I'm coming from the 50 side of things where that is an attractive rebarreling choice for one of my 50s.
-Alex
What do you like about the 460 steyr Alex? I've got a 2" action waiting to be built and trying to decide caliber as well. Was set on 375 cheytac, talked to Robert Vestal and he likes 416 hellfire, been interested in the steyr but don't know a lot about it.
I would consider doing the 50 with the bad ass 510 bullets from badlands walks all over the steyr really makes the 50 cal come alive.
Its a few things. Bigger heavier bullets give you a nice big splash when you miss. Feed a 375 all the dick enlarging pills you want and they still aren't going to make a big splash. If you don't know where you have missed then your next shot is just a prayer that you miss in a place you can see.
460 is the biggest thing that has well optimized powders. The reality of 50 bmg wildcats is that the brass is an ancient design so you are bit gimped. Far more crippling is that your powder choices are terrible and none of them are well optimized for driving an 800 grain bullet fast. FCSA comp velocities are rarely over 2850 fps. I was considered to be running hot with a 742 grain at 2950. The (fucking endless) number of 50 BMG wildcats have very little actual improvement in performance. Ken Johnson, Skip Talbot, Lynn McMurdo and Randy Dericks made more than you can believe and regarded them as failures for the most part. The biggest I can think of was the 50 FCSA which topped something like a 300 grain 2N29 charge with an 800 grain bullet and yielded a gun that by all accounts made a bit over 3000 fps and great big bruises.
460 seems to be near the end of where you can take existing powders. Respectable velocities and a nice big bullet. I asked for years at SHOT to get samples of slower powders to play with. The usual answer from VV was mostly to the effect of "we have all these powders that might be good, how many people are going to want it cause it will cost us quite a lot to release it and we already can't make most powders fast enough." The answer from others was a lot closer to "fuck off".
Accepting that no new powders will come to market means optimizing a cartridge around the powder. 460 could possibly be optimized a bit more. A web redesign couldn't hurt since it is just a formed 50BMG case, and a straight body would probably be better performing. Extraction might be an issue though so overall it is probably pretty close to as good as it gets for now.
Lastly, 50 brass is cheap and reforming it isn't that big of a deal. Since going to 460 for me is just a new barreled and dies, it isn't a huge investment which makes it more attractive.
If you are building a new gun from scratch, I doubt a 460 will be a significantly different price tag than a 375 CT. Cost per shot will probably be higher because of the primers but pretty close otherwise.
-Alex
Looks like it. I'd be curious as to why cause he finished 3rd in the SPR finals last year and has been in the bottom 25% with the 50 so far this year. Might be saving the barrel life or rebarreling the 460. I wouldn't take his switch as a judgement of any kind at face value. I think he'll be at castle, I'll ask.
-Alex
As to why he dropped from the top of the results to the bottom?
Again, I wouldn't read into it at all. There are plenty of explanations that are possible. Send him an email and ask if you care so much.
-Alex
Could care less as I have no intentions I'm not shooting either one of them. but I do know that he does shoot Badlands bullets
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Nothing wrong with being motivated and goal oriented. It's going to take a lot of time and a hell of a lot of money for anyone to spend, even more so at 15 year old. Must be a good paying summer job. Hats off to you though. I would love to see achieve your goal. If it were me at 15 years old I would discipline myself, learn to be extremely patient, soak up as much knowledge from reading and others long range shooting experiences/career in the meantime. I would even consider meditation and breathing exercises too. Best of luck to you and stay safe above all.
Currently, there is NO cartridge/bullet combination that is shoulder fired that will shoot over 3.5 miles accurately with any sense of repeatability! I do not get why people want to shoot 2+ miles when they cannot hit a 3'x3' plate at 2000 yards on demand. Shooting at these extended distances is nothing more than rolling the dice and hoping you come up lucky. Low single digit hit ratios are an absolute joke.
EJ
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The 416 bird is the way to go. The problem you’re going to have at the moment is getting the materials. You can buy a barrel or you can buy an action and you can buy a stock and trigger. That’ll take you about nine months to a year to build the rifle. Brass for the 416 Barrett is nonexistent. So you’re going to make it out of 50 Cal brass. Good luck getting consistent 50 Cal brass. I am speaking to you from personal experience on this project.
@Aidenhicks If you are still watching, I am assuming at this point you have realized there is a lot more to this than picking a cartridge and squeezing the trigger. This is going to cost you a ton of cash. You need to learn a bunch about reloading and wind calling. That 300 WM will suite you just fine out to a mile, go shoot that for a while, learn a bunch and save some money, come back and read these forums until you are blue in the face and choose your own cartridge (It won't be an off the shelf cartridge)
How was the winners circle at KO2M this weekend?
