2 years in...what I've learned.

I very much appreciate you taking the time to write….ive reloaded for a long time but it's more for enjoyment n my own use when I have time n I haven't learned as much as you did in 2 years
Good job

I've reloaded for approximately 60 years. Didn't realize how little I knew until I joined this forum about 10 years ago. I was a lurker, read a lot and it seemed every time I'd Google something I'd end up here. I believe I'm a better reloader now, I didn't say I was great. It's cost a fair amount and I've accumulated quite a few cool toys. Thank you to everyone that asks great questions and a special thank you to the members that take time to answer them. Hope everyone has a great day and be safe.

StumpyJohnson said:

Whelp, it was a bit over two years ago that I made my first few posts here. I was intending to detail my first semi-custom build and the trials and tribulations that followed. I didn't quite make good on that goal, although I may go back some day soon and try.

But...

I figured I'd outline a few things I think I know. I still maintain I'm a paint sipping, window licking, mouth breather...and two years is not a long time in this game. I still learn new things and find myself throwing things I thought I knew out the window on a weekly basis.

1. You can't buy accuracy.
   
   1. I spent thousands on a semi-custom rifle that was almost immediately out shot by a tikka that I built for a friendly competition.
   2. I've purchased quite a few pre-fits from well regarded manufacturers and none shoot as well as the take off tikka barrel I twisted on to a used tikka action.
   3. Pre-fit barrels are a crap shoot.
   4. Having a gunsmith chamber and thread a barrel to your action is a crap shoot with slightly better odds.
   5. Barrels are like people, some just eat crayons.
   6. Barrels from some families are less prone to eating crayons. But every family makes a unicorn every so often.
   7. I still think and act like I can buy accuracy.
2. Faster magnums are hard to tune.
   
   1. Its just my experience that bigger, faster, magnum cartridges are inherently a bit more finicky.
   2. 28 nosler, 26 nosler, even 6.5 PRC are awesome rounds. They can be very accurate obviously. But the road to getting there seems to be a bit more windy than slower cartridges with less boom in them.
   3. Shooting a 180 grain projectile at 3600 fps is more fun than a 147 grain projectile at 2800 fps however.
3. Consistency is accuracy, and larger group samples more accurately capture how consistent a gun is shooting.
   
   1. Not to ruffle feathers, and not to say you're doing anything wrong. But in my experience a ten shot group tells me more than a 3 shot group.
   2. I plan and shoot accordingly during load development. I load in 10 shot increments and make
   3. I believe making changes to a load based on a 3 or even 5 shot group will find you chasing your tail more often than not.
   4. A string of 5 3 shot groups, is a 15 shot group when viewed as a whole.
   5. As a rule I try not to chase numbers to a large extent in terms of sd/es or group size. If I'm in the ball park of 30 es and say 12 sd over 10 to 20 shots, I'm satisfied.
4. Most people make load development more complicated than it needs to be.
   
   1. I've noticed powder/bullet combination is more important than powder charge/seating depth.
   2. I can't tune a crappy powder/bullet combo to shoot well.
   3. A proper combination is ALMOST not worth tuning.
      1. If it shoots well, the time and effort spent wringing out tighter groups, or better es/sd numbers can be a fools errand.
      2. My reloading bench is overflowing with powders/bullets due to this fact.
   4. Listening and researching what works for others is key.
      1. For every cartridge there will be loads that most people favor, there is a reason for that.
      2. Experimentation outside of this fact CAN result in some great results, but WILL result in statement 3.2 being true.
   5. Monolithic bullets are harder to tune than traditional bullets.
      1. I have some decent copper loads, but all of them were harder to come by than their cup and core counterparts.
5. A decent trigger is ABSOLUTELY key.
   
   1. I would wager that a good trigger lends itself to better accuracy than throwing an extra few hundred bucks into your scope budget.
   2. SOME factory triggers can be tuned to a perfect thing of beauty, but it will take time and effort.
6. Standardized SAAMI chambers are for standard cartridge configurations.
   
   1. Longer bullet? Monolithic Bullet? Consider very carefully the chamber dimensions and know that SAAMI chambers aren't usually going to cut it.
7. Plain white paint tastes better than most any other color.

There's more, but I just saw a squirrel and I need to gather some more paint chips for breakfast.

​

Click to expand...

I'm going to add to your list.

Not all scopes are created equal and you can waste lots of time, money, and effort with load development when your scope won't hold a zero. I just found this out recently. If you're not getting any good results when you think you should, swap to a known scope and see if you have scope issues. This was a major eureka moment to me on a riffle I've been messing with for the better part of the last year.

Love my .308 Win Tikka CTR. Best rifle I have ever shot!

I agree with some of your comments and disagree with others. Seating depth is where final tuning takes place and is extremely critical to load development.
One more thing to add is that if you are testing without wind flags you are wasting your time.

BSPPC said:

I agree with some of your comments and disagree with others. Seating depth is where final tuning takes place and is extremely critical to load development.
One more thing to add is that if you are testing without wind flags you are wasting your time.

Click to expand...

I halfway agree, and I do tune for seating depth. BUT, some rifles that don't like some projectiles in my experience. Most initial bullet testing I do in two seating depths. If I don't see anything promising at either depth I usually move on.

I don't think I've had a powder/projectile combination yet, that shot crappy at both seating depths, that then through seating depth tuning shot great. And trust me, I've tried.

Just this weekend I tested a combo that showed some promise, so I loaded 10 shot samples at 5 different seating depths and found a good one.

In the past I've spent hundreds on components to try and find the sweet spot on combo's that I WANTED to shoot well, but simply never did.

Now, I do seating depth tests in increments of .020. +.010, -.010, -.030, -.050, -.070. And usually 10 round groups.

Its important to note, that I wasn't always this way...I have shot 5 round groups in .005 increments, 3 round groups in .002 increments, and all the combos in between. And for me, on multiple occasions, I THOUGHT I had found something perfect and loaded up a heaping helping of that load only to find it lacking when I put a more substantial number of rounds downrange.

I'm not trying to parrot the much maligned hornady podcast's statements on this topic, but I have noticed SOME of the advice they gave has held true for me...particularly with regards to sample sizes during load development.

I have binder's of my grandfather's (RIP) range targets, he'd shoot 3 round groups all day long, and he was an amazing marksman. But there's another factor in being able to make decisions based on 3 round groups that I just don't have. Unfortunately, he never got to teach me his method, so until I get the voodoo...I'll be slogging through 10 round groups.

I'm 5 years in with lots of rifles and barrels, and mirror your findings almost exactly. Except all of my higher end barrels with perfect chambers have shot lights out. But so have some tikkas I've dialed in for buddies.

One thing to note is the rifle weight and cartridge size. Like 10lb .223/6.5 CM tikka is going to outshoot any custom 7lb $6k 300 win mag. You can't buy accuracy for sure. You have to build it into the rifle, with recoil management in regards to the rifle weight.

The number of groups to confirm become smaller with the experience with the particular firearm you're working with. I may only fire 2 rounds if I know it wasn't a pulled shot or something if I'm working with a rifle that I'm used to.

nealm66 said:

The number of groups to confirm become smaller with the experience with the particular firearm you're working with. I may only fire 2 rounds if I know it wasn't a pulled shot or something if I'm working with a rifle that I'm used to.

Click to expand...

Agreed, as you learn the nuance with each rifle, intuition can kick in. I do feel like larger sample sizes at the outset, leads to less overall rounds during development. And I second guess myself less having more confidence in my data.

I think we're all guilty of trying to skip a step or save money/time when it comes to load work up. Over time we all figure out what works the best for our personal setups. I'm teaching a friend how to reload currently and I'm having him do load work up on multiple different rifles/bullets. He's working on a Glock 10mm as I'm typing. Figured out yesterday his holosun has to be 25 meters or further to be parallex free.

…….And if you've been doing as long as some of us you just kinda know where a barrel is gonna want it saving lots of time.

There's so much more information nowadays. Like the 6.5 creed you can almost throw a popular load off the internet and be fairly good

StumpyJohnson said:

Whelp, it was a bit over two years ago that I made my first few posts here. I was intending to detail my first semi-custom build and the trials and tribulations that followed. I didn't quite make good on that goal, although I may go back some day soon and try.

But...

I figured I'd outline a few things I think I know. I still maintain I'm a paint sipping, window licking, mouth breather...and two years is not a long time in this game. I still learn new things and find myself throwing things I thought I knew out the window on a weekly basis.

1. You can't buy accuracy.
   
   1. I spent thousands on a semi-custom rifle that was almost immediately out shot by a tikka that I built for a friendly competition.
   2. I've purchased quite a few pre-fits from well regarded manufacturers and none shoot as well as the take off tikka barrel I twisted on to a used tikka action.
   3. Pre-fit barrels are a crap shoot.
   4. Having a gunsmith chamber and thread a barrel to your action is a crap shoot with slightly better odds.
   5. Barrels are like people, some just eat crayons.
   6. Barrels from some families are less prone to eating crayons. But every family makes a unicorn every so often.
   7. I still think and act like I can buy accuracy.
2. Faster magnums are hard to tune.
   
   1. Its just my experience that bigger, faster, magnum cartridges are inherently a bit more finicky.
   2. 28 nosler, 26 nosler, even 6.5 PRC are awesome rounds. They can be very accurate obviously. But the road to getting there seems to be a bit more windy than slower cartridges with less boom in them.
   3. Shooting a 180 grain projectile at 3600 fps is more fun than a 147 grain projectile at 2800 fps however.
3. Consistency is accuracy, and larger group samples more accurately capture how consistent a gun is shooting.
   
   1. Not to ruffle feathers, and not to say you're doing anything wrong. But in my experience a ten shot group tells me more than a 3 shot group.
   2. I plan and shoot accordingly during load development. I load in 10 shot increments and make
   3. I believe making changes to a load based on a 3 or even 5 shot group will find you chasing your tail more often than not.
   4. A string of 5 3 shot groups, is a 15 shot group when viewed as a whole.
   5. As a rule I try not to chase numbers to a large extent in terms of sd/es or group size. If I'm in the ball park of 30 es and say 12 sd over 10 to 20 shots, I'm satisfied.
4. Most people make load development more complicated than it needs to be.
   
   1. I've noticed powder/bullet combination is more important than powder charge/seating depth.
   2. I can't tune a crappy powder/bullet combo to shoot well.
   3. A proper combination is ALMOST not worth tuning.
      1. If it shoots well, the time and effort spent wringing out tighter groups, or better es/sd numbers can be a fools errand.
      2. My reloading bench is overflowing with powders/bullets due to this fact.
   4. Listening and researching what works for others is key.
      1. For every cartridge there will be loads that most people favor, there is a reason for that.
      2. Experimentation outside of this fact CAN result in some great results, but WILL result in statement 3.2 being true.
   5. Monolithic bullets are harder to tune than traditional bullets.
      1. I have some decent copper loads, but all of them were harder to come by than their cup and core counterparts.
5. A decent trigger is ABSOLUTELY key.
   
   1. I would wager that a good trigger lends itself to better accuracy than throwing an extra few hundred bucks into your scope budget.
   2. SOME factory triggers can be tuned to a perfect thing of beauty, but it will take time and effort.
6. Standardized SAAMI chambers are for standard cartridge configurations.
   
   1. Longer bullet? Monolithic Bullet? Consider very carefully the chamber dimensions and know that SAAMI chambers aren't usually going to cut it.
7. Plain white paint tastes better than most any other color.

There's more, but I just saw a squirrel and I need to gather some more paint chips for breakfast.

​

Click to expand...

lol I second your observations

Huntnful said:

One thing to note is the rifle weight and cartridge size. Like 10lb .223/6.5 CM tikka is going to outshoot any custom 7lb $6k 300 win mag. You can't buy accuracy for sure. You have to build it into the rifle, with recoil management in regards to the rifle weight.

Click to expand...

This has really become apparent to me as I've moved out to longer ranges (1000 yds+) I find it difficult to shoot light weight guns in magnum cartridges at long range as well as smaller cartridges.

Great post and discussion! I've been at this game for about 10 years. I started with trying to reload for a factory rifle that I thought checked all the boxes (it didn't) now on my 4th custom rifle and a huge cabinet full of reloading crap.

I've experienced most of what you said. My process is still developing, as I'm sure it will as long as I shoot bolt rifles. Curious the action you were using pre-fits on. I've done two on zermatts, and both shoot more consistently and were easier to tune than my first full custom. Maybe some of that is me having more experience?

Teaching some buddies how to reload and tune rifles has been beneficial to me as well. Helped me learn where I'm weak when I try to explain how I think things work