Load development

[0-tolerance]

0-T
I'm glad you found you way into a great load development technique. When multiple folks separated by distance, space and time are coming up with the same technique is pretty exciting (great minds think alike). I'm fortunate to have 100 yards off my back porch and can load a test up in a few minutes and shoot it. I also get to shoot 8-10 rifle rounds annually. A few things to consider is, I have taken care of all of the brass prep possible from trim length, annealing, shoulder bump, using a mandrel for .0015 neck tension etc etc etc. I do this for everything from 223 to 338 LM. The video is a little old and I plan on doing another with Steve and Ed explaining ghost nodes which look good on the chronograph but don't shoot that well and how to handle smaller and larger cartridges. One of the reason I stick to 100 yards is I don't want to work my way into positive compensation (PC), which simplified is tuning your rifle for the slowest and highest velocity bullets leave at different points of barrel deflection and converge at the desired distance. This is awesome for F class and Bench rest guys and absolutely necessary to be competitive in the game they play. For Hunting I'm sure PC would fine as well most of the vital zones on bigger game animals are MOA or better to 1000 yards, but the what I like to do I need the load to be accurate and the ES to be low as well. My method wont work for everyone for a wide variety of reasons.

Think you Scott for your willingness to share. Another thing I forgot to mention is breaking in and fire forming brass. I do the regular shoot, clean a few times then shoot a few groups then clean. After putting 20 rounds down the barrel, I continue the break in by fire forming my brass doing ladder tests, to about about 100 rounds. This gives me some good data on where to start my ladder. Because it's virgin brass, the speeds are a little erratic but give some good starting point for the ladder test with fire formed and prepped brass. Still saving for an annealer $$$$. Also found that the speeds are erratic with clean barrels. When doing barrel break in, my target has ten points to shoot at for each ladder test. One point per charge so I can watch the shifting points of impact better. It's a lot easier to see this way vs 10 different charges fired at one point. This process works everytime.

This process saved me so much headache in load development. I read about this type of ladder testing off an article that probably got it from you.......... so thank you! Did i mention that this process saved me so much headache in load development. Thanks again!

 

[Satterlee Scott]

Think you Scott for your willingness to share. Another thing I forgot to mention is breaking in and fire forming brass. I do the regular shoot, clean a few times then shoot a few groups then clean. After putting 20 rounds down the barrel, I continue the break in by fire forming my brass doing ladder tests, to about about 100 rounds. This gives me some good data on where to start my ladder. Because it's virgin brass, the speeds are a little erratic but give some good starting point for the ladder test with fire formed and prepped brass. Still saving for an annealer $$$$. Also found that the speeds are erratic with clean barrels. When doing barrel break in, my target has ten points to shoot at for each ladder test. One point per charge so I can watch the shifting points of impact better. It's a lot easier to see this way vs 10 different charges fired at one point. This process works everytime.

This process saved me so much headache in load development. I read about this type of ladder testing off an article that probably got it from you.......... so thank you! Did i mention that this process saved me so much headache in load development. Thanks again!

Yup it usually takes 5-10 rounds to get stabilized VE out of a clean barrel. My break in process is shoot till stable then do load development. I typically don't clean the rifle until it tells me to