tigerwerkes
Well-Known Member
I can probably count my lifetime internet posts on one hand, but the information I have learned from this forum deserves recognition.
After 35 years of growing up in the deep dark east Texas woods, we recently moved out west to open country. I've very seldom ever had the opportunity to even see past 500 yds in the woods, much less be able to take a shot that far. I can shoot two rabbits before they could scatter from a clearing the size of a kitchen table, but 400 yds on a whitetail is not my comfort zone. Since we moved out here I've become obsessed with long range marksmanship and all of the science that you can put into it if you want to, so I added a personal goal of shooting a 1 MOA group at 1000yds to my bucket list.
I reached a milestone on my way to victory this week by dialing in on a load for my 338 WM that reached 2960 fps with an ES of 6fps, yes s i x, six.
I know from all the reading I've done here that's not unheard of, but the true value of this community is that i found it on only the fourth string of rifle reloads i have ever loaded in my life based on information from you folks!
Thanks guys! You give thousands of $$ of confidence to folks like me every day.
No excuses now, my system is tight and the only variable left to get under control is me.
I'll be sure to post my target when it finally happens.
Here's what i have learned from you so far:
From my large scale mfg background, I have a great appreciation for the process control required for this to happen and how narrow the margin for success is. Not many people get how exciting this was to achieve but i know you do!
Thanks again!
After 35 years of growing up in the deep dark east Texas woods, we recently moved out west to open country. I've very seldom ever had the opportunity to even see past 500 yds in the woods, much less be able to take a shot that far. I can shoot two rabbits before they could scatter from a clearing the size of a kitchen table, but 400 yds on a whitetail is not my comfort zone. Since we moved out here I've become obsessed with long range marksmanship and all of the science that you can put into it if you want to, so I added a personal goal of shooting a 1 MOA group at 1000yds to my bucket list.
I reached a milestone on my way to victory this week by dialing in on a load for my 338 WM that reached 2960 fps with an ES of 6fps, yes s i x, six.
I know from all the reading I've done here that's not unheard of, but the true value of this community is that i found it on only the fourth string of rifle reloads i have ever loaded in my life based on information from you folks!
Thanks guys! You give thousands of $$ of confidence to folks like me every day.
No excuses now, my system is tight and the only variable left to get under control is me.
I'll be sure to post my target when it finally happens.
Here's what i have learned from you so far:
- if you cant shoot MOA at 100 yds, don't waste $$ throwing lead down range until you have control of all the variables that are making it happen.
- find optimum COAL, mine was 2.772 base-to-ogive with hornady lnl gage. Best group was .80 @100, what amazed me was that the next closest group was over 2.5"! my test lengths were .002, .005, .010, .020, and .030" off the lands. .002 was the sweet spot by far. Being an engineer, i did add an element of control to the experiment. Instead of shooting all of the rounds from each length in one group, I shot one round from each group in a round robin at five separate bulls. this eliminated any variable "stackup" on any one group since variables such as barrel heat, fatigue, atmospheric, etc, were then spread evenly across all groups.
- worked up the load. This was amazingly straight forward. from LRH i learned you could "neck size" the 338 wm by backing off on the sizing die. Also learned that 73 gr of RL-19 was a good place to start ( and verified by mfg data) and increased charge by 2%. Then VOILA! there it was at 77.5 gr. No pressure signs, bolt free and easy. The next closest ES was above 20 FPS.
From my large scale mfg background, I have a great appreciation for the process control required for this to happen and how narrow the margin for success is. Not many people get how exciting this was to achieve but i know you do!
Thanks again!
