Finally got some 6.5 Creedmoor time in..bareel break in and some load development
For my fellow CREEDMOOR nuts out there:
EDIT: There has been some discussion about the primer pockets in the Hornady 6.5 Creedmoor brass and I did find that they are not as uniform as pretty much any other brass I have loaded over the years (and that is TENs of thousands). I did not measure the pockets, but did find that a few primers went in too easy, almost to the point where I first thought that the seater punch sometimes had not picked up a primer to insert. Most primers were a little harder than what you normally feel (I always use a hand primer..NEVER one with a bunch of leverage) to get to seat and then there were a few that either would not accept a primer at all or were nearly impossible to seat....so hard that I could not feel the primer bottoming in the pockets....had to squeeze some of them so hard that it was scary!
What I did with the ones that were apparently somewhat undersized pockets was to gently (BY HAND!!) run my crimp remover into them and that seemed to fix the problem. I have never seen such variability in primer pockets on ANY caliber of brass, whether it be high dollar stuff, regular new brass or once, twice three times fired stuff. Going to be interesting to see how well these primer pockets hold up as they get loaded over and over. Just a comment.....I suppose it COULD be the primers, but then I buy these things by the bricks and have NEVER, EVER run into this where it was due to primers not being of uniform size....Just thought I should toss that in there to add to the pool of knowledge/answers about the Hornady brass.
END OF EDIT.
Today I finally got some time on a day where the wind wasn't howling and the temps were in the 45 to 50 degree (f) range to make a trip out to shoot my newly put together 6.5 Creedmoor. The gun is a Krieger LW Varmint profile, a 8 inch twist rate (stainless) barrel with a finished length of 26 inches , Timney trigger, Remmy 700 S/A trued up/blue printed action with a Sako extractor installed in the bolt, scope is a Vortex Viper PST 6 to 24 X 50 1st focal plane MOA/MOA (Vortex says that the reticles cover .18 MOA) on a Picatinny rail. Stock is a Choate Machine with a Karsten's cheek piece. Before any of you go off on me about the stock...I think I was the ergonomic model for Choate when they designed this stock..it fits me PERFECTLY and is weighty enough to lend a good degree of stability when I shoot in matches. I weighed this rig and it is 14.5 pounds as it will be used in matches with everything mounted on it.. This is the first Vortex PST that I have tried and, so far, it seems to me that the reticles are a tiny bit on the thick side, but when I get to firing actual targets they could turn out to be just right. Quite good optics, though...I can see holes in the target better through the scope on the rifle than I can with my spotting scope!! (I guess I need a 2500 buck or whatever Swarovski like my buddy has, huh? But, THAT is NEVER gonna happen!!)
Main objective today was to do the break in as per Krieger, which I did using Hornady SST 129s over Varget...Calculated (using Quick Load) velocity was 2665, but it turned out to be more like 2750 over the chrono. I didn't really shoot this for groups..mainly these were for the break-in process, but I did want to get it printing pretty much where I pointed it for when I started to shoot my test loads. Did it all according to Krieger's web site advice on breaking a barrel in.
Once the barrel seemed to be not making copper, I started in on the 24 loads I made up for the first testing...sort of in accordance with Berger's advice..for a person that does NOT like jamming bullets. So, I loaded them with Federal GM210M primers and 42 grains of Reloader 17 pushing the new Lapua Scenar 136 L (136 grain, advertised BC .545) bullets seated to .010, .050, .090 and .130 off the lands (6 rounds for each distance to be shot in groups of three). I did load several rounds each in lower .5 grain increments so I could see if there were any pressure signs as I shot them working up toward the 42 grainers. No pressure signs at all in my rifle...no marks on the head of the brass, primers looked fine with only a TINY pretty normal looking crater (couldn't catch your thumb nail on it at all) and good, easy bolt lift...no bind at all. As I shot through the set, I found only one round that made the bolt a little hard to close and I think that was likely due to a piece of brass that was a little "chubbier" that its buddies. Velocity results were forecast by Quick Load to be:
.010 off the lands 2832 fps
.050 off the lands 2847 fps
.090 off the lands 2868 fps
.130 off the lands 2876 fps
And they chrono'd (averages)
.010 off the lands 2935
.050 off the lands 2929
.090 off the lands 2957
.130 off the lands 2987
So, they were a little faster than I expected them to be.
I shot off of my (kind of slippery) back pack and supported the rear of the stock with my hand/sand bags. All of the groups were shot at 220 yards with pretty much NO wind.The very last group I shot (.130 off the lands) produced a group of .316 MOA and that was the best with the worst of the 8 3 shot groups being almost 1 MOA and the average for all of them being .678 MOA. I did discover that my chosen targets for the test had bull eyes that were too small....they would be obscured way too easily by the reticle in the scope, so I have changed the targets I will be using in the future so that they have a center dot big enough to where I will be able to tell better EXACTLY where the gun is/should be pointed. (which will be about 1 1/4 inch diameter for use at 220 yards). I think that there are three things at work here that caused me to be disappointed in the groups I shot: (1) the barrel is likely not really even close to being broken in and the groups it shoots will tighten up in a while. (2) Me sliding around on the slippery pack ( this isn't the greatest thing for accuracy during load development, but the matches I shoot in require "field ready" and so I use a pack.....Remember the old "Train like you fight and Fight like you train"?? (3) The size of the bulls eyes I chose for this outing were too small to allow accurate, consistent target alignment.
Hopefully, with some equipment changes, the next outing will give me more USEFUL info, as I really didn't learn a lot today.........
In closing, I will stick in the usual disclaimer: THIS IS NOT INTENDED TO BE RELOAD ADVICE and I recommend that you work up loads yourself in increments that work in YOUR RIFLE, since they all seem to be different!!
Hopefully this was somewhat helpful to someone. I'm hoping that the next trip out with this gun for load testing gives me better info with which to make decisions to wind up with the best loads. i want to use the new Lapua Scenar 136 L bullets as I belive they are one of the better bullets out there.....not to mention that I have 1000 of them
!!! If you have any questions/comments relating to all of this, drop me a PM or hit me at
[email protected] See ya....and have fun shooting!!