Acceptable powder drops for 223 plinking rounds

JustMissedIt

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  • Jan 22, 2019
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    Ohio
    Loading bulk plinking ammo for my AR. 55gr FMJ with CFE223. I’ve not tried this powder in my Hornady powder drop yet. Heard it meters like water. I don’t want to trickle to exact weights on every load. I’m gonna be at 26gr. What is the acceptable spread? I seriously doubt I’ll get 26 every drop.
     
    Hornady lists the max load as 27.4gr if that helps. I try to stay within +/- .2 grains on my progressive for .223, but I had loaded up to the max charge on a single stage first without any pressure signs so I knew I had quite a bit of tolerance to play with.

    24.8gr - 2800 fps
    25.5 gr - 2900 fps
    26.1 gr - 3000 fps
    26.7 gr - 3100 fps
    27.4 gr - 3200 fps [MAX LOAD]
     
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    Agreed..

    I loaded 150rnds of 75gr bthp about a month ago for a guy at work with cfe. I checked the first 20 throws and it was less than .2 spread, closer to .1 so I started checking every 20rnd, no change. Gun will keep 20rnds inside 3/4"...that sold me on bulk loading 223.
     
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