Ocw advice

[Morgan321]

Never developed my own load. Loading up now to shoot tomorrow. 30-06 shooting 168gr Amax with rl19 powder.

Checked 4 places, max load varies from 58-61gr. The brass I'm using is the heaviest I've seen so I'm going to start with 55-57gr in 0.5 gr increments. I have up to 1k Yds and can load ammo at the range to zoom in on the most promising area and shoot a few groups at finer increments.

Advice?

 

[rduckwor]

Load from the listed Max for your bullet/powder combo in 0.5 Gr increments, one each down to as low a charge as you wish to reasonably run. You will fire these from low charge to high charge looking for pressure signs. Stop when you begin seeing signs.

Then, using your highest safe charge from above, reduce by 7-10% and load three each from lowest to highest in 0.3 Gr increments. This is your OCW run. Fire one from each charge level round robin lowest to highest again watching for pressure at 100 yards at separate target points, then highest to lowest, etc. Look for the charge wgts that tend to have the same vertical dispersion. Generally you will have a couple or maybe three wgts that group about the same vertically in relation to the POA. That is your OCW range.

If you have the capability to load at the range, pick a charge and see if it holds for you. Once you have your favorite charge, you can start working on fine tuning OAL for better accuracy.

Sounds like a lot of work, but its actually fun and it works.

 

[Twoboxer]

Assuming 61gr is an acceptable "max", Dan's OCW instructions (Google "OCW Dan") would call out the following loads (using 0.8% increments for test groups):

Sighter/Fouler: 54.9, 56.0, 57.1 (I'd use 55, 56, 57 which would then generate the sequence below)
Test Groups: 58.1, 58.6, 59.1, 59.5, 60.0, 60.5, 61.0, 61.5

At a max of 58gr, the loads would be:

52.2, 53.2, 54.3 then groups of 55.4, 55.8, 56.3, 56.7, 57.2, 57.6, 58.1

Of course no load would be fired unless the previous load showed no pressure signs . . . particularly for that last load which Dan's methodology calls for to be over the max. The spread is designed, with any amount of luck, to expose 2 sweet spots which usually are a ~3% powder charge apart.

Since there are 8 groups (27 rounds in all), you might want to consider making 3 extra foulers. The sequence would be foulers, 2 rounds from each group (19 rounds), clean, 3 foulers, 1 round from each group (11 rounds).

With 7 groups and 24 rounds you probably should also clean and re-foul somewhere in the sequence. You might also consider tweaking the numbers a bit so that adding an 8th group at ~58.5 makes sense, particularly if you are selecting the most conservative published max load.

Depending on your shooting habits, you may find patience is required to fire one round every two minutes lol. But if your '06 gets as hot as mine you'll need the cooling time.

 

[Morgan321]

Well I did 55-57 in 0.4 increments. Primed a bunch of brass and will load more as needed at the range based on those.

 

[HobbyShooter]

What Twoboxer said.

The only thing I would add is that depending on your cleaning practice, you may or may not want to clean in the middle of the test. I'd follow what you typically would do when shooting that many rounds.

 

[Pinecone]

I did an OCW Excel Template to automatically calculate the charge increments. It also allows you put int eh various load manual weights and show you the lowest, highest and average Max charge. You then pick what YOU will use as your max and it sets up the loads.

It is posted on the Hide, but search is down, so I can't get you the link. But when search is working, search in Reloading using Advanced, my User Name and Threads Started. It will come up near the top.