Pulling a barrel

[JM4590]

So my barrel in my 6.5 SAUM shows some fire cracking. 1800 recorded rounds. Accuracy is still there at 100, but SD is now highly teens. Does a fire cracked barrel lead to high SD? MV has dropped from 3115 to 3065. Same everything as far as load goes. Have not chased lands , have not increased powder. I have never ” shot out” a barrel before, so this is all new territory to me. This is not a competition rifle, I only shoot it for prone long range competing against me. I have read here on the hide that if accuracy is good, rock on, but what accuracy at what range? .3 groups at 100 is pretty , but SD of 19-23 is no bueno. Or? Is the cracking not the issue , and my reloading regimen sucks? And just to put this out there…I have no idea how many times I have reloaded the cases. I had a neck split on my last shooting exercise…so I guess that one may have been reloaded too many times

Thoughts and opinions welcome!

 

[Tokay444]

What bullet are you running at 3115? What powder? What season did you start your load in? What season did is lose 50fps?

 

[JM4590]

Running a Berger 140 hybrid, H1000, not sure of the season…but progressively slower. Last kestrel / Magnetospeed entry was 3095. Have been having DOPE issues, but figured it was me. For the record, I am a piss poor record keeper…but velocity loss is velocity loss….

 

[spife7980]

.I have read here on the hide that if accuracy is good, rock on, but what accuracy at what range?

At whatever range your standards are is the honest answer, some people are fine with 1” at 100 yards, some peoples goal is 1” at 1k yards

I like for my load to be ~3-4” at 500 for a small sample. If I can’t get that worked up with a good barrel without tooo much work then I need to switch up my combination of components to a combo that may work easier

1800 on a 6.5 mag; get another barrel on order and set it in the corner until needed because it will be sooner than later if you don’t order it, Murphys law

 

[Dead Eye Dick]

My additional suggestion is record keeping. Get a small notebook, line it off and when you finish loading, record it. Otherwise, you’ll never know when or what change is making a change. It becomes a guessing game. Lyman makes a reloading record book. The pages fit into a three ring notebook. Clear concise and easy to read/use. I have since moved from my notebook to using the Lyman book. A good spreadsheet works even better, until you have a computer crash. Then a backup is a lifesaver, but as I learned, even having written the backup program myself, if you don’t use it everyday…. So, my solution is to keep a notebook, record the shooting into a computer file, keep a written and spreadsheet file of my reloads.

However, I am a record junkie, with data going back more than a decade. (How did you ever guess?). Why only a decade, I had moved to a computer only data file. My back got ignored, and a computer crash destroyed everything not previously printed or written.

Finally, for fun, its great to go back to the 1970’s, see what we were loading and what we were using in those loads.

 

[DeathBeforeDismount]

Barrel is toast. Buy a new barrel...problem solved. Shits not rocket science.

 

[JM4590]

A little bit of rocket science? neck area turns to plasma due to high temps…that’s kinda like rocket science….