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  1. #1
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    The great 70-77 grain competition

    Sorry folks, I don't have any data to display at this time. This thread will likely take me all of 2014 to complete.

    I have all of the components on hand to do an accuracy test at 100, 200 and 300 yards.

    This test will display the muzzle velocity of the most accurate loads. And then maybe a notch or two above that for a bit more velocity. Even if accuracy opens up a bit.

    Bullets:

    Barnes TSX 70's
    Speer TNT 70's
    Swift bonded spitzer boat tail 75's
    Hornady HPBT 75's
    Berger HPBT 73's
    Berger OTM TAC 77's
    Lapua Scenar 77's
    Nosler Custom 77's
    Sierra MK 77's with and without lee crimped cannelures.
    JLK 77's

    I have all of these in my possession except for the JLK, Swift, Berger 73's & Speer bullets.

    Brass:

    Nosler brass for Nosler bullets
    Lapua brass for Lapua bullets
    Hornady brass for Hornady bullets
    Norma brass for Berger bullets
    Lake City 2009 brass for Barnes
    IMI brass for Speer bullets
    Federal brass for Sierra bullets
    Un determined brass for the JLK's
    Un determined brass for the Swift Sciroccos



    I will likely mix some Lake City 2008 and 2009 nato stamped brass as well.

    Primers:

    Primers will be what the book calls for.

    I have a good selection of Winchester, Remington, Fed 205 and CCI 450's + #41's

    I may mix and match a bit when i use the Lake City brass just for experimentation reasons.

    Powders:

    Again what the book calls for.

    I have all of the popular ones on hand at this time except for TAC and RL 15.

    Rifle:

    I have a heavy barrel Mark 12 which is a very good quality 18 inch barrel. It has around 1300 rounds through it since new.

    Also I have a couple of carbines in the 16 inch barrel length.

    Last but not least is the 11.5 inch short barrel rifle.

    Most tests will be with the MK 12.

    Reloading Manuals:

    Lyman
    Sierra
    Berger
    Nosler
    Speer
    Hornady
    Barnes

    About me:

    My shooting abilities are the right on the dead center of average.
    I have reloaded around 4-500 rounds total and am new to this hobby
    I have researched all of the above manuals thoroughly and carefully.

    Reloading equipment:

    I have an RCBS rock chucker reloading press.

    I use Forster FL sizing dies, and the Forster Ultra Match bullet seater now.

    Hopefully by the end of March. I will have the data out for at least one of these.
    Last edited by aklaunch; 24 February 2014 at 17:55. Reason: New information

  2. #2
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    Thanks for doing that I'm excited to see the results.


    Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

  3. #3
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    aklaunch, I am looking forward to the results as well.

    We did a barrel length versus velocity test a couple of years ago. We did not do as many load variations as you are planning, but many different barrel lengths from 26" down to 7.5" - object was to get some sort of average velocity loss per inch of barrel as the length dropped. We enjoyed the testing, I'm sure you will too. I have been reloading since the mid 70's, but do not load anything heavier than 60 grains in 5.56. I will be very interested in your velocity figures.

    Thanks for starting the thread.
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  4. #4
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    After being very busy doing home improvement projects i did not get any testing done. leaving for work again and won't even be able to consider doing anything until the end of March.

    I just built a new reloading bench indoors to facilitate the hobby until the cold weather season is over. In addition i was able to load up 50 Berger 77 grain OTM TAC's using Norma cartridge cases.



    I started low on the powder scale because the Berger 1st edition manual does not specify the cases or the primers they used... Not really impressed at all with the lack of info regarding that matter. The rest of the manual is very unique, informative and a must have IMO.

    I made 3 different batches using Varget, Winchester 748 and IMR XBR 8208 all just a hair over the minimum start load for the advertised 223 pressure.
    Last edited by aklaunch; 28 April 2014 at 23:21.

  5. #5
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    Hmmm. Very interested in this. Thanks for doing it.

    I've never done much in testing beyond accuracy loads for plinking/varmint ammo using 55 grain Hornady SP and hunting ammo using Sierra 65 grain Game King.

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    Cool thread, and look forward to your results. I am somewhat new to loading the heavier grain .224 loads , but have had good luck so far with hornady 68gr bthp's and even better luck with seirra 69gr SMK, using varget and h335 only so far, and both have shot under a MOA at 100 yards with my bench gun , home built 18" RA match barrel with FF handguard AR with a crappy milspec trigger. Give the edge to the varget, all while using federal match primers.

    Working up loads now with CCI 450 mag primers and some AA2230 and some newly acquired TAC, Which i have read is great with the 77gr stuff, which i want to try next,anyways, carry on and report back.

  7. #7
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    Nosler Brass/Nosler 77gr

    My ultimate goal is to find the most accurate bullet/brass combo for the 300 and 600 yard lines. In addition to performance I am looking at cost.

    At the time of this writing, and when in stock, You can buy 1000 Nosler CC 77 grain BTHP bullets for $171.00 plus shipping. This equates to around 17.1 cents per bullet.

    The brass is on the expensive side, selling for around 60 cents per shell. WSR primers usually run about 4 cents a piece.





    The brass is of the highest quality. They run a bit short at 1.745

    After firing 25 of them i measured the cases and did not notice hardly any variance in case length from new. The primer pockets did not need to be de-burred. They were clean and smooth.

    I randomly weighed and measured 10 bullets. The bullets ranged from 0.91-0.96 long and weighed between 76.90 - 77.16 grains.

    Some types of bullets are a pain to get consistent C.O.A.L. My bullet seating die seats from the ogive and i normally let a bit of variance pass by my personal quality control, but some types need constant die adjustment to stay within what i would consider reasonable. The Nosler's required no additional bullet seating die adjustments.

    In my opinion maximum effective range is the range that a projectile stays super sonic. (roughly 1200 fps) The temperature's in my area range from around 20F-95F

    My range Altitude is approximately 200 feet above sea level

    The Nosler 77 grain bullets have a B.C. of 0.346

    What this means to me is at 20F i will need a minimum velocity of 2500fps at 20F. As a general rule of thumb there is a difference of 210fps in most rifle cartridges from 0F-100F. Just because i am clocking near that on a 65F day does not mean i will have that sort of effective range during a cold spell in the middle of the winter.

    On the flip side... At 95F the minimum fps is way down to 2275fps.

    Interesting huh?



    [IMG][/IMG]

    On the bottom of the target i wrote "noticed primer flattening" After further inspection i noticed NO primer flattening and have upped the charge one half of a grain.





    I have an RCBS 505 scale and an electronic Gempro 250 i used to manually weight each powder charge.

    Since i have all of the components the book calls for in addition to having a 5.56 chamber, i decided to start in the middle of the 223 pressure range.

    With a lot of chronograph work behind me i was very impressed with the velocity variation of the H4895 powder and the accuracy of the Nosler bullets.

    The Nosler brass came in a box that said fully ready to load. The first thing i noticed was that the cases were much shorter than the competitions. Seems they averaged around 1.745 long.

    Going against my own rules and intuition i loaded the rounds with out full length resizing the brass. Out of the box of 50, there were 2 cases that had smaller diameter case mouths than the others. This was evident when trying to seat the bullets. I had to push a little harder than normal on my press and noticed copper jacket material coming off the bearing surface area when seating. I am also under the impression that the larger group in the upper right was one of those cases. Unfortunately i think the second one is ready to be fired using Varget powder.



    I do not hold this against Nosler. I just recommend FL resizing all new brass.

    It was a nice day out there. The temps where in the low 60's and the altimeter setting was 30.15. My range is around 200 feet above sea level. I have been shooting so many different combinations of bullets and powder lately i have not bothered to adjust my scope to much. This project is not about hitting the bulls eye. It is about consistent groups.

    I was very impressed by the velocities posted. Starting load was 21.5 and max was 23.5. I am getting just under 2500fps and still have a full grain to go. The Nosler manual shows the load to get more accurate until the max load is reached.

    Unfortunately the tripod i use for my spotting scope is the tripod i need for the chronograph. I was unable to tell which shot out of the 5 shot groups were the flyers.

    I have noticed that the first shot fired out of a cold barrel, or a cooled barrel is always the slowest. My belief is that this is because as the chamber heats up, pressure increases and could be linked to that first cold/slow bullet being the flyer of the group.

    This in my opinion is one of the major disadvantages to using a self loading rifle for extreme accuracy. It is hard to calculate the difference in ammunition temperature/pressure from one shot to the next.

    On this test i waited about 1.5 minutes between each shot. Unfortunately the cartridge is sitting in there pre heating the whole time. IMO this did help to cool the barrel and the chamber though.

    All in all i was very pleased with the velocity and accuracy of the cartridges. I will continue to work up and see how it goes. I am also loading and testing Varget with the Nosler products.

    I loaded up the now once fired cases another 0.5 grains and am heading out to the range tomorrow to see the results. The cases just felt better loading them after a firing and a full length resize. I am optimistic that we will see even better results. The numbers don't lie though and we will see.

    Will get it posted asap.

    Thanks
    Last edited by aklaunch; 28 April 2014 at 23:04.

  8. #8
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    Maybe i missed it in the above post, where these 77gr nosler the non canelure's or did they have one? Did you crimp?

    thanks, picked up some non cannelure 77gr noslers in trade and plan on working up some loads using TAC and 1x fired LC brass.

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    I plan on making this one heck of a nice thread. And it will be extremely lengthy. I need to make a sequence that i follow in all reviews.

    These were non cannelured bullets. I emailed Nosler to find out when they plan on releasing cannelured 77gr. bullets. The representative emailed back quickly and said they are working on it.

    I have both cannelured and non cannelured Sierra bullets lying around waiting for the difference to be tested. They are likely last on the list as they are covered so in depth on the world wide web.

    I will get another batch of Nosler's ready tomorrow and test them Monday and hopefully post the results shortly there after.

    I am very impressed by the quality, accuracy and price of their bullets. The brass on the other hand is top dollar price wise. I plan to cover how many firings i get out of them before i get splitting, loose primer pockets or a loss of accuracy due to the case mouth not crimping the bullet tight enough.

    Out of the bunch the Nosler 77's and the Hornady 75's are the cheapest.

    I will post a Ballistic chart i made up on all of the bullets this evening. It has some very, very interesting data.

    Thank you for your interest.

  10. #10
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    Cool, appreciate you talking the time to post up all the info.

    I just picked up some non cannelured nosler 77's and plan on trying some tac and varget workup loads in my 18" rainier arms match barrel, 69gr SMK's and 25 grains of varget shoots lights out already so excited to see what i can do with some 77's, im using LC brass , as i have a good amount of it and it seems to work well for me.

  11. #11
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    I have not yet found a way to get my Excel spread sheet document to post...

    Will find another way around it.

  12. #12
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    If your printer has a "scan" feature, you can scan as a JPEG and then attach it as a picture. That's what I did for the chronograph data in the "Spring Shoot in Florida" thread.

    My Excel Kung-fu is not the greatest, but I have tried a lot of different things - "Format as Table" - "All Borders" - differing line colors - "Save As" many different file types - they all copy/paste the same. The Bulletin Board Reply function strips all the neat stuff out and just jams the cells together with no regard to content. I believe some bulletin board versions consider the inclusion of formatting type data (XML or HTML) as a security risk; i.e., easy to bury a virus. So it removes all formatting, font, text size, color, borders, spacing, etc. You can change some of those formatting features using the format buttons on the top of the reply box, but you cannot recreate the cell sizes - so Excel still looks like plain text with no Row / Column organization. It's not Excel, it's the vBulletin software.
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  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by aklaunch View Post
    I plan on making this one heck of a nice thread. And it will be extremely lengthy. I need to make a sequence that i follow in all reviews.

    These were non cannelured bullets. I emailed Nosler to find out when they plan on releasing cannelured 77gr. bullets. The representative emailed back quickly and said they are working on it.

    I have both cannelured and non cannelured Sierra bullets lying around waiting for the difference to be tested. They are likely last on the list as they are covered so in depth on the world wide web.

    I will get another batch of Nosler's ready tomorrow and test them Monday and hopefully post the results shortly there after.

    I am very impressed by the quality, accuracy and price of their bullets. The brass on the other hand is top dollar price wise. I plan to cover how many firings i get out of them before i get splitting, loose primer pockets or a loss of accuracy due to the case mouth not crimping the bullet tight enough.

    Out of the bunch the Nosler 77's and the Hornady 75's are the cheapest.

    I will post a Ballistic chart i made up on all of the bullets this evening. It has some very, very interesting data.

    Thank you for your interest.
    Kool post!

    FYI, I just got some canalure'd Nosler 77's from midway USA so, they are out. Hope this helps ya.

    Have fun and stay frosty.

  14. #14
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    It was a nice day today so i thought i would go out and get a little shooting done.

    Unfortunately it was a bit windy out there and i forgot one of my key rests for setting the butt stock on. I had to make due with other components and feel my accuracy would have been a little bit better had i brought the proper equipment.

    On the plus side, Velocity was outstanding today. So good that i am questioning my chronograph set up:) It seems like 22.5 grains of H4895 produced around 2500 fps with temps in the low 60's

    I loaded up 0.5 more grains and am now showing an average of around 2,650 fps with another 0.5 grains to go. IMO this is very respectable out of an "18" barrel. As a matter of fact the Nosler reloading manual shows the max load of 23.5 grains clocking in at 2692 with a 20 inch barrel.

    http://www.nosler.com/223-remington/

    I have an 18 inch barrel with a half a grain to go and am only 42 fps slower. Obviously on a cold day these high flying numbers would not be near the same and the bullet would fly much lower in relation to the target.


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    Nice , what powders are you working with again, and what one next...

    Im following along as i just got some 77gr noslers to play with for my 18" RA mach barrel

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