Hi guys, my M1A shoots the best group with the Black Hills 168 g match ammo. Beats out Fed match and a dozen or so of my reload recipes. Does anyone know what the Black Hills 168 g (red box) load is? I did a search but don't find the answer.
Duplicate load for Black Hills
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Not me but my rifle seems to like 40.5gr of H4895 with 155 Hornady A-Max's or 40.0gr of H4895 with 168gr A-Max's with CCI-BR2... 41.0 crono's the best and may be my load...
Selected brass and thrown powder charges.
Did a re-check guy's and do believe lighter loading is better for accuracy in our rifles. Will try 40.0/40.5 again with 155's/168's 39.5 with Sierra 175's
Selected brass and thrown powder charges.
Did a re-check guy's and do believe lighter loading is better for accuracy in our rifles. Will try 40.0/40.5 again with 155's/168's 39.5 with Sierra 175's
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I have shot that load too but I dont know its components. The best shooting factory fodder I have seen is the older red box Federal Match, before FGMM. I used up my last recently, sure miss it. I dont know for certain that the FGMM is different but the red box seemed to shoot better for me. I may have a couple rounds of the Black Hills load, may pull one down just out of curiosity.
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I pull and weigh all factory ammo before running it thru an M14 gas system. If a 168 has more than 43 grains of anything in it, I don't recommend using it.
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As luck would have it I still have a full box of that load. I pulled one apart. I believe the bullet by its ogive shape is a Hornady. It weighed 167.7 grs. Powder is a ball powder of unknown type, weight of charge was just under KurtC's max at 42.8grs. Probably not much help but its really tough to identify ball powders.
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Black hills won't give out that info. Trust me I tried. In fact the guy I talked to at black hills chuckled when I asked...
G
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·I had "Heard Somewhere" that the powder was Ramshot-TAC, a rather dark looking fine ball powder. But, don't trust me on that, bad things can happen when we "Assume" about reloading data or something we read on the 'Net.
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Every round?!
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How do you do that when the bullet slams into the feed ramp more or less at random? You ever check runout after chambering?
[FYI: I use the word chambering in its modern sense, not the Biblical meaning "Sexual immorality; wantonness; fornication; lewdness." KJV Rom. 13:13 DI5 ]
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It is difficult to determine just what powder is being used and don't forget that ammunition mfg.'s may well be using a powder that is not available to the average shooter.
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I don't have a proper concentricity gage, so my testing was rough 'roll the cartridge on a piece of glass' and look for tip wobble.
Testing was with my 308Win M1, single round load from a 1-round SLED - load the sled, pull oprod back and release.
I had 9 dummy rounds, and I couldn't see any tip wobble after seating the bullets.
Did 4 1-round loadings from the righthand side of the clip, and 4 from the lefthand side, kept the 9th as a 'control'.
After chambering and carefully extracting those 8 rounds, I still couldn't see any tip wobble. They 'looked' the same as the 9th round control.
In addition to the position of the bullet in the neck of the chambered round, there's the whole other consideration of how the bullet gets released from the neck and how it enters the leade and rifling of the bore.
An AMU person told me that for the NRA long range national competition they use new cases. They found that new cases gave better results. Maybe neck tension, bullet release, concentricity, case flex on firing, etc. ?
I don't view this as any 'proof', but I believe there's much more to 'ammo accuracy' than just simple 'load data'. And even then the 'best' load data might vary slightly from rifle to rifle.
Jay Kosta
Endwell NY USA
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Thanks for that.
I actually have a concentricity gauge somewhere. If I can find the parts that go with it and they aren't rusted over I'll give it a try and report back.ICONWINK
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And by "bullet leave the case consistently" ... that means a consistent neck pull... which involves proper annealing.
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I ran into a neck pull issue the other day with a Ruger 7x57. I had been using a LEE collet die for brass for that rifle. Primed and charged 20 pcs and started to seat, and the bullets almost fell to the bottom of the case! Nuts!! Started all over, sized them in full length RCBS dies and had good even tension then. I dont anneal cases, when they cant provide good tension I just chuck them. Its takes lots of loading's generally before that happens.
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New cases have freshly annealed case necks.
The necks get work hardened every firing cycle
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Another load of note at least to me as it shoots really well in all my M14 rifles is the Fed American Eagle 168 OTM M1A load, so I pulled one down. Bullet is as stated a 168, though the one pulled was a few tenths under. Powder was an extruded type that most resembled of the powders on hand, Alliant Re15 but of course there is no way to know exactly what it is, but judging by its weight of 43.1 grs, that may not be too far off. The bullet was shorter than a 168 Sierra MK as well. The one I pulled was 1.193" whereas the 4 SMK's I measured averaged about 2.023". I like this load enough that I just ordered another 200 rd box from the CMP, best price around, and for less money it shoots about as well as the FGMM load.
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I believe the bullet on the 168 is the Hornady OTM and the 175 is the Sierra Match King
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