Brian in Montana
Well-known member
I haven't worked much with compressed loads and it kind of makes me nervous.
This weekend, I loaded some 165gn Fed TBT's for the .308 using Big Game. The max load in the published data is 51grns (which sure seems like a lot for .308). I was loading a 13 round ladder test with my highest charge being 51gn. I didn't measure each round, just got the seating stem where I wanted it for a COL of 2.8 and went ahead. After loading all 13, I measured some of them and the higher charges were longer. Well... That won't do for a ladder test or really anything. So, I thought about it for a while. Ultimately I just pulled the bullets and started over.
This time, instead of using an arbitrary COL from the manual, I used the magazine from the rifle to determine how long I could load the bullets. My first round, I put on the press and ran it into the die, took it out and tried to put it in the magazine. When it "barely" fit. I measured the round from the ogive with a comparator and got 2.223 (not sure what the COL from the tip of the bullet was, around 2.84 or so). Then I loaded the rest of the batch increasing each rung by .2 grains. I measured every round the same as the first and adjusted the seating stem ever so slightly as needed on the higher charges to get them all the same length: 2.223 from the olive. Seemed to work pretty well, I measured them all again once I was done and they were all within .001 of each other, not bad for an amateur with a crappy single-stage Lee press.
Any thoughts or opinions on this from you guys with more handloading experience? I'd rather not blow up my rifle, or my face for that matter.
This weekend, I loaded some 165gn Fed TBT's for the .308 using Big Game. The max load in the published data is 51grns (which sure seems like a lot for .308). I was loading a 13 round ladder test with my highest charge being 51gn. I didn't measure each round, just got the seating stem where I wanted it for a COL of 2.8 and went ahead. After loading all 13, I measured some of them and the higher charges were longer. Well... That won't do for a ladder test or really anything. So, I thought about it for a while. Ultimately I just pulled the bullets and started over.
This time, instead of using an arbitrary COL from the manual, I used the magazine from the rifle to determine how long I could load the bullets. My first round, I put on the press and ran it into the die, took it out and tried to put it in the magazine. When it "barely" fit. I measured the round from the ogive with a comparator and got 2.223 (not sure what the COL from the tip of the bullet was, around 2.84 or so). Then I loaded the rest of the batch increasing each rung by .2 grains. I measured every round the same as the first and adjusted the seating stem ever so slightly as needed on the higher charges to get them all the same length: 2.223 from the olive. Seemed to work pretty well, I measured them all again once I was done and they were all within .001 of each other, not bad for an amateur with a crappy single-stage Lee press.
Any thoughts or opinions on this from you guys with more handloading experience? I'd rather not blow up my rifle, or my face for that matter.