Ladder Test for finding powder charge

[It’s Bucky]

@ImBillT you’ve put a lot of thought into this. What are your thoughts on the following:

How many random .25MOA 3-shot groups can you find in these photos? Are these .25MOA rifles or 1MOA rifles? Would you throw any of the shots out as ‘flyers’ when determining your group size or zero?

All 4 loads are the cheapest factory ammunition I could find for each rifle. I chickened out on shooting 10 with the 6.5CM, but wish I would have.

 

[Dougfirtree]

This thread, and some gentle challenging from my brother, has been making me take a dive into the subject of sample size and reloading. Way behind the curve, I know... I've been aware, but resistant to the idea that findings that seemed meaningful to me, probably weren't and resistant to a model of reloading that seems to require even more expensive and hard to find components.
Looking at data and some of the big tests done by Hornady and others is making me reckon with the reality of this stuff, and I'm thinking a lot about some of the ways that load development can be reconceptualized to get better data and not go broke (especially since I'm just reloading for hunting and hunting practice). I've enjoyed hearing people's methods. Keep them coming!

 

[Frequently Banned Troll]

@It’s Bucky Those are pretty insane groups
For factory ammo!

 

[ImBillT]

@ImBillT you’ve put a lot of thought into this. What are your thoughts on the following:

How many random .25MOA 3-shot groups can you find in these photos? Are these .25MOA rifles or 1MOA rifles? Would you throw any of the shots out as ‘flyers’ when determining your group size or zero?

All 4 loads are the cheapest factory ammunition I could find for each rifle. I chickened out on shooting 10 with the 6.5CM, but wish I would have.

I would consider th 6.5CM to be a more accurate rifle than 1 MOA, but not the other three, only because I don’t see data that suggests otherwise, and none of those groups look like what you would see in a ladder test from a .25-.5MOA rifle. Obviously you weren’t shooting a ladder test. I would not consider any of them fliers. I don’t consider a shot to be a flier unless I feel myself flinch, and then I don’t say “look how good this is except for that flier”. That said, using cheap ammo, it’s likely that something about the ammo caused the groups to be around 1MOA, and likely that better ammo would shoot better, but I’m not going to guess how much better. I honestly haven’t shot a single round of factory center fire rifle ammo in well over 20 years. Likely fewer than 100 in my lifetime. So if you post tiny groups with something else, that’s great. And yes it’s possible for a rifle to shoot some excellent three shot groups occasionally simply due to random distribution. There’s a reason that no competitions use three shot groups. But even then, in your targets, other than the 6.5CM, there are not three consecutive shots in .25MOA anywhere in them, except possibly the one where I can’t find shot number five. Also, I’ve seen the Hornady 140BTHP shoot very well for others. You may not shrink groups a ton with different ammo for the 6.5CM, but you might.

The targets that I posted were not the occasional three shot groups that were phenomenal. The three shots at 100yds in a very small hole(first group posted) were the first three shots on a clean barrel, the second target posted was the next three shots at 200yds. So that’s six consecutive shots, and the 200yd group was small enough that if it had been five shots in a sanctioned match it would be a new world record. Those two groups were 156EOLs. The 130VLDs were shot the next day. They’re what I decided to hunt with, and I dialed them to the center and shot three. I shot those groups in front a benchrest hall of fame member, and he said “you know you’ll never a shoot an another group like that in your life”. The next day when I zeroed the 130’s he said “Stop shooting that gun, it’s perfect, and you can’t do anything now but make it worse”. No I have not shot any more world record sized groups at 200yds. Yes I have shot more .25MOA amd smaller groups at 200yds. I quit shooting the 156’s on animal, so I have only shot one more group with them. It was tiny. They’ve shot the smallest groups from that rifle. The small group at 200yds is “in the zeros”. That is .0xxx MOA. Benchrest shooters have given me free barrels because they shot in the threes. That is .3xxx MOA.

The larger the average group a rifle shoots is, the more shots it takes to prove that tuning did something. You quickly get into a real where you have to spend more time and ammo to take mediocre to slightly less mediocre than is probably worth it compared to being able to quickly go from pretty good to great with a rifle that shoots well enough for you to trust what the paper is telling you without having to figure out what was tuning and what was random.

The first photo is the same rifle just before a hunt on a different year. The second photo is the same rifle, shot with 140Elite hunters just after the group in the zeros with the 156EOL’s. It was sighted in with 140’s. That’s why the 156’s were off center, and why I came back the next day to zero it with 130’s once I decided that I was going to use the 130’s.

 

[ImBillT]

This thread, and some gentle challenging from my brother, has been making me take a dive into the subject of sample size and reloading. Way behind the curve, I know... I've been aware, but resistant to the idea that findings that seemed meaningful to me, probably weren't and resistant to a model of reloading that seems to require even more expensive and hard to find components.
Looking at data and some of the big tests done by Hornady and others is making me reckon with the reality of this stuff, and I'm thinking a lot about some of the ways that load development can be reconceptualized to get better data and not go broke (especially since I'm just reloading for hunting and hunting practice). I've enjoyed hearing people's methods. Keep them coming!

Statistics definitely need to be considered, and the less accurate a rifle is, the larger the sample size has to be to show the difference between tuning and random shot distribution, and that gets ridiculous fast. If a rifle isn’t shooting really really well, I’m not likely to bother trying to tune it.

You can’t take 5-6 random loads, shot three shots with each, and declare the one that shot the best group to be the best load. There’s a very high probability that you’re not going to be able to repeat the results of that test. Especially if all the groups weren’t fairly small.

 

[44hunter45]

I think trying to school @Frequently Banned Troll on practical shooting is kind of funny. Kurt has put more pounds of game meat on the ground than I ever will.

Suppose not.

... Also had to accept the reality that I do really want a higher velocity out of my hunting rifle and I really wouldn’t choose to give up 200 fps for a tighter group.

This is me.

I want my hunting rifles to hit as hard as safely possible. SUB MOA is just a bonus. I have never taken a 500 yard shot in the field. We are figuratively aiming at a dot on a volleyball. I don't have to hit the dot to pop the volleyball. I want that dot to be the focus of my attention, but I don't sweat missing it so long as I pop the volleyball. Aim small, miss small if you want to say it that way.

I will take that 1 MOA rifle and make sure I can bang a 6" gong with it from practical field situations. If I can't, I need to shorten my range before I change my load.

What really interests me is how much time some handloaders spend to get 1/2 MOA groups when they spend far less time practicing wind calls and knowing their ballistics.