How do you measure distance to the lands?

[smoothy8500]

To be clear....

[LynnJr]

I am located in Santa Rosa and shoot in Marin at Circle S ranch which is expected to open soon. The owner had a heart attack and is healing up. I was involved in a local attack and the stitches won't be out until this Friday.
Circle S goes out to 300 yards. Yes on the node location.

[LynnJr]

I am the only reloader that can not measure neck tension, I am the only reloader that has a tension gage, deviation gage, both use pounds and or inches. I can measure crush fit and interferents fit, at one time I had a tool that went up to 100,000 thousands pounds, I was always relieved when the gage dropped pressure. When I hit bottom the pressure did not drop.

F. Guffey

Read more and post less and someday you will understand the terminology. If you get in sugar bears grill you won't be allowed in the crib.

[fguffey]

ghilligan, forgive.

Normally I would say a dummy knows what a dummy is worth; you deserve better. Once I have made one I do not need three more. I am not a guru but below is a link to a forum that has a 64 year old guru +10 +/- a few; in house.

Our In-house Reloading Guru turns 65!! - Shooters Forum

https://www.shootersforum.com/.../77460-our-house-reloading-guru-turns-65-a.html

[ar15barrels]

But isn't "round robin" (or even randomly shooting rounds from different charge-weights) meant to mitigate the effects of barrel temperature on test results?
I mean, if I shot the whole ladder in order, wouldn't the later loads in the ladder be affected by the hotter barrel, and all the early loads would be with a relatively cool barrel?

Set a time pace for each shot.
Say 1 shot per 4 or 5 minutes.
That gives you 4 or 5 minutes to have your downrange spotter on the radio go mark the target and then get back behind a berm before you can fire the next shot.
You send a few sighters to get yourself dialed OFF your aiming point but on the target so you can hold on the CORNER of the big piece of cardboard or the frame but have your first shots landing low on the frame so that the shots for record will "climb" the ladder.
Holding a corner gives you a MUCH better aiming point which is crucial to the success of the test.

Warm the barrel up before you run the test.
Follow the same 1 shot per 4 or 5 minutes routine and after firing say 4-5 shots to get your ladder placement where you want it, you will also have your barrel at operating temperature that you will maintain through the whole string.
After your last sighting shot, have your spotter put up a clean paper sheet to start your ladder.
On each shot, control for chamber time.
That means, leave the case in the chamber the same TIME for every shot.
I do this by not loading the chamber until I am ready to fire.
That way, the round is only in the chamber for a few seconds.
Longer dwell time will warm the powder and give you a higher shot.

[fguffey]

Because of the compulsive gigglers I was not allowed to finish the instructions for the 'transfer'. It reminds me of one of those old time cowboy shows "Lets cut him off at the pass!

F. Guffey

[ghilligan]

Circle S Ranch

I am located in Santa Rosa and shoot in Marin at Circle S ranch which is expected to open soon. The owner had a heart attack and is healing up. I was involved in a local attack and the stitches won't be out until this Friday.

Attack?! I hope your'e doing OK.

I kind of forgotten about Circle S Ranch. I've been there several times, and it's a good place to do testing and chat with some pretty knowledgeable people. I've never met the owner. Let me know if you're headed over there and are in the mood to give me some pointers!

I don't like that it is limited to bench shooting only; I've found that I've picked up some bad body position habits while bench shooting that don't transfer well to prone shooting.

[ghilligan]

Weighing Federal brass

Your brass could be contributing to your unfavorable results compared to factory loads.

...

Peterson makes some NICE brass. Hard case heads, soft annealed necks. Their select grade is weight sorted, and each case in the lot is guaranteed to be within 1 grain (+/- 0.5 grains) of one another.

The regular non-select brass that I bought is still very consistent: I weighed 50 pieces, ranging from 175.1 to 176.3 grains, so even without the guarantee they're about +/- 0.6 of one another.

So, I weighed 11 random pieces of my once-fired Federal brass (trimmed to 2.005"). I stopped at 11 pieces, because it's a huge PITA on my beam scale!

They ranged from 175.5 gr to 178.2 gr, with an average of 176.8 gr (ES 2.7 gr, SD .97, 95% +/- .6 gr, because I couldn't help myself, and ran the numbers through an SD calculator program!).

The one piece of Winchester brass I have (also trimmed to 2.005") weighs 157.0 gr... which goes a long way to explain why it's supposed to hold more powder.

Given my current skill level, in both shooting and reloading, I doubt it's worth my time to weight sort my brass for such a small difference. Am I wrong?

[LynnJr]

You weigh your brass so you get rid of any outliers that will show up as velocity variations.
When you read about people mixing brass headstamps and shooting 1/8 inch groups those are the shooters your ignore button was meant for.