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Jere wrote:
>>>The
30/06 has stood me in good stead all these years since I built it on a
surplus
Springfield 1903 barreled action bought for $20 from government
surplus as a
teenager. I have a box or two of 250 Gr Barnes? bullets
but have never loaded any
cartridges with them. Say some more about
what you find to be a good load when you
do,
eh?>>>
I could not sleep so I got up and checked the
supply of the 30-06 ammo I have. I have plenty of them of different kinds so I
will not load the 250grain Woodleigh right now. Still I have made the basic
planning and found a starting load but not for my Woodleigh bullet,
but for the 250 grain Barnes that you have. I found it in a handloading book
from Finland:
Bullet: Barnes 250grains Original RNSP. Primer
CCI200. Case: Lapua. LOA 81mm. Barrel 620mm. Pitch 1/10"
The powders are the Vihtavuori
N-powders:
N160 starting load 40,9 grains 580 m/s. Max 47,8
grains 648 m/s
N560 starting load 43,7 grains 599 m/s. Max 51,8
grains 673 m/s
N165 starting load 42,7 grains 584 m/s. Max 49,5
grains 653 m/s
The max. performance for the 220 grain Hornady
and Woodleigh bullets with N560 in this book are pretty much the same that
I have developed and chronografed so I guess the 250 grain loads are
rather OK also.
I will use the N560 powder but the hotter
Federal 215 primer suggesting that I should reduce the max. load with 1 grain,
about. Then again I will use the Norma cases that have a lot more boiler room
than the Lapua cases so I will add the lost 1 grain again to the max. load,
and perhaps even more. The 220 grain Woodleigh bullets I have measured use
to be just slightly larger in diameter than the 220 grain Hornady, and the
jacket seems to be a bit thicker and harder, creating higher pressures, so
what the max. load will be is finally determined by the case head expansion. I
allow 1/100 of a millimetre.
The N560 powder is a high energy double base powder
burning very slowly. It has not been critical when reaching max. loads and I
have experimentally with 220 grain bullets been well over the limits
recommended in the loading books. The 220 grains Woodleigh with a set-back safe
load leaves the mussel of my gun at a measured 800 m/s. The barrel I have
is not a really "normal" one, but it comes from the British ARS (Arms
Restoration Service) and they claim it is 30% stiffer than an ordinary rifle
barrel and hence most likely harder and more smooth, more like a machine gun
barrel perhaps. I guess the bullets might pass it more easy than an ordinary
barrel. That could explain why I get a little better performance from it
than the old barrel that was pretty ordinary. Anyway it is not stainless but
made from some carbon steel mixture.
The drawback with the N560 powder is the heavy
fouling of the barrel and the very impressive mussel blast and flame - in
the 300 Winchester Magnum class. I use to call it for "the heavy fuel oil of the
gun powders". If you don't like to clean your barrel often, and do not like to
use ear protection, then use something else instead  ) The characteristic of
these type of powders also make them sensitive to too light charges, they just
might, in very rare cases, detonate unless ignited properly. Therefore I
use the hot Federal 215 primer, it will ensure a fast ignition of the entire
mass of powder and not just whisk it around in the case with a delayed ignition
and possible following detonation as a result. Interestingly the Fed. 215 primer
was originally developed for the extremely large 378 Weatherby Magnum case -
unless my memory fails me.
Norma MRP and MRP2 burn cleanly and are almost as
efficient as the N560, of the Scandinavian slow burning powders. Then again you
have hundreds of different superb "native" powders over there. We can
have them here too but they are due to the extra cost of the dangerous goods
transports rather expensive, once on this side of the
big pool.
There is one more thing with the 220 - 250 grains
bullets in the 30-06 that is not out of importance. The zero free-flight over
all length of the cartridge would be 86 mm in my Mauser 98 action rifle but
since the cartridge has to fit into the magazine and feed reliably from there I
have to reduce it to 83 mm, or perhaps even more when I have tried it out
thoroughly. The bullet will take up a lot of boiler room and we will see what it
does to the final charge and performance.
Whatever, when you are hunting, moderate and safe
pressures are always to prefer before highest possible speeds. Nobody likes a
case that has stuck in the chamber, particularly not when your grizzly is coming
))
The only doubt I might have about this bullet is
this: Will the 1/10 twist in my barrel stabilize this very long bullet? I guess
the only way to find out is to shoot at paper at different distances and see if
it makes key-holes at some distance. I believe that somewhere at Barnes website
there is a recommendation for the 30-06 of a 1/9 or 1/9,5 twist.... I presume
they think about their very long all-copper X-bullets...
There has lately been a slowly growing interest in
bullets with a high sectional density. The interest comes from those who have
been to Africa and failed with high speed bullets on dangerous game. The 375HH
for example has a for long time been misused with light 270 grains
bullets. The old truth from the British era of big game hunting, that slow but
heavy and long bullets at moderate speeds of around 2100 - 2300fps, that
penetrate really deeply without too fast expansion or no expansion at all, are
the best and most reliable medicine for dangerous big game.
For example the many otherwise perfectly sound
German cartridges never became popular in Africa since the Germans for some
reason refused to load them with strong, heavy bullets. Hence the 375 HH and
other big game cartridges are again loaded with a lot heavier bullets that
travel slowly and penetrate really deep, instead of exploding in the shoulder of
the creature that is capable of powderising you before you have had
time to catch it up with the next round. The small British 318 Westley Richards
that I mentioned was considered as a superb cartridge for anything but dangerous
game, only due to the long, heavy and slow bullet it was loaded with. It is even
today mentioned in the Swedish hunting magazines.
I remember many years ago when the Lapua Mega was
new on the market. It was of course marketed as the best bullet ever made. One
week I shot a wild boar cleanly through both shoulders. The next week I
bombarded a galloping moose with the same bullet several times. The first
one took about 2 feet too far back but the next one hit in the middle of the
shoulder but failed to drop it on the spot. It fell over shortly afterwards,
just 50 meters short of a road with heavy traffic. It would have been nice if it
had dropped dead on the road)
When I investigated it I found that the bullet,
that I expected to break both shoulders of the animal, had exploded in the
first shoulder and only pieces of bones had gone into the lungs and bled it to
death. I never found a trace of that bullet. Well, it has been improved
since then but I am very reluctant to use it again.
Well, well....a discussion about dogs might come to
an end at last, but a discussion about hunting ammo will never end.
Long after the stars have gone out and the universe has vaporised or been sucked
into a black hole you will hear the echo of the only really eternal happening in
the former universe, the echo from the handloaders quarrelling about the best
combination of bullets, powders, primers and cases!
Torsti
Borta Med Vindens Kennel "Ask not what your dog can do for you. Ask
what you can do for your dog." www.rospigan.net |