As Herman's post indicated........

[Richard]

The weather was quite nice. Anticipating the temp's going up to the 70's, I brought the rod and cooler along. And, it became necessary if one wanted to shoot fairly rapidly. Herman put about 7 or 8 shots down range without cooling and then blew a sabot
The day started out cloudy with virtually no wind. I had two wind flags with Daisey wheels, vanes and tails. It was not until mid morning when the sun started coming out that the wind picked up in mostly a left to right direction. The way our range is situated, it is sort of tiered.............100 is just slightly lower than the 200 and the 300 is slightly above that. About 75 yrds prior to the 300 is surrounded by high pine trees and not much wind gets in..........However, the area from the 100 yard berm up to that point is wide open to the left and subject to a lot of left to right wind. Herman pretty much started out shooting at 300 yards prior to the wind getting up which showed in his results........As always, he is a good trigger puller!
My intention was to do some serious testing with the triplex I shot last week that gave me good results. In particular, I wanted to try it with the 195 Barnes (targets 1 & 2) both plain and knurled. NO real significant difference
Note: All targets 1 thru 6 were shot with the same triplex load:
10/22/35...........N-110/N-120/H-322
Target #3 utilized the 200 gr. XTP
Target #4 the 200 SST
I then took the 200 SST out to 300 yards (after the wind picked up : (I should have cropped that picture and left out shots 2 & 3 ;D) As can be seen, shots two and three drifted out to the right but shots 4 & 5 formed one of "Deadeye's" nice TWO shot groups ;D (I am only bustin's because he indicated he only shoots two and three shot groups) But................My point is: this is what happens when shooting long(er) distances and particularly with the "rocks" we shoot in our ML's
Moving on to target six, still with the same triplex, I switched to the 200 gr. FTX sabot less. It shot pretty good but velocity dropped a good 100 fps. I would not call the seating pressure tight but more on the looser side A .060" veggie wad was used.
So now, I did a little switch-a-roo with the triplex...........I upped the N-120 to 23 gr. and dropped the H-322 to 34 gr. Shot # one printed about where it should have.............shot #2 just seemed to make the first hole just look a little "darker or........maybe a hair bigger?". I had Bill watching thru his spotting scope Then shot #3 only slightly opened it at 7:00 but not by much Now both Bill and Herman were looking....Bill said: "Man, I would not shoot another shot and ruin that one!" Since I still wanted a five shot group, I decided to move to the next bull to fire the last two shots.............Yup, shot #4 would have messed it up But shot #5 would have only opened it up from .054" to .447". Needless to say, that was my all time best three shot group with a ML. It should also be noted that this load gave a relatively small ES. My experience tells me that loads with low ES's will generally produce the smallest groups.
For my last target, I used the original triplex of 10/22/35 but substituted H-4198 for the N-120. The velocity stayed pretty close to the N-120 loading and accuracy was somewhat similar.
In mentioning the low ES's and accuracy, I am following Deadeye's progress and would like to see some strings of shots to see how low his ES's are. A good bullet, as well constructed as it might be, cannot produce good accuracy if the velocity fluctuates too much particularly at those longer ranges.
Richard

[alphaburnt]

I would like to see the PT of the load #7, or have you done it already?

[Richard]

No, no PT on that load alpha. Here is the thing.............I have gotten comfortable with these triplex loads and if you notice, I am not pushing them. The PT's I ran on others loads indicate that they are well below all of the duplex loads I have shot. This whole thing of mixing or layering powders is nothing new.....its been done for a long time in other disciplines. The Aussie's do it all the time since they don't have access to all the powders we do here in the states. So, they mix and match. I have shot and talked with them at 1,000 yard matches here in the states so I know it first hand. As long as you know the powders you are dealing with and how they act as singles, it is just common sense on layering them. After seeing how single fast powders spike and how duplex and triplex loads spread out the pressures, I feel working with the chronograph to produce low ES's is all I need to work up safe accurate loads. For instance, I have shot a lot of both H-4198 and N-120 and know they pretty close in the velocities they produce. So, when I switched them in the triplex, I had not doubt they would produce similar velocities and results. I was more interested in how they affected accuracy and ES's. I will, in the future, substitute 5744 and 4759 in place of N-110. My thought being, is to get powders more readily available to all shooters, that can produce the same results as the V V powders. H-322 has become one of my favorite "main" charges to use. VV N-130 is good but no one can find it? I think it has been discontinued. I have a pretty good supply of it, but that would not last forever so why not work with a powder that is plentiful?
Richard

[alphaburnt]

Okay, I was thinking when I posted about another question I had, do PTs of a load show anything that would indicate they would be a fantastic shooter. That is along the lines I was thinking, I would like to see the PT of that load because it was so accurate. I thought Australians made Hodgdon powder, they should have tons of it? The last two cans of H4831 I have had say they are anyhow?

[alphaburnt]

I found this while looking at gunpowders, it is a chart that is supposed to show gunpowder equivalents for different brands/ designations: www.adi-powders.com.au/handloaders-guide/equivalents.asp


I have not verified this information, just found it and thought I would post it up for you all. I do not even know if it is accurate!

[Richard]

Alph.......Yes, I have seen that chart along with many others. They do give you a general idea of burn rates. They also mix and match bot stick, flake and ball powders.........many which are a no-no with our smoke less ML's. And yes, Hodgedon does make some of their powder in Australia but many of the other brands powders we use are not available. We don't know how good we have it here in the states.
As far as a trace for that load? Maybe if TGinPA gets a chance, in between all the work he is doing with deadeye, he could run one. The next time I bring out the PT I will also run it. Any time you get a load that gives you very low ES's, you see the trace lines overlapping. Look thru all the traces I had run....When the velocities are close, the traces look "nice!"
You have to understand also, the fact that most of the bullets we are shooting in these ML's (with the exception of a very few, such as Parkers) are nothing more than pistol bullets meant to be shot at "mostly" sub-sonic velocities and generally at ranges under 50 yards! There is alot of leeway in the accurate construction of one of these pistol bullets as compared to a benchrest quality custom bullet. I am sure the jacket wall thickness is not held to the tolerance of J-4 benchrest jacket and the lead cores are not cut and squirted to the precision of benchrest core. The multiple dies that put these pistol bullets together are not where near the quality of the carbide dies used to point up benchrest bullets. Actually I believe these pistol bullets have their inner lead core poured from molten lead. This allows for possible air pockets and dirt in the mixture. Any of this can cause an imbalance when the bullet rotates..............particularly when you spin them faster that what a handgun would spin them? So, you could have a perfect pressure trace and low ES's and still have an out of balance bullet to mess up your group!
Unless you got a company like Berger to mass produce a quality, affordable bullet for ML use, getting tiny groups becomes ................."hit or miss!" ;D Keeping your Extreme Spreads as low as possible is the best formula for getting small(er) groups.
Richard