Hey guys guess what? I made it to the range today to give Gertrude a test drive with the ammo I’d made. Sorry for scattering things on a bunch of different threads, this has been quite an undertaking for me but now that I have things pretty squared away I’ll try to keep everything here.
I started things out at the 50 yard rifle range, had the whole thing to myself which was nice and allowed me to stroll down to the target when I wanted to take a closer look. Started things off with 28 grains of H4895 and put four rounds within an inch of each other which is just amazing (look close as two were in the same hole). Only problem was they’re about 7” too high.
I really should have stopped there but what’s the fun in that? Moving up to 29 grains everything seemed to fall apart rapidly resulting in 7”-10” groups if you can call them that. I didn’t even bother with the 30 grain loads I’d made figuring they’d be even more out of line. Heck, I’d probably have to aim at the bottom of the target to hit the top. In any event, I then moved on to 25 grains of Reloader 7 and things improved again but still nothing like the initial load. About my only options at this point, that is if I want to continue shooting at this range (50 yard max) is to slow things down or move to a heavier bullet. If ya’ll have any suggestions I’m open to hearing them.....please . Here’s a pic of the load data I used and in the pic is the 8X72r next to a 30-30. Right now I’m at what I’d call a starting load and I’m not sure about going lighter on the powder charge concerned things could go BOOM and not bang. I do know that I could move to a pistol powder ie Unique and drop 100-200fps but the chamber pressures shoot above the limit I’ve set of 20,000CUP. I’m going to have to think on this one a bit.
Well next it was off for a round of trap and again I had the entire field to myself. Plopped in one of the 16 gauge BP loads I’d made, called for the bird and nailed it. At least I think I did but it was hard to tell through the smoke screen I’d produced . That was just cool. Things rapidly deteriorated with my hit to miss ratio ending up only hitting 10/25. I did figure out the problem though, that being that I need to take up a much bigger lead on the bird. Man, the shot is moving so slowly you can see it clearly as it flies through the air. All in all I’m very happy with the load of 2.5 Drams and 1oz shot. No need to change anything in my book, nice and mild for the old girl.
That’s really about it for now. I’ll be reading about different loads for the rifle and see what I can come up with as a solution.
Stay tuned
I started things out at the 50 yard rifle range, had the whole thing to myself which was nice and allowed me to stroll down to the target when I wanted to take a closer look. Started things off with 28 grains of H4895 and put four rounds within an inch of each other which is just amazing (look close as two were in the same hole). Only problem was they’re about 7” too high.
I really should have stopped there but what’s the fun in that? Moving up to 29 grains everything seemed to fall apart rapidly resulting in 7”-10” groups if you can call them that. I didn’t even bother with the 30 grain loads I’d made figuring they’d be even more out of line. Heck, I’d probably have to aim at the bottom of the target to hit the top. In any event, I then moved on to 25 grains of Reloader 7 and things improved again but still nothing like the initial load. About my only options at this point, that is if I want to continue shooting at this range (50 yard max) is to slow things down or move to a heavier bullet. If ya’ll have any suggestions I’m open to hearing them.....please . Here’s a pic of the load data I used and in the pic is the 8X72r next to a 30-30. Right now I’m at what I’d call a starting load and I’m not sure about going lighter on the powder charge concerned things could go BOOM and not bang. I do know that I could move to a pistol powder ie Unique and drop 100-200fps but the chamber pressures shoot above the limit I’ve set of 20,000CUP. I’m going to have to think on this one a bit.
Well next it was off for a round of trap and again I had the entire field to myself. Plopped in one of the 16 gauge BP loads I’d made, called for the bird and nailed it. At least I think I did but it was hard to tell through the smoke screen I’d produced . That was just cool. Things rapidly deteriorated with my hit to miss ratio ending up only hitting 10/25. I did figure out the problem though, that being that I need to take up a much bigger lead on the bird. Man, the shot is moving so slowly you can see it clearly as it flies through the air. All in all I’m very happy with the load of 2.5 Drams and 1oz shot. No need to change anything in my book, nice and mild for the old girl.
That’s really about it for now. I’ll be reading about different loads for the rifle and see what I can come up with as a solution.
Stay tuned
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