A Good Day At The Range!

Stopped by the gunsmith on the way to the range today to see if there might be a problem with head space on new (used) Savage model 112 25.06. The reason I was concerned as some of the brass from loads I fired last week were showing signs of incipient case head separation. The gun passed both the go and no go tests so I assume it was something else is causing this to happen. I had loaded up some more rounds with 49.5, 50. and 50.5 grains of H3841SC that I had only neck sized so headed on over to the range to see if these would do any better. I shot 2 5-shot groups of each weight using Nosler BT's and all performed well, but the 50 gr. 5-shot groups were both under an inch at 100 yds. None of the brass fired today showed any signs of head separation after being necked sized. I have 50 new pieces of brass that I am going to try next to see how they do. If no signs of separation with these then it must be that I was pushing the shoulders back too far or the brass was worn out.


While waiting for the gun to cool down between the 5 shots groups I picked up some brass that was left over from the 4th of July shooting. Mostly, 45 ACP (I only pick it up to trade as I sold all of my 45's last year), but did find a handful of .223 and .380.

Walkalong thanks for the link, very informative. I've dealt with this problem with some older Swiss rifles and managed to make reloads that would work when GP-11 ammo would separate on the first firing.

Walkalong,

Thanks again, great info regarding this subject. I will say that I had a lot of help figuring out the Swiss problem from the folks over on the Swiss Rifle board. Before asking over there, I thought these 2 rifles were headed to the scrap bin based on the cost of having the barrel replaced or re-chambered. Found that by using Graf and Prvi Partizan brass (which apparently allows more stretch than GP-11 brass from the late 70's) I was able to fire form some cases strictly for use in these 2 rifles and reload this brass numerous times without is showing any signs of separation. I also when to lighter bullets and lower charges. I also purchased several boxes of Graf and Prvi Partizan ammo that I shot and use that brass strictly for these two gun.

It was late last night when I made this post and didn't have a photo of the target ready. Not sure what happened (or what I did) in the 1st group to cause the 2 flyers but I will give this load another try next week. The 2nd target was almost a duplicate the 2nd group of 5 with 50 grs. For the shooting I do, this for now will be my "favorite" load for this rifle. The 3rd group started spreading out to over an inch but again this was mostly my fault as it was hot and I should have waited for a cooler day to shoot these rounds. I will probably try some 100 gr. bullets since I already have a couple of boxes on hand and maybe some Varget powder as it worked great in an older S&W 1500 in 25.06 that I no longer have.