kmw1954
Member
Still working on this and made some headway and also a continuing setback.
First the headway. my original loadings were with a 55gr Hornady Varmint SP (#2266) and it shot fairly well with a ladder of TAC starting at 21.7 and then increasing by .3gr up to 22.9.. The 21.7 stunk and the 22.9 fell off sharply with what looked like an accuracy node between 22.3 and 22.6 gr.. So I laddered 223., 22.4, 22.5 and 22.6 gr.. Not much difference between these loads. I knew the 55gr bullet was on the light side when I started but again it was all I could find locally.
After starting those loads I found some 62gr Hornady at Midway and the price was OK so I purchased 500 and then started a ladder load with this and again the TAC powder. Started at 22.5 up again by .3gr to 22.8, 23.1 and 23.4 gr. There was a vast improvement over the 55gr bullets at all levels with the 23.1 and 23.4 gr showing the best.
I am sure there is much to improve on my part with practice. Both the 22.1 and 22.4 groups were within 1.75" @ 100yds and they were strung out vertically and about 1.2" wide. These were again 6 shot groups and each had 3 shots that were touching.
Now for the setback. I am still getting Failures to Fire and before everyone goes off about high primers and light strikes as in the last thread I have to explain this as I observed this. Today I had 8 different loads to test and I was shooting them in 3 shot strings, 6 shots at each target.
As it worked out I had 8 misfires out of 16 firing cycles. As it turns out each first shot of the session of 3 shots failed to fire. There also was one cycle where there was no misfire and one cycle were there were consecutive misfires.. There were no random misfires, all were on the first shot after loading the magazine. Seems strange to me. Seems a high primer issue would not always fall exactly on the first round, consistently.
First the headway. my original loadings were with a 55gr Hornady Varmint SP (#2266) and it shot fairly well with a ladder of TAC starting at 21.7 and then increasing by .3gr up to 22.9.. The 21.7 stunk and the 22.9 fell off sharply with what looked like an accuracy node between 22.3 and 22.6 gr.. So I laddered 223., 22.4, 22.5 and 22.6 gr.. Not much difference between these loads. I knew the 55gr bullet was on the light side when I started but again it was all I could find locally.
After starting those loads I found some 62gr Hornady at Midway and the price was OK so I purchased 500 and then started a ladder load with this and again the TAC powder. Started at 22.5 up again by .3gr to 22.8, 23.1 and 23.4 gr. There was a vast improvement over the 55gr bullets at all levels with the 23.1 and 23.4 gr showing the best.
I am sure there is much to improve on my part with practice. Both the 22.1 and 22.4 groups were within 1.75" @ 100yds and they were strung out vertically and about 1.2" wide. These were again 6 shot groups and each had 3 shots that were touching.
Now for the setback. I am still getting Failures to Fire and before everyone goes off about high primers and light strikes as in the last thread I have to explain this as I observed this. Today I had 8 different loads to test and I was shooting them in 3 shot strings, 6 shots at each target.
As it worked out I had 8 misfires out of 16 firing cycles. As it turns out each first shot of the session of 3 shots failed to fire. There also was one cycle where there was no misfire and one cycle were there were consecutive misfires.. There were no random misfires, all were on the first shot after loading the magazine. Seems strange to me. Seems a high primer issue would not always fall exactly on the first round, consistently.