.308 powder ???'s

[biga972]

I have been reloading for a .308 AR it seems to have a lot of powder blast from the muzzel....It has quite a bit about double that of factory loads.

I am using 41.5 grns of Tac which sould be about mid range..This is what gave me the tightest group.

Any ideas (am I just using the wrong powder)

 

[Funshooter45]

I can't say for sure about muzzle flash. I just don't notice if it's there or not. I did try TAC a few times and I couldn't get the accuracy that I got out of Varget. But after using Varget for quite awhile, with good results, I have switched over to RL-15 with even better (slightly) results.

 

[biga972]

I like varget but could not get it to meter very well out of my powder drop.

 

[rozziboy18]

been there done that brother!

worked up a load for my dpms 308lr 2 years ago and started with imr 4350 then went to varget, and ended with rl15. give the rl15 clean burning low flash and accurate as all get out behind a 175 grain smk!

 

[Slamfire]

I don't know a solution.

This weekend I was shooting my 24" Match rifle in 308. The guy running the line came over and said my rifle was producing fireballs at the end of the muzzle.

I was shooting 168 Nosler's with 38 grains IMR 4895, not a hot load at all.


I have seen more and larger fireballs with guys using ball powders.

 

[grubbylabs]

You could also try IMR 4064 It works very well for the 308.

 

[REL1203]

i started with TAC, very quickly tried Varget and RL15, and settled on RL15 and its awesome. Just dont meter worth a crap, but i have a chargemaster I use for my DMPS SASS and R700AAC reloads.

Try RL15, you wont regret it.

 

[biga972]

So you are saying that rl15 does not meter very good .......or are you talking about the varget......I have used varget and know it does not meter very well.

 

[Funshooter45]

Varget and RL-15 meter about the same. I don't think it's all that bad though. Using the Lee Perfect Powder measure, about 8 out of 10 drops are within 0.1 gr. Not quite as good with my Lyman 55 measure. But I load slowly and weigh each load.

 

[Rob96]

RL-15 here as well for 308 Winchester.

 

[biga972]

I have looked at the rl15 load data.....here is a question for all you RL15 users.


The data I can find real quick on the RL15 only has one load.....How do you know where to start and end? I have been used to vargets website giving a starting load and a max load.

 

[mtrmn]

42 gr TAC (or surplus 4895) over Widener's 145gr FMJs is my go-to load for general shooting. Easily groups within 1.5" at 100 with some 3-shot groups in the .5" range. Have noticed no big fireballs with my 20" BAR10 (old bushmaster) with a YHM Phantom flash hider. Where I DID notice the huge fireballs was with Brown Bear ammo. I have not loaded for pure accuracy as of yet and may very well change my powder like others have in the future, but I've had zero problems with TAC.

 

[Funshooter45]

I have looked at the rl15 load data.....here is a question for all you RL15 users.


The data I can find real quick on the RL15 only has one load.....How do you know where to start and end? I have been used to vargets website giving a starting load and a max load.

Yeah, Alliant does it different than Hodgdon for load data. Alliant gives only their MAX load. It is up to you to know that the usual starting load is 10% less than that. So, if they give a maz of 46.0 gr of RL-15, the normal starting load would be 41.4 gr.

 

[Flintknapper]

Rl-15
imr 4350
h322

 

[MEHavey]

24" Match rifle in 308. The guy running the line came over and said my rifle was producing fireballs at the end of the muzzle. I was shooting 168 Nosler's with 38 grains IMR 4895, not a hot load at all.

And therein lay the problem.
That particular combo produces only 35ksi -- leading to underburning/dumping 4% out the 24" muzzle.
Had you used more powder -- say 44gr @ 53.5ksi -- it would dropped that to ~1%.

biga972's TAC load (168gr bullet?), however, should have been a 99% burner. What primer did you use?

 

[jack44]

varget for my .308 and .223

 

[Jasper1573]

+1 for RL-15...tried Varget, IMR 4064, Win 748, IMR 4895, and so on. Found the best accuracy with RL-15...42.5 to 43 grains under an SMK 175 or Hornady AMAX 178, and it will shoot very consistently in a .308 Win with 1:11 twist 24 inch barrel. I vary the charge for summer and winter a few tenths of a grain as I find RL-15 is slightly susceptible to summer vs winter temp changes. IMR 4064 works well also and requires about .5 grain less than RL-15 to get similar performance, but the IMR 4064 doesn't meter well at all. I have to trickle every charge.

 

[nyc71]

For the most part same here, I also use H335.


"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety"- Benjamin Franklin

 

[Strykervet]

I like Varget in autoloaders. I weigh each load and went to a digital dispenser, so the powder's metering qualities mean nothing to me. Every load gets trickled.

I haven't tried it in .308, but the H335 works well in 6.5Grendel and 5.56mm.

 

[1stmarine]

Varget gives you several benefits. Easy to meter(hard to overload), good in may barrels and it is almost insensitive to temperature changes. Something very important in hunting season with the cold weather. You see spread variations of single digits when in others you might see in excess of 100fps difference when the thermometer drops.
I use other powders but for a nice hassle free reloads varget is the ticket. CCI primers are good.

 

[biga972]

using cci LR

 

[jmorris]

I prefer 748 over TAC but if 41.5 of TAC gives you the best groups just keep you eye on the target when you pull the trigger and you won't even notice the flash.

 

[Jim Watson]

The data I can find real quick on the RL15 only has one load.....How do you know where to start and end? I have been used to vargets website giving a starting load and a max load.

Yeah, Alliant does it different than Hodgdon for load data. Alliant gives only their MAX load. It is up to you to know that the usual starting load is 10% less than that.

I would not say it is "up to you to know...", the opening page of the Alliant data site clearly states it. Now if you get into such a big rush to see some numbers as to ignore the introduction, you end up with the problem above. It IS up to you to read and understand the instructions.

 

[USSR]

I was shooting 168 Nosler's with 38 grains IMR 4895, not a hot load at all.

That's a good midrange load, SlamFire. I use the same load with 37.2gr of IMR4895 for 200 yard competition. That's the nice thing about IMR4895. You can download it and get good accuracy at modest velocities. I tried the same thing with both Varget and RL15, and found out they are not particularly good at low pressure levels.

Don

 

[Rockfish61]

I have been competing in F-Class with my 308 POF 20", 1-10 RH twist. Currently (on a calm day ) I have been holding less than 1 MOA at 1000 yds using Sierra 155 HPBT Match (not the Palma), 44.9gr IMR 4320, CCI LR, Hornady Match Brass, COAL 2.800. Measured velocity was 2705 +/- 18 at 6ft from the muzzle on 10 rnd strings. I tried a lot of different powder/primer configurations to get there.

Every rifle is different and it takes time to work up that "Sweet Load"

I am currently working up a load for the 175s.