captain awesome
Member
I went shooting with a good friend of mine today and had a great time. Both of us bought Savage 338 Lapua target rifles, it just so happens they are 2 serial numbers apart. We were thinking we could do load development together and got a pound of Retumbo and H1000 reloading powders and Federal magnum rifle match primers. Bullets Seated to the lands in both rifles which was exactly the same length.
We started with H1000 shooting Berger's 300 grain tactical what ever bullets.. my rifle shot the first group OK..about .3 Milradians, second group was a bit better, and the third group at 85 grains, pow! First round was a flyer not sure why, but the rest were a one hole 4 shot group at 100 meters. It was the best group I have ever shot with a rifle discounting the first shot flyer. Looking at it you wouldn't have believed four bullets went through it, 2 yes but not four. Just for the heck of it I tried out retumbo. first group was ok, 86 grains was it, one hole clover leaf group. I Fell in love with that rifle and was amazed the drastic change just one grain of powder made to the group size. Ironically the smallest groups were about the same velocity, 2740 FPS.
We both assumed getting identical rifles they would probably like the same loads and shoot similarly.....
NOT SO!
My buddy fired his first group repeating the process, his first group was not quite as good as my first, his second group was worse and it went down hill from there. .6-.9 Mrad depending on the load. When i fired his rifle my groups were just as bad. Nothing we tried worked for his rifle. (We had a reloading table set up out there so we could try different things on the fly.) So its back to the drawing board, I have some milsurp WC867 we can try out, maybe different bullets or primers, but I was surprised how differently the two seemingly identical rifles performed. What works in yours might not work in someone else's. It was an eye opener.
We started with H1000 shooting Berger's 300 grain tactical what ever bullets.. my rifle shot the first group OK..about .3 Milradians, second group was a bit better, and the third group at 85 grains, pow! First round was a flyer not sure why, but the rest were a one hole 4 shot group at 100 meters. It was the best group I have ever shot with a rifle discounting the first shot flyer. Looking at it you wouldn't have believed four bullets went through it, 2 yes but not four. Just for the heck of it I tried out retumbo. first group was ok, 86 grains was it, one hole clover leaf group. I Fell in love with that rifle and was amazed the drastic change just one grain of powder made to the group size. Ironically the smallest groups were about the same velocity, 2740 FPS.
We both assumed getting identical rifles they would probably like the same loads and shoot similarly.....
NOT SO!
My buddy fired his first group repeating the process, his first group was not quite as good as my first, his second group was worse and it went down hill from there. .6-.9 Mrad depending on the load. When i fired his rifle my groups were just as bad. Nothing we tried worked for his rifle. (We had a reloading table set up out there so we could try different things on the fly.) So its back to the drawing board, I have some milsurp WC867 we can try out, maybe different bullets or primers, but I was surprised how differently the two seemingly identical rifles performed. What works in yours might not work in someone else's. It was an eye opener.
