anyone try / use TAC in 308
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Blue68f100
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One of my shooting neighbors has used it with very good results. I don't have the load info to past on. Tac has been one of the powders that has surprised me on the results I get. It seams every thing I try it in it preforms very well.
Love it for making 7.62x51 M80 clone ammo, and there is very good 168 grain data too:
http://www.ramshot.com/load-data/
Extremely clean burning, meters like micro ball bearings, good load density, and I believe has added flash suppressants, maybe even anti-fouling additives as well. Use it for other military surplus type rounds, and it does well for those too... Like it right up there with AA2460, for these applications.
http://www.ramshot.com/load-data/
Extremely clean burning, meters like micro ball bearings, good load density, and I believe has added flash suppressants, maybe even anti-fouling additives as well. Use it for other military surplus type rounds, and it does well for those too... Like it right up there with AA2460, for these applications.
I've gotten good results using it with 130 gr Barnes TTSX bullets and I think it would be OK for bullets up to 150 gr. Heavier than that and there may be better options. I wouldn't buy a pound to try with 168's, but since you already have it, it won't hurt anything to try.
WelshShooter
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I've used it in .308 for 155gr projectiles, no experience with 168gr so cannot comment there. It worked pretty well, I had excellent accuracy at 100m using a relatively load, I think it was 42.5gr with bullets seated to around 0.005" off the lands. For long range shooting at ~1,000 yards this load is naff, especially from a 20" barrel as the velocity was just way too low. The accuracy at 100m wasn't amazing with higher powder charges, but thinking back it was probably me. It was a Tikka T3 so it was very light and the recoil was actually quite harsh considering (and I shoot 8mm Mauser full loads!).
Ok, so it's time for me to quit wondering about this and try it.
I am going to load up 50, 168 grain SMKs with RamShot and see how they shoot. I will probably shoot them tomorrow.
I am a dyed in the wool Varget man. In the two .308 rifles I have ever owned, I tried them with Varget and it produced good accuracy and low standard of deviation, so I never really played around with trying anything else. But, I am down to the bottom of my last bottle. Yesterday I was going to go buy some but then I thought about it and I have a lot of powder sitting around here. Why not try it ?
So, I dug out a jug of H-4895 and today I shot 50 of them. My worst group at 100 yards was just over .7. The standard of deviation of these loads was not as good as with Varget but my best load was .51" and an SD of 8.7.
So the brass is in the tumbler and if I have time tonight I am going to reload them with 168 grain MatchKings and Ramshot TAC and see how they shoot tomorrow.
I am going to load up 50, 168 grain SMKs with RamShot and see how they shoot. I will probably shoot them tomorrow.
I am a dyed in the wool Varget man. In the two .308 rifles I have ever owned, I tried them with Varget and it produced good accuracy and low standard of deviation, so I never really played around with trying anything else. But, I am down to the bottom of my last bottle. Yesterday I was going to go buy some but then I thought about it and I have a lot of powder sitting around here. Why not try it ?
So, I dug out a jug of H-4895 and today I shot 50 of them. My worst group at 100 yards was just over .7. The standard of deviation of these loads was not as good as with Varget but my best load was .51" and an SD of 8.7.
So the brass is in the tumbler and if I have time tonight I am going to reload them with 168 grain MatchKings and Ramshot TAC and see how they shoot tomorrow.
someguy2800
Member
I tried it with 150 and 168 grain bullets. I didn't chrono it but I'm sure it was plenty fast. It did not group as well as varget or H4895. Strangely I also noticed it smelled funny when burnt. It meters great in my lee auto drum for loading larger qty's of 223, but I don't like using it in my lyman powder dispenser as it is staticy and hard to clean up.
Ok, sorry this took so long. As the popular saying goes......."Life got in the way".
So, I tried this powder today with 168 grain Sierra MatchKings. The manual shows the following load data:
168 SIERRA HPBT MK
39.4 grains = 2,511
43.7 grains = 2,730
62,000 psi
2.800" OAL
I used Peterson brass ( https://petersoncartridge.ecwid.com/ ) that had been loaded 4-5 times. The brass was trimmed, primer pockets uniformed, flash holes deburred. Shoulders bumped back two thousandths. Powder charges weighed to within one tenth of a grain. Chronograph was the Magnetospeed V3 ( http://www.magnetospeed.com/products/chronographs/ ), Rifle is a Savage-Ashbury ( http://www.savagearms.com/firearms/model/10SavAshburyPrecision ) that I traded for a couple weeks ago. I have fired about 200 rounds through the rifle and it seems to be a very good shooter, especially for a factory rifle. Scope is a SWFA SS 16x.
So let's start off by saying this powder/bullet combo gave me the worst group I have ever fired in this rifle (probably all my fault not the load or the rifle, it was my first group of the day and was about 1.5") along with the worst standard of deviation (not that the SDs were horrible, but the other two powders I have tried in this gun gave me excellent SDs) I have ever gotten in this rifle. That being said, the results were fairly good. The accuracy was very good. I wouldn't balk at using this powder/bullet combo in the future.
I am not really interested in extremely light loads, so I started with 41.7 grains of TAC and went up to 43.7 grains in half grain increments. I fired 10 rounds of each load into two, five round groups at 100 yards.
41.7 grains gave me 2629 fps with a 9.1 standard of deviation. Best of two groups = .669"
42.2 grains gave me 2666 fps with a 19.2 standard of deviation (more about this later) Best of two groups = .838"
42.7 grains gave me 2710 fps with a 12.3 standard of deviation. Best of two groups = .750"
43.2 grains gave me 2738 fps with a 11.2 standard of deviation. Best of two groups = .770"
43.7 grains gave me 2764 fps with a 14.3 standard of deviation. Best of two groups = .541"
Again, these velocities were a 10 shot average and the SD is for 10 shots. The group size was the best one out of the two groups fired with each load.
So the 42.2 grain load.................... Something weird happened.
I am going to try to attach photos of my targets. Assuming that works, you will see that my first group with this load had my first four rounds going into one small ragged hole. Then my last shot was way below the rest of the group which caused me to look at my chronograph to see if something was amiss. Indeed it was. This shot was 98 fps slower than the previous shot (it was 2636 fps). Why, I have no idea ????? Then I started the next group and the first shot of that group was similar velocity (2631 fps). Then everything returned to normal. So IF I removed those two shots, 42.2 grains of TAC would have resulted in 2675 fps eight shot average with a standard of deviation of 8.8. But those two consecutive shots were way slower than the other 8 for some reason and it ruined the one group and it skewed the SD. When I put the ammo in the box, did I put those two in the wrong row ????? I believe this might have been the best load if I could take out those two "bad" rounds. That would have been the best SD and it was headed to the best group.
So anyway, I am going to try to post images of my targets. I am not the best shot in the world, but I try.
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cougar1717
Member
TAC is a 308 powder - use it according to the data. I had similar results as 444 - it's ok, but there are better options. A temp-sensitive ball powder is not going to perform as consistently as an extruded powder, which isn't going to perform as consistently as an extruded powder with a temp coating, like Varget or H4895. Tac is great for a semi-auto because there is plenty of gas to work with, but (on average) it's not going to set any accuracy records.
Blue68f100
Member
I've had that happen many time, 5th shot flier
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What I found was that the brass was not consistent on case volume or weight. I weighted them afterwards. One thing I have found on TAC is that it has a fairly small node. So it's very sensitive to case volume. But if every thing is pretty consistent it preforms very well with normal ±0.1gr deviations.
.What I found was that the brass was not consistent on case volume or weight. I weighted them afterwards. One thing I have found on TAC is that it has a fairly small node. So it's very sensitive to case volume. But if every thing is pretty consistent it preforms very well with normal ±0.1gr deviations.
I've had that happen many time, 5th shot flier
What I found was that the brass was not consistent on case volume or weight. I weighted them afterwards. One thing I have found on TAC is that it has a fairly small node. So it's very sensitive to case volume. But if every thing is pretty consistent it preforms very well with normal ±0.1gr deviations.
In this case, I doubt that was the problem.
The reason simply being the fact that it occurred in two consecutive rounds out of 50. I just think the odds of having two cases that don't have the same volume or weight happening to be randomly sorted so that they were next to each other in the box to be too high for this to be realistic.
Something else was going on there. I suppose it's possible that I used the wrong powder charges, but I think it would be hard to do. Those two would have been the 5th and 6th rounds (so right in the middle) out of 10 loaded with that load. I use a Lyman Gen 6 electronic powder measure and use the auto throw function so that when you sit the pan on the scale, the next charge begins dispensing. When I am working up loads, well actually pretty much any time I am loading rifle ammo, I dump any charge that is not right on the money to 1/10 of a grain which is the limit of the scales' resolution. In other words, if I am loading 42.7 grains, the scale either reads 42.7 grains or I dump the charge and throw another one. If I had screwed something up, two rounds right in the middle would seem to be an unlikely place to have the problem when the previous four rounds shot into one hole and the following three clocked right up the expected velocity.
Maybe somehow I had something on my hands that spoiled the primers in those two ? Maybe I contaminated the powder in those two somehow ?
I don't know and I can't say that this ever happened to me before, just like this. What caused me to look at the chronograph is that I have been doing a lot of work with .300 AAC Blackout subsonics. And when you are shooting at 100 yards or beyond with subsonics and you drop a shot low like that (and the shot felt like a good shot) it is always the velocity. It is critical when shooting subsonics at "longish" ranges that you have a tight standard of deviation or you get bad vertical stringing. So, when I dropped this shot low, even though I was shooting .308, my first impulse was to look at the velocity of that shot and sure enough, that was the culprit.
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