bullest, primers, and powder

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scheaman88

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ok I am on the road to getting started out in reloading and have so questions on what would be best. The bullets I will be purchasing are for my springfield XD-M 40 S&W and for a browning A bolt II long range hunter 300 RUM. My questions are what brand and type of bullets would be suggested for both the range and for hunting (hunting only for 300 RUM). Also what would be good powders and primers to use for each of these scenarios? Your inputs are greatly appreciated.
 
Your going to have to experiment quite a bit in order to find this out as each hand gun and rifle can have different taste for powders, bullets, primers and cases.
Usually, People will buy whats cheapest and go from there.

A LB of powder in handgun can last a while. It can last in rifle to but will go rather quickly depending on how hot your loads are. If your gonna plink, Buy what ever suits your needs and cheapest. There are sites that sell FMJ, Plates or lead in bulk.

Powders and primers, Get them at your LGS. That way you can save on haz-mat charges. If you want quality bullets, Your going to have to buy the name brands such as Hornady, Speer, Sieera, Berger, Nosler, ETC.
 
I would start with either Winchester 231 or Alliant Power Pistol for the .40 S&W with 180 grain bullets. A good place to buy bullets is:

http://store.brassmanbrass.com/servlet/-strse-Pistol-Bullets/Categories?sfs=56c18a29

He sells them in small enough quantities with free shipping if you don't have the cash for a quantity of 4000 or whatever. I would use any standard small pistol primer that I could find. I prefer CCI but they are getting hard to find for a reasonable price.

The 300 RUM is prolly going to give you fits unless you use a heavy bullet. I would start with a 180 grain premium bullet, and a slower powder like Reloader 22 or 25.

You are looking at about 75 rounds per pound of powder so you don't want to cheap out on the bullets or primers. I would buy some Large Rifle Magnum Match/Benchrest primers and a box of Nosler or Berger bullets.

Remember that large magnum calibers like to be loaded near the top of the scale. I wouldn't recommend dropping down too far for a start load. If you don't have a load manual, I recommend getting one that manufactures the bullets you are most likely to use, i.e. Nosler, Hornady, Sierra, etc.
 
4895, Thank you very much for your post i will for sure look into getting the manuals for the type of bullets i buy and this post has been very helpfull i will be looking into all of these materials you have suggested. I appreciate your taking the time to give your input and seemingly proffessional advice.
 
Good advice already posted. The manuals will help you out the most.

Like mentioned you will need to decide what your going to want to use the loads for first. Then decide what weight bullets you want to use. Once you have those two down solid, then the fun starts.

For your 40, your optimum bullet weights for velocity and energy will be the 175 and 180gr loads, however there are sime great 155 and 165gr bullets out there as well. Personally I would simply stick to the 175-180gr range and be done with it. For your RUM, I wouldn't go any lighter than the 180gr bullets and probably no heavier than a 210gr. My friend and I did some pretty extensive load development with everything between 180 and 240gr for his and finally settled on the 185gr Berger. This said the 200gr Accubond is an awesome bullet as well as the Partition, but you will need to decide again on what your intended use will be, then find out if they shoot like you want them to.

For primers, you might as well go for the best and get the Fed Gold Match 215M's. Out of all I have tied with several heavy magnums these have overall given the best performance. In your 40, what ever you feel good with should work. The powders you will use for it are not hard to light off and usually very consistent.

Powders, for your RUM, I would look at loads using H-1000 , RL-25, Ramshot Magnum, Retumbo, and H-5010, as these should give you the best velocity for your loads, depending on bullet weights. They also were the top accuracy producers we found other than AA-8700 which unfortunately was discontinued just as we found a load with it.

In your 40, there are plenty of powders which will work, and work really well. I settled on the AA powders 5,7,9, for my loads in my 10mm. They are all easy to meter, and give top velocities with most bullet weights without spiking pressures. However, there are plenty of others out there which work as well, so pick something that is readily available close to you and start with that.

The biggest hurdle your going to find is finding a good supply of cases for your RUM. To be honest, out of everything we used, we found the standard Remington cases to be as good and in most cases better quality than the other brands. This may or may not be the case with your rifle, if so, and you find them in bulk and affordable stock up on them. It wouldn't hurt to have a couple hundred in reserve, as during your load development you are going to find a few that need to be tossed after the first or second loads. Just the nature of the beast. We probably went through 500 between Remington, Federal, and Hornady, and after all of the work ups and such were done, ended up purchasing 500 Remington cases for the long haul. The rest were simply bagged up, and sold or scrapped. I shoot a wildcat based off the RUM case and found the exact same things with my work ups, and now only Rem cases are in my stash.

Anyway study long and hard on the processes, look at the loads listed in the manuals. Don't look tot he top end side for your only information, as rarely do you get the velocities, but quite often you will hit the pressures. That is the part to concentrate on. IF you see a load which list, (simply pulled out of the air) 1250fps with a pressure of 35,000PSI and another load which list 1275fps with a pressure of 28,000fps I wold look more into the latter than the first. If your getting good velocity with less pressure from a powder that is always a good thing. Even if the velocity is a touch under what you want, the pressure getting it there is what is going to be the deciding factor. Same with the RUM, having 3200fps with 65,000 PSI, or 58,000 CUP isn't nearly as good as one which is hitting 3100fps with only 62,000 PSI or 54,000 CUP, you want accuracy, first and foremost. Get that and hitting your target every time will be much easier. Trust me when I say you will never miss the lost 100 - 150fps if your groups are 1 MOA or less, and no matter what your intended target is, it isn't going to bounce off of it, simply because you didn't reach the top end load listed in the manual.


Good luck, be safe, and research EVERYTHING first and foremost.
 
41 MAG, Thank you very much your post has been incredibly informative and i will take all these factors into consideration. I've got at least 8 months of time to be spent on researching before i will even have an opportunity to start purchasing anything and start experiments of my own.
 
First and foremost, I didn't notice it before but I DID this time,

THANK YOU TREMENDOUSLY FOR YOUR SERVICE​
It is VERY MUCH APPRECIATED, in this house, and every house of my family members. ​

To be honest IF I were loading for a 40 I would probably look hard at he 170'ish grain stuff. I am running the 10mm with the 180gr Gold Dot, but I also have a 7" barrel to take advantage of the added velocity. With a standard lenght or shorter barrel I might drop down a bit in weight to gain a bit more velocity, but to be honest it is a toss up either way.

Yep you have time to study up on what your looking to do with yours. Me personally I like to stick with medium weight bullets per caliber, and medium to slower powders for the loads. There just seems to be a better gain using this method. You get a decent velocity with a decent weight bullet and if the accuracy is there you can hardly go wrong. I strive for the utmost accuracy even though I am shooting mostly standard factory off the shelf rifles. I have seen it put so many times you can't get better than such and such accuracy from them but mine get MOA or less, and get it consistently. It's all in the load development and why I use the powders mentioned above, they are more forgiving once you find a load.

If your serious about dialing your ammo in you will see a trend as you look through the manuals. Take a few notes, you will see the same powders popping up over and over again within certain capacity cases, use these to narrow your search down. Then look over and see what the pressures are doing with regards to the top end loads, and you will see some of the ones you picked giving top end velocities with a bit less pressure than one above or below it. Use this to narrow down a bit more. Before long you will have a short list of a couple of powders which give the best performance with the best pressure, within the parameters of the case your looking to load. Then you simply try them out and see which one does the overall best with your rifle or handgun.

Nowadays with the instant gratification crowd running amok, folks want to be able to ask and receive the best finite load, for what ever they happen to be shooting. Well if it were that simple, there wouldn't be many choices to look over. It takes time to research, then a bit more to develop a solid load, and even more, to test it out at several different ranges, and verify it is stable, maybe adjusting your seating depth along the way. This all said however, once you have it dialed in, you have it whooped.

Me I once played with all sorts of weights and powders, and primers looking for the perfect load when usually I had it right under my nose from the beginning. It's fun, but after a while, you pretty much get satisfaction out of knowing when you grab this rifle, and that box of ammo, it is going to shoot right where you point it, this time and every time. If it don't well take a hard look in the mirror, cause that is usually the first thing that goes wrong.

Take care and again THANKS
 
41MAG again thank you very much your post is very helpful and i agree completely with you on the fact that people just want the best load put it in theirs and be done with it. Thank you also for your appreciation to the military im proud to serve and am glad people appreciate it.

I like hearing what peoplpe are having the most success with in the sense that it should give me a good starting point for when i do start reloadinig and i wont be starting completely from scratch. thank you for all of your information and help.
 
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