Need help figuring out a good non-lead load for 30-06

[falldowngoboom]

I've been having trouble figuring out a non-lead hunting load (mulies and pigs) and was hoping some of the more experienced guys and gals out there could give me some advice...

Using Hornady 165g GMX bullets, I've worked up loads with Varget and IMR 4320 (both from 47.5 to 51.0g in 0.5g increments). I shot 5-shot groups and managed to find 1.25" groups with both powders, but I don't have a lot of confidence in those loads because they're flanked by really poor groups. For example, with the 4320, I found a 1.26" group @ 48.0g but 3.18" group @ 47.5g and 3.28" @ 48.5g. Similar findings with the best Varget group.

I know my gun is capable of much better and with the same powders. Using Nosler CC Match 168g bullets, I've gotten 0.84" and 0.92" groups @ 50.0 and 50.5g, respectively. With Varget, 1.00" and 1.22" groups @ 50.0 and 50.5g.

At this point, I'm wondering if I should be trying different powders or a different bullet. On hand, I have some W760 and IMR 4350 (probably too slow). The W760 turned in 1.25" groups with the Noslers. Should I look to some Nosler E-tips or Barnes bullets? Or IMR 4895 or 3031 or something else? I'm unsure of the best (and most economical) way to go here. Is it more likely that the two powders I've tried just aren't right for the GMXs or that my gun just doesn't like those bullets?

I'm not looking for the absolute best combo, just something that will give me similar performance as the Noslers 168g CCs in a non-lead bullet. I'd be happy with a recipe that gave me 1.25" groups all the time.

*Rifle is a Marline XL7. Twist rate is 1:10. Cases are mixed winchester and remington, fire-formed and trimmed to same case length. Seating depth is 0.01" off the rifling, though I haven't played around too much with seating depth.

 

[rcmodel]

I would sort out the mixed cases and use all of the same brand for accuracy testing.

Remington & Winchester cases have different capacity, and the result will be different pressure with identical powder charges.

None of the trimming, and OAL measuring you have done, or different powder will make much differance with mixed case brands throwing you a curve ball.

rc

 

[falldowngoboom]

Thanks rc. It hadn't occurred to me that it would make that much of a difference. Is it possible to say just how much of a difference it might make? For instance, if you have a good load that shoots 1" groups with uniform brass, how much could it open up with mixed brass that's been fire-formed and trimmed to the same length (assuming no military stuff).

I'd like to know if I can still (mostly) rely on my past tests or if the difference can be so dramatic that my good groups are probably flukes and the bad groups could possibly be good ones.

 

[ASCTLC]

I'm new to reloading and watching this post with great interest. But what strikes me as odd is your questioning if IMR 4350 is too slow. Seems to be commonly stated IRM 4350 consistantly performs very well for the 30-06 application in 165 and 180 gr.

Also, Nosler shows on their web site that the W760 as one of the 3 loadings they had luck with for the 180 grain and the H4350 as one of the 3 loadings they had luck with for the 165 grain.

 

[falldowngoboom]

I guess I misspoke there. It's not necessarily too slow, but I found much better accuracy when I used Varget (and 4320 and W760) for 168g Noslers than 4350. IMR 4350 is absolutely awful for me in 150g bullets and the worst out of the four powders I've tried for the 168g Noslers. I suspect it's ideally suited for 180s with 165/168s being a gray area. Others may disagree, but personally, I'm no longer going to bother testing IMR 4350 with anything under 180g. Although W760 is only slightly faster than IMR 4350, I found it was a noticeable bit more accurate in pushing the Noslers. FYI, I've not loaded any 180s to date.

 

[Runningman]

Seating depth is 0.01" off the rifling, though I haven't played around too much with seating depth.

That is way to close for unleaded bullets. Barnes has done much testing in this area and have printed articles on this subject. Try a test group of.030 and another .050 off the lands.... twice. Your rifle will like one or the other. Don't waste your time or money on unleaded bullets that do not have the circumferential relief grooves in them, they are a step backwards IMO. There is a reason Barnes went to circumferential relief grooves.

Try the 165 grain Barnes TSX bullet or the Barnes 168 grain TTSX bullet or the Barnes 150 TSX bullets.

Should I look to some Nosler E-tips

Don't bother I have, they don't work to well from a accuracy standpoint.

Cases are mixed winchester and Remington

Not a good idea for testing groups. Case capacity is different pick one or the other to work with. Remington 30-06 cases have less case capacity than Winchester 30-06 cases. I use the Winchester cases for slower burning powders such as Reloader 22.

I've owned five 30-06s over the years IMR 4350 was never near the top in accuracy testing for me in any of them. Try Norma MRP, Reloader 22, Varget, or IMR 4064.

Make sure you don't let copper build up to much when working with unleaded bullets.

 

[falldowngoboom]

Runningman, I will give that a shot. The Hornady GMXs look just like the Barnes TTSX but they have 2 relief bands instead of 3. I checked out the Barnes website and found their rec for seating depths of 0.03 to 0.07, but I can't seem to find any articles. Can you point me to them?

 

[snuffy]

Don't waste your time or money on unleaded bullets that do not have the circumferential relief grooves in them, they are a step backwards IMO. There is a reason Barnes went to circumferential relief grooves.

Try the 165 grain Barnes TSX bullet or the Barnes 168 grain TTSX bullet or the Barnes 150 TSX bullets.

Runner, you obviously haven't seen a GMX up close, or know much about them. They are NOT a pure copper bullet like the barnes. Therefore they don't NEED those relief grooves. The GMX is made using guilding metal, the same alloy used in most other jacketed bullets. So is the Nosler E-tip.

My experience with the GMX in my 300 WSM shows no problem with fouling. Here's some expanded bullets fired into gallon milk jugs lined up end-to-end;





FDGB, those GMX bullets are quite a bit longer than any other 165 grain bullet. Therefore you're on the verge of instability with a 1-10 twist.

A couple of weeks back another guy was having the same problem with his '06 and the 165 GMX. Someone had a calculator that could figure out if those bullets would be stable. They were on the verge of being unstable at IIRC 2600 fps.

Another thing is how hard they are. There's no "give" to them, like a cup & core jacketed soft point. Most solid copper or copper alloy bullets aren't tops in the accuracy department because of their hardness.

 

[falldowngoboom]

Snuffy, thanks for posting those pics! It's good to know they seem to expand uniformly.

I guess I never thought about stability and twist rate being an issue. (Apparently there's a lot of good points you fellas have made that I haven't considered...) However, I would think a company like Hornady would check, double check, and triple check, test, test, and re-test to make sure a new bullet they put out would be sufficiently accurate, stability issues included (especially in standard twist barrels). Wouldn't you agree?

I don't know much about calculating optimal twist rate for bullets, but I do know the bullet material is a variable. I wonder if the guy who did the calcs put in the right coefficient for the GMXs. As you mentioned, they are not pure copper, so using the coefficient for copper wouldn't exactly be accurate.

Also, I believe the GMXs need the relief grooves for the same reason Barnes bullets do. I've talked to someone in Hornady's tech department when I was asking about load data, and they mentioned that the relief grooves are there to relieve pressure in the barrel. I assume this is a necessity due to the alloy being used, but it is possible they're there so GMX load data can match up with SST data, which is how they're advertised.

 

[Runningman]

Therefore they don't NEED those relief grooves.

snuffy, The name is runningman. Not only do I disagree with you but Hornady also seems to disagree with you! Because Hornady is also using pressures relief grooves on their GMX bullet. Those grooves cut down on unleaded bullets overly long bearing surface reducing pressure and smoothing out pressure spikes.

In general I like Nosler bullets.... but their E TIP unleaded bullet with no pressure relief groves is a flop in the accuracy and velocity department. At least in the 200 + rounds of E Tips I have tested for groups and chronographed.

Most solid copper or copper alloy bullets aren't tops in the accuracy department because of their hardness.

While they won't match a good accurate bullet such as a Sierra match bullet you should be able to get decent hunting bullet accuracy of .750 - 1.000 MOA out of a good unleaded bullet in many action bolt rifles. At least I have with 270, 7mm, and 30 Cal unleaded bullets.

Shooting water jugs may make for some cool looking pictures but it will tell you almost nothing about how a bullet reacts to bone, muscle, and meat. The original Barnes X bullet I tried more than a dozen years ago looked real good shooting into water filled milk jugs. I than proceed to pencil a few .243 holes right on thru a Mule Deer many years ago.

FDGB, those GMX bullets are quite a bit longer than any other 165 grain bullet. Therefore you're on the verge of instability with a 1-10 twist.

A couple of weeks back another guy was having the same problem with his '06 and the 165 GMX. Someone had a calculator that could figure out if those bullets would be stable. They were on the verge of being unstable at IIRC 2600 fps.

Highly unlikely the 165 grain GMX length bullet is having accuracy issues due to a 1 in 10 twist in a 30-06 even if Hornady was using a high ogive design. More than likely this person is making the same mistake that many people make when shooting unleaded bullets..... Bullet to close to the lands.

 

[snuffy]

Excuse me runningman, for attempting to shorten your user name!

Using the greenhill formula for twist rate calculation for the 165 GMX, I come up with 1-10 being marginal or should I say minimum for the GMX at below 2800 fps. Going ABOVE 2800, it says 1-12 would be minimum. So from that I say maybe you'd have to load them as hot as possible to get above the 2800 level. It has to do with the longer bullet, in this case the GMX is 1.420 tip to stern, the length has more to do with it that the weight. BC has to do with how fast it decelerates. The spin on a bullet doesn't decay hardly at all.

On the Hornady site, they show expansion at different velocities for the GMX. I see they've changed their site now, I can't find where they showed the expansion at different velocities. Below 2000 fps, they had a very small frontal expansion.

I agree that water is a poor test medium. But it's consistent and cheap. Someday I'll get the test tube set-up that will show not only expansion, but permanent wound cavity and depth of expansion.

 

[Offfhand]

It's interesting that this thread should appear because only a few weeks ago the laboratory I work for completed a contract for testing a series of what we called "green" bullets, in rifle barrels with different rates of twist. Our findings are the property of the firm for whom we did the work and of course I'm not allowed to divulge the details. (I assume the data will be published eventually however.) I can say however the .30 cal Nosler 168 grain "E" tip bullet performed acceptably in a 10" twist barrel at nominal .30/06velocities. But I must also add that our testing is with SAAMI spec laboratory grade barrels at metro atmospheris conditions that do not necessairly represent the performance to be expected from ordinary field type hunting rifles at different temperatures. I would suggest that amateur experimenters who wish to further investigate the performance of "green" bullets that they try it at temperatures lower than 30F. Such findings may prove both interesting, even surprising, and certainly worthwhile.

 

[falldowngoboom]

Snuffy, what do you use for bullet length and SG?

 

[snuffy]

Snuffy, what do you use for bullet length and SG?

I measured one of my 165 GMX, it came out at 1.420. SG? Do ya mead SD, for sectional density? It doesn't figure into the greenhill formula, only velocity, bullet length and weight. Neither does BC or ballistic coefficient.

 

[falldowngoboom]

SG as in specific gravity. Bullet weight actually does NOT figure into the formula. How are you calculating without it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifling#Twist_rate

It's why I mentioned that one needed to figure out the coefficient to use for gilding material because it's not straight copper.

If you're using a version of the equation where you don't have an SG to plug in, it's probably for lead core.

 

[KODB]

I've been using Varget 47gr even for years with 165gr bullets from both Hornady (SST) and Sierra (SPT GK) and have roughly equivalent accuracy with the loads being repeatable from bench at 0.7" at 100 (M70 classic FW with 22" barrel). In my hands prone generally groups open up to 1-1.5". The absolute most accurate load in 165gr I've tried is from Mad Dog McClung and is 165gr Sierra GK SPT/51gr imr4064/Fed GM primer/IMI case-->.5" groups. That load works in every -06 bolt gun I've run but I tend to stay with lower loads so I can use all my ammo in my Garands as well. I did have worse accuracy when seating them all the way out to max OAL in an effort to tweak bullet jump instead of simply using the Hornady suggested at cannalure or the Sierra suggested OAL in their manual. When I went to suggested OAL they instantly hit down consistently as noted above.
I'm not sure if the GMX compostition changes the equation all that much since the weight and BC aren't markedly different than what I've listed above, so you might want to consider the above combinations to try to sort our where you want to be.
HTH
Bob

 

[falldowngoboom]

Thanks for the recipe, Bob. As (bad) luck would have it, the lowest charge I've tested was 47.5g of Varget with the GMX bullets. Will try dropping down to .5g and see what that does. Might give the 165g Gameking/4064 combo a try too, but that will involve some purchasing

For anyone interested in the twist rate issue, I read up further. From what I understand, ideally you want the optimal twist rate or faster for the bullet you shoot. Faster will over spin the bullet and make it less accurate at shorter ranges but a twist that's too slow will fail to properly stabilize the bullet.

Using this calculator:

http://kwk.us/twist.html

A 1:10" twist is optimal for a Hornady 165g GMX with a MUZZLE velocity of 2350fps. So shooting the bullet faster than 2350fps out of the muzzle would be more than enough to stabilize it with a 1:10. If you had a 1:12, that might be too slow for these bullets. I used 1.42" that snuffy mentioned for bullet length and an SG of 8.5 since gilding metal is brass (95% copper, 5% zinc).

 

[snuffy]

FDGB, The greenhill formula I used is here;

http://sourceforge.net/projects/reloadersrfrnce/

This resource would have to be downloaded by you, then there's a tab on the top of the resulting load tables for figuring rate of twist. It must figure in the specific gravity, that's why I didn't know what SG meant, it's not in that calculator. I still can't see why SG would matter. Weight, length and caliber are all that's required.

 

[KODB]

fallingdown
Let us know how you make out!
Bob

 

[falldowngoboom]

Went to the range yesterday, but I didn't get to try all of the suggestions on this thread (yet). I am no longer using mixed cases, thanks to rc's suggestion.

Using the 165g GMX (first pic), I tried seating depths at 0.03, 0.05, and 0.07" off the lands, and found 0.03" to be the best, but really no different than just 0.01" from the rifling. This is using Varget. Load was 48.0g, which was the best out of the loads I tested previously (47.5 to 51.0g, 0.5g increments)

The real surprise was the 150g GMXs (second pic). I had some lying around, and I'd actually never tried them with Varget, so I loaded up two loads that had previously turned in 1-1.25" groups using Hornady 150g FMJ bullets.

I'd rather shoot a 165g bullet, but at least I have an accurate 150g non-lead load. It's plenty for what I need, though I haven't quite given up on the 165g GMXs.

 

[falldowngoboom]

Twist Rates

Snuffy,

Out of curiosity, I installed that program. I see what you were saying, but I think the program uses the simplified form of the equation, which assumes lead bullets. Again, the wikipedia entry for the greenhill formula is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifling#Twist_rate

I'm kind of regurgitating wikipedia here but.... the second part of the equation has the square root of SG/10.9. Since SG of lead is 10.9, that part of the equation becomes 1, so you can ignore it for lead projectiles.

This is what the twist rate calculator in the program you posted does (as do some others I've found online.) So in actuality (if wikipedia is to be believed), the Greenhill formula does consider bullet density, which obviously will have an effect when considering a non-lead bullet. I think since shooters overwhelmingly care about lead bullets, a lot of sites and postings of the formula have simply dropped the (10.9/10.9)^0.5 part of the equation since it's moot for lead.

That said, according to the formula, all else being equal a less dense material--copper in this case--actually requires a faster twist rate. So the 165 GMX bullets may indeed need more twist than a standard 1:10. For my part, I don't really understand why the equation works, so I'm hesitant to draw any definitive conclusions. However, the fact that I can't seem to get the 165 GMX to shoot tight groups, but easily found a good combo with the 150g GMX (1.32" in length) is indeed telling.

FYI, my previous post, #17, was based on the formula in the link I posted. I suspect it uses some variation of the greenhill formula and not the exact formula as it has actual velocity as one of it's inputs. Greenhill's formula uses a constant of 150 for sub 2800fps speeds and 180 for speeds over 2800.

 

[snuffy]

FDGB, I can't say I understand the greenhill formula either. After reading up on it, I come to understand it's historic significance, but also understand it's age. Meaning it was developed for CANNONS and they seldom used spire pointed boat tail projectiles.

I think the GMX in 165 is purely a magnum bullet. It NEEDS extra twist to stabilize it, or extra velocity in a 1-10 twist. Most everybody knows that you can drop bullet weight when using monolithic bullets. By that I mean drop down one notch like from 165 to 150. Mainly because you're not shedding weight from loss of bullet lead core during expansion,(fragmentation).

The 150 will require less stabilization, and will penetrate as well as a heavier lead core bullet.

 

[falldowngoboom]

I agree with you about the age of the equation. It certainly doesn't consider things like BC, or anything related to the shape of the bullet. That MUST have an appreciable effect on gyroscopic stability. Then again, I'm no physics major.

The fact that the GMX is a solid does give me more confidence in a 150g bullet. To be frank, I'm really splitting hairs here. I was trying to go higher because I thought I could get more accuracy with a 165, which just doesn't seem to be happening. I guess figuring this stuff out is part of the fun in it. I might buy another box of the 165s to do one last round of tests, but at this point, I'd rather just be shooting!