[petey]

4. Powder prep.. LOL, we all know that different powders have different burn rates and can cause different pressures based off of things like ambient temperature. Powder selection is important, but not so much as everything I've gone over so far. What?...yeah, you know that two different powders can get the same job done and there's things one needs to consider when selecting powder. It all comes down to consistency and guess what? Repeatability. Let me throw this little scenario out there.

I'll pick on the 6mm for a moment here. I'll even pick a bullet, hmmm, lets say the 107gr Sierra Match King, or even the 105gr Berger Hybrid,to me no nevermind to get this point across. Each one of those bullets require a certain velocity and twist /stability to be "accurate". I'll use that term loosely. For this example, lets say it's 2950fps. That's the optimal velocity it likes.Yeah there's "other" velocities it'll shoot good, but that's the best. Those bullets do not care if the vehicle pushing it is a .243, 6mm, 6 Dasher, 6XC, 6CM, or any of the other variant 6mm wildcats. So why wildcat then? Well many reasons, but the bigg'st in the competition world? Two words, barrel life. Look up articles on this. Why did they come out with the 6CM, which was really just reinvented from an original wildcat? Why do it when the 6XC was perfect, it could launch that bullet that desired 2950fps. Well the means to get it to that magic number. Was causes throat erosion, fire cracking, all the bad things that make a barrel go by by? Heat and friction right? What causes that? Powder going bang, bullet going down a barrel, fps for that bullet is the same in both right? What if I told you the 6CM could easily get 1000 more rounds than the 6XC? How??? The POWDER, all about case capacity. In order for the 6XC to push that bullet that fast it must use something like a H4350 or H4831SC, a 6CM can accomplish the same optimal velocity with H1000. Look at the burn rate charts and see how much slower H1000 is than H4350. The 6CM is born, same optimal velocity for accuracy, slower burning powder, same bullet, less heat, more barrel life. In fact the slowest burning powder you can fit in a 6XC may be 7828SSC, right handy to 4831SC. So why wildcat in the competition world? Well who wants to change barrels like underwear? Yeah yeah there's other reasons too, like feeding rounds in certain actions, but I'm talking MY world of benchrest 1000 yard shooting.

5. CBTO :Case Base to Ogive, for years I always measures OAL, end of case, to end of pointy bullet tip. It didn't tell me anything other than it could fit in a feed magazine or was to "specs". What I've found very important is freebore of a chamber. Where's that bullet seated on the neck of the case and how close it is to the lands. All has to do with neck tension, pressure concerns, blah blah. I wont write a book other than to say, I don't have a single barrel that doesn't prefer to have that bullet either touching or jammed into the lands. Very little if ever any jump in our world. In fact some people short freebore and chase the lands watching throat erosion, knowing that every X amount of rounds they need to seat you bullet out .001 further. Only way to do this is with measuring using the right tools and having something as simple as an ogive nut for your bullets. Any lengths you see written on my load development targets is ALWAYS CBTO

6. Neck tension.. So yeah I turn my necks, why?? Um do I have to say it?...ok repeatability. Even if it's a no turn neck chamber. Quite honestly I prefer tight neck chambers b/c of the tolerances required. We've all use those full length sizing dies right? Non-bushin type feed your case in, crush the crap out of it, shoot it, expands to your chamber, repeat. Really overworking brass. Remember all that brass prep work? You wanna get more than 5 firings out of it?, Why not just neck size and bump the shoulder if and when you ever have to? Buy different types of bushings, I like to stay somewhere around .004" less than loaded round. Remember this formula for clearance = brass neck thickness X 2 + bullet diameter

.013" thick neck X 2 = .026 + .244 = .270

In a tight neck chamber, your chamber better be no less than .271 nk, most like that .004, so this example is for a no turn .274 nk chamber and I turned my necks from .0145 to .013, to clean them up and guess what? repeatability. You will not have that on straight factory brass.

Most people say I run a .003 neck tension. What they really mean and we all know is they are running a .267 bushing in this case. It's really not .003 neck tension. Just means they're sizing down the neck .003 from overall loaded round before seating the bullet. It really has to do with the "grip" of the case on the bullet, so there's other factors that come into play like seating deapth, length of neck, blah blah.. I'm not going into a lot of detail b/c there's so much info on this stuff out there to read. Feel free to read at your own leisure.

7. Working up the perfect loads. So in years past we all just loaded up 3 and shot, then went up or down .5 grains until we found something that shot right? Wrong, .and read this carefully, b/c there is a lot of merit to this and will safe your barrel life. At what cost to your barrel? 100-200 rounds? How is it I can shoot less than 20 rounds and be in the .1's? Good steal? Yes. Good Brass prep? Yes. All that other crap above? Yes. now we're starting from scratch.

Two words " Ladder Test " There is awesome articles on this stuff and let me tell you it works. For those of you that are reading this for the first time and have no clue what I'm talking about, I'll explain at a 30,000ft level. Google it and read the real research, b/c it works plain and simple. I don't care if it's a factory gun or a custom, it'll work. Do this as soon as you change powder, bullet, any of those 4 components we talked about above. So back to that example of the bullet requiring that certain velocity to be accurate. The ladder test tells you this. Meaning it will tell you the node in which that bullet will be most accurate or in our world of long range, stop stringing vertically up the ladder. Where the harmonics of that barrel and that bullet and that series of powder charges do not change much because you're in the "Node" of accuracy. If you can't control your vertical, you dont have a chance at 1000. Left and right you have that whole wind thing going on, but vertical, you actually can control. It's all about finding at what point that the powder charge doesn't change your vertical.

Concept is simple. You start low lets say 37.8 gr and load each round identically the same only changing the powder charge by .2 gr increments. So you will have 37.8,38, 38.2,38.4,38.6,38.8,39,39.2,39.4,39.6,39.8,40 all loaded to the same CBTO, normally seated touching the lands (we know that's normally the best place for accuracy) Now some factory guns have long throats in them and you may not be able to touch the lands, so pick a spot where your bullet isn't seated out beyond where you're allowed.

You have to do this at 300 yards or farther, preferably farther. Now with a nice solid rest, start shooting at the same aiming point one after the next in increasing powder charges. Common sense will tell us as the powder charge increases so does pressure, so does velocity, so the bullet will "walk up the ladder" at some point throughout that string you will find horizontal stringing, not vertical.

So say 38.6, 38.8,39 shot on the same horizontal line. Bang, first accuracy node, keep shooting, you'll normally find another and so on. So lets say I choose that node to be my load to test. I'm going to choose 38.8 right? Why, well b/c if I'm wrong in my measurement by .2 gr either way I won't see a vertical change. This is where you guys using a beam scale it helps. Me.. I load to 38.00 or 38.02 to the two hundredths. I got lots of room for error.
Anyhow I load up a 5 string and shoot it.. Normally it's dead on and I'm done. I may tinker with seating depths by I go in instead of out as I've found jumping never works for the bullets I use. So here I just shot 12 rounds for a ladder test, 5 for group, after I picked my node and it's shooting in the .1's...wow, that was easy.

Those of you that loaded .5 grn increments 3 shot, guess what, you hit that accuracy node, but are you in the middle? More than likely NOPE! you can actually miss a node by going in .5 grains, notice my example. So as you're out there shooting away wondering what's going on, I'm all done and ready for a match. Why is this important? Well what if you're running a barrel burning round like a 6.5x284? Average life about 1000 rounds, maybe more or less depending on steel and cleaning techniques. If it takes you 200 rounds to figure out a "good load" your barrel has just lost 1/5th of it life in "tinkering". Every barrel has an end of life. There's nothing more sickening to have a barrel just start shooting good then all of a sudden have to start over.

Really folks... search Ladder Test and read the real research. I never knew anything about this stuff, but once I started applying this technique, it was like "what in the world have I been doing over the past 20 some years?"

I'd say that's enough for now, appreciate you listening to me ramble, but WOW what a ride over the last year.. Everything I knew, I know better now, believe me there's WAY more (primers, runout/concentricity, keeping track of brass, cleaning techniques, blah blah) these are just a few key points to get the point across. I thought I was a pretty good reloader over the past 27 years. What I now know is I only scratched the surface when it came to achieving ultimate accuracy. There is a meticulous attention to detail one must appreciate if you want to get to that level