wsimpso1

Yeah, I know guys who run their loads hot too. The High Masters I know do not run their ammo hot. They like consistency more than velocity. It makes wind doping easier when you don't have to ask if the conditions today are adversely affecting my group size or zero. But that is beside the point... How are those hotter loads hard on the gun and accuracy? Well, first off, Sierra themselves had at one point recommended velocties no higher than 2750 and 2600 for 69's and 77's out of Service Rifles (20" barrel) supposedly because the forward part of the bullets slumped during the peak acceleration when they were pushed above those velocities, which goes with peak pressure. Space gunners could run a little higher because they had more barrel length. Most of the guys that got more velocity with conventional powders got it with excess pressures, with case material extruded back into ejector hole, cratered primers, and occaisionally knocking primers into all sorts of bad places. Remember also that hard extraction is a sign of high pressures too, but in the AR15, the signs we get of sticky extraction is ripped and bent rims, galled or broken locking lugs, broken bolts, and broken cam pins. And these failures take time to build up to, and then trash practice sessions and matches when they happen. Since I have been shooting tactical rifle here (ACTS), we have a couple guys who have lots of case flow with some factory ammo, and they have colleagues who also have lots of case flow, and between the bunch of them, have also been seeing broken bolts (locking lugs and broken through the cam pin hole) and cam pins and stuck cases. Now, some folks may not think that excess pressure is hard on the gun, but it is only these high pressure guys that I know who have broken lugs off of their bolts or cracked their bolts through the cam pin hole or galled the locking lugs or pitted their bolt faces and firing pins... And that is the first place where I get "hard on the gun". The second way that I get "hard on the gun" from higher velocities is the guys who swear that they are getting 2800-2850 and higher with 77's through their Service Rifles are also complaining that they only get 2500-4000 rounds before their barrels give poor accuracy. Hmmm. Turns out they are either using "high energy" powders or are loading the ammo to within an inch of its life or both. This stuff does not by itself drive high pressure, but the pressures it does make, it makes for longer down bore. So the highest temperature is working the throat and first part of the barrel for longer on each shot, and a 5000-7000 round barrel is now only lasting 2500-3000 rounds. And I call that hard on the gun too. Now is the N540 hard on accuracy? Maybe not, but it goes towards shorter barrel life and one-use cases. Is an excess pressure charge of RL15 or Varget going to blow up a gun? Maybe not today, but when extraction gets sticky or the bolt lugs gall, you can count on groups opening up and stoppages when the bolt or cam pin breaks or the extractor quits pulling empties from the chamber everytime. And I call all of that hard on the gun. Now maybe enough Varget or RL15 to get another 100 ft/s will not be terrible. But we have plenty of evidence that getting another 200ft/s is hard on the gun, on function, and on accuracy. And we also have evidence that that extra 100-200 ft/s does not make a significant improvement in how it hits the target. You still have to dope for the wind... Now, having said all of that, I will confess that my records show a little higher velocity than what I wrote earlier, but not by much. I got there with groups getting better as I raised the charge, and I saw groups fall off indicating a peak. So I load at the charge that gave me the best accuracy. Works great and shoots fantastic in several rifles... but I was not loading for speed. Billski

No real need for military (hard) primers in AR15's. Use what is available and give best accuracy/consistency. Billski

All of the conversion (burning) of gunpowder into gases has actually happened shortly after peak pressure, which is pretty early. Usually the bullet has not travelled but an inch or less at that point. Then the gases expand as the bullet travels downbore and temps come down adiabatically (not through heat transfer, just through expansion). In a comp'ed racegun, the more pressure you have at the muzzle, the better the brake works, so those guys use slower powders, extending the peak further down bore and raising muzzle pressure, but even then the burning is done by about halfway downbore. So L9x25 is approximately correct - there is no basic gunpowder burning going on out late in the cycle. What is left is watching the flames. Remember (High School Chemistry) that flames are visible because the hot gases have electrons excited to energy levels above the rest state, and when the electrons fall back down, they emit photons. Each element has its chaecteristics. And this means that the flames are visible not where the burning occurs but where the hot gases are cooling down... So the first flame is a little orange flame at the muzzle, and the second flame is after the ejecta gases mix with air, are lit and burn some more and have commenced cooling, and can be either orange/yellow (CO and HC to H20 and CO2) or mostly invisible but slightly purple (H and H2 to H20). If all of this makes your head hurt, don't worry over it. Your ammo was not frying the hair off of your hands and lighting your clothes on fire before, so just because a friend saw the flashes does not suddenly mean that you have to fix it. Heck, I know a couple guys who have great big beachball sized muzzle flashes and ejection port fires off of their AR15's and they never knew they had it until someone told them. Then they started looking for ammo that would not do it. It took the fun out of watching them shoot... Billski

The DMW gadget is great. There are threads (with pictures) already for you to locate with the search feature on installing them, shortening them, smoothing the loading path, and even Shawn Carlock's fix for the feed latch. Works great shoots soft. Billski

Hey, Andy, I had the same issue. The left pawl was the fix for me too. It just was not going quite far enough for the detent to catch on one space in the plate. I make mine work for three cartridges, and it took some fine tuning of the pawl to make it work OK for all. Billski

OK, I am going to add to your basic load of shooting trivia here: Primers and gunpowder is oxygen deficient. This allows your barrel to last as long as it does. If there was excess oxygen or even just enough oxygen, the barrel features would oxidize and be blown out the barrel so fast that it is not even funny. So, that means that there is still lots of fuel in the powder gases coming out of the gun. CO, HC's, and quite a bit of hydrogen (both H2 and H). And that stuff has expanded and cooled quite a bit and comes out the muzzle when the bullet flies free, as well as out the breech when the empty is pulled out and tossed away. When the powder gases mix with the air, they are all set to burn some more, but have little to ignite them. Well, unless your primers produce incandescent ash. This is ash that is still orange hot from the primer firing. The primer ash is at the back of the powder column, and comes out last, and acts as a spark plug, tripping off the hydrogen and making a fire that you usually can not see in daylight, as well as lighting the CO-HC-O2 mix in the plumes at the muzzle and breech. We were working on making shotshell primers work better in the cold (I worked for Rem in the early 1980's) and found that shotguns can be quite spectacular at dusk if you include finely divided aluminum to primers. We had fire at the muzzle, gas port at mid barrel, and at the breech. Sometimes twice. Yeah, we had too much incandescent ash... Anyway, I would not feel any need to cure it. It never bothered you in daylight did it? If you just must cure it, cases that conform to the chamber wall will cut down on leakage, and might reduce it. Changing primers might fix it, but all of the makers like ash because it helps with ignition when things are cold or in rounds with a lot of free air space. Another solution might be to go with faster powder to seal the case better and further reduce gas temperature at ejection. That might also delay ash introduction to the inflammable gas and make the problem worse... Billski

In High Power, 68's/69's have become a 200 yard load, although some still like them out to 300 yards - Too much drift, although it is way better than 55's. My receipe for 68/69's is Rem 7 1/2's and N135 loaded to 2750 ft/sec or so (20" barrel). Going faster is hard on the gun and accuracy. For 300 yards and above, you will get less wind drift - you still have to dope wind - with 77's. My best loads were with Rem 7 1/2's and RL15. Load to about 2600 ft/sec (20" barrel). Going faster is hard on the gun and on accuracy. There are those out there that swear that CCI primers and Varget go together and I have not tried that combination. Good Luck. Billski

A Grendel for High Power? Please. A Grendel would be a serious disadvantage at 600 yards, not to mention frustrating if there is any wind. High Power is 223 only in AR15's for Service Rifle. The Grendel would put you into Match Rifle. The short 6mm's own the bolt gun show, and Space Gunners usually just shoot 223 also. There are some folks shooting 22 PPC or 6mm PPC, and some in 243, 7-08 or 308. Then the guns become pretty specialized and heavy in that game, right down to the sights, cheekpieces, balance, everything. NRA Match Rifle is a pretty big equipment and fuss game, which is why many peolple shoot Service Rifle. Other than making the single-stage vs two-stage trigger and barrel weight decisions, you get to adjust the weight and balance, play with front sight post widths and rear sign hood and aperture sizes. Oh, and develop your load. Now, if you kept it simple, your rifle could do Service Rifle three-gun, multigun, etc. The float tube in a good Service Rifle adds some weight but not a huge amount, and it would work in the various games as an Iron Sight Tactical, etc. It would still be kind of heavy and clumsy on close fast stuff that we do a lot of. But the Grendel? That will just run up your ammo costs... Billski

The reason that there are any shorty gas systems with 16" barrels is because when the US military wanted a shorty, Colt and the Army put the gas port the same distance from the muzzle as on the 20" barrel, and then set everything up from there. Us civilians have to use 16" barrels, so Colt just made 16" barrels on the CAR15 pattern. That is how we ended up with little dinky handgaurds and a too short gas tube and a too short sight radius... Now, shorties can be made to run. Some work fine from the builder, and others need to be fussed over, but after the chamber is polished, if it still wants to yank the rim from the case instead of extracting the case, you have to fuss with vents or adjustable gas ports or Pigtails or Fat Tubes... Now if you insist upon having a 16" barrel, you can build with a mid length fore-end, get a better handle, longer sight radius, reliability, and get a softer cycling rifle too. But I will tell you the really hot ticket. Just build a rifle length gun, and if you want it to be handier, just have it made 18" and an adjustable stock. Billski

I would love more rifle only or rifle/pistol events. Near me (SE Michigan) there is ACTS in Battle Creek and then... well, I went to NY for Square Deal's Rifle Championship in April. It was a great match. So, I would even travel for rifle matches. Billski

I reload for several reasons: I want to know that when I am shooting at tough targets, the ammo and rifle will perform. It puts the onus on me to be good; When I was a High Power shooter I came up with several terrific loads that also shoot great in my Tactical rifle, so I do not have to do any development; I am cheap; I already own all of these nifty tools and bullets; My High Power loads were all done with moly coated bullets and stick powder. I only use the expensive bullets on precision or distant targets, and use 55 FMJBT on the rest of the stages. Since going between moly and naked bullets and going between ball powder and stick powder both cause accuracy loss for a few rounds and sometimes shift POI for a few rounds, you want to avoid that. Factory ammo is naked bullets and ball powder. How? Always shoot moly bullets and stick powder, which means you gotta handload. I make my handloading easy. For precision ammo, I do the whole nine yards myself. For my 55 FMJBT stuff, I scarf LC and Win cases wherever I can, ship 2000+ cases to RVO for size/trim/primer pocket swage/clean, prime while watching a movie with the wife, and load on the progressive. Works fine. Billski

The biggest trouble with supplying receipes for 223 loads is that the throats used on match quality barrels vary, case capacity varies by brand, and different primers show the stop sign sooner than others. 223 with 77's is living large for that little case... 77's and 69's are long range ammo for the AR15. Even the 52's are gross overkill for most CoF. I load a lot of 55 FMJBT for the short CoF, and reserve the good bullets (with established zeros) for precision targets and over 100 yards. Best plan is work up a load with each primer and case you are considering and pick the best shooting load that makes enough velocity. Use a chronograph, look at primers, case heads, and group size. In RL15 and Varget, 23.0 is a good place to start. You will be compressing the powder, and that may actually limit how much powder you can load these cases with - I actually had some ammo that loaded OK and was to length originally (Rem cases, which are a little short on internal volumn compared to Win and LC). A few days later, half of that batch was too long to feed through the magazine... Good luck! Billski

Make up modified targets. You can simulate 200 and 300 yard targets with reduced ones, and shift the hit zone based upon your difference in zero. For instance, my zero is ON at 50 yards and 220 yards, a couple inches high at 100 through 175, and few inches low at 300. I can make up a 50 yard simulated rack. A row of dark filled in circles 1 1/2" diameter are my aiming references. Since I need to hold 2 minutes high on 300 yard plates and my zero is ON at 50 yards, my target would have a lightly drawn scoring ring centered 2 minutes high (1 inch here). I use paper that looks like my backstop, and when I use correct holdover for 300 yard plates, my hits should go into the scoring circles (not on the balck dot). Similarly, I can make up a 100 yard target the same way with 3" aiming reference and the scoring ring is not needed. You can do the same thing with stadard targets and shift the A box for the simulated yardage. The idea is to force your holdovers to be correct. Billski

I live and shoot in SE Michigan. Two years ago and last year, we had full matches. This last year, we saw those formerly full matches only close to full. You can not just show up an know that you will shoot at those events, but it can work. During the warm months, I can shoot four good to excellent IDPA matches each month. The local matches are all good enough that I do not feel any need to travel far to regional and other matches. During the winter there is still one good match and several practice sessions every month. Things are healthy and a good core exists. I think that what is happening is the Ford/GM/Daimler-Chrysler woes ripple through the rest of the local economy with predictable results on descretionary spending and recreational time. Those of us that are still on the job are working more hours, and that gets in the way too. Billski

And the biggest ones won't even come up to shoulder on that polar bruin while it is lying down.

I doubt that the VLD Power mags are being used by fighting units. The AMU might for High Power... You need to know a bit about the High Power CoF: 20 rounds Slow Fire Standing at 200 yards, single loading; Two strings of ten rounds each, Rapid Fire, Standing to Sitting at 200 yards, 60 seconds per string, start with two rounds, reload with eight; Two strings of ten rounds each, Rapid Fire, Standing to Prone at 300 yards, 70 seconds per string, start with two rounds, reload with eight; 20 rounds Slow Fire Prone at 600 yards, single loading. So these special mags allow you to use your 600 yard ammo on the Rapid Fire strings. The mags only fit 8 rounds in a single stack, and they use the recess in the back of the magazine to carry the rear end of a cartridge loaded really long, like 2.450-2.500". High Power 'smiths cut the throat for 80's loaded long because that is the most accuracy critical part of the match, and you generally take what you get for the short lines. In general, it has not been found to be very helpful to use 80's seated long on the Rapid Fire strings - The big impediment to shooting clean scores at 200 and 300 yards is position, wind correction, position, and position. The Ten Ring is 7 inches. The gun and 69's or 77's typically deliver way better than that and only a little more wind drift than the 80's do. A well known President's 100 shooter and High Power riflesmith has written in his book that his SR (200 and 300 yards) ammo is the same powder and charge as his MR (600 yards) and he just adjusts the bullet seater for 77's. If he can call the wind and get cleans at 200 and 300, then that is all the effort he is going to put into that ammo. Additionally, some folks believe that those long loaded 80's get pushed out of alignment in semi-auto feeding, hurting you more than helping you on the stages where they would do that. The real reason for their being unavailable may be that the outfit is not making them anymore. Previous makers got out years ago... The mod that was cited with the front of the mag cut out will allow the shooter to load to 2.300 instead of the standard 2.250-2.260". It too will not work for much over eight rounds. Billski

Any factory match ammo tipped with Sierra 52 HP or 69 BTHP will do fine. If that stuff does not shoot 2", you have a gun problem. A good barrel will deliver 1". Billski

I have one and love its repeatablity. Once a setting is established, when I twirl the knob to that position, it gives me the right charge. I do not count on its linearity down to 0.001". Neither should you. As to poor correlation between a change in setting and a change in weight, well, you are dealing with gun powder grains, which may not fill a space efficiently and have a finite size. A tiny change (0.001 is really small) will sometimes make no difference and sometimes make a big difference in how many grains will drop in. This is particularly the case with flake and stick powders. Here is a way to think of it. This is quantum theory for powder meters... If you were metering buckshot instead of powder, the meter would have to be a certain amount open before it would drop even one pellet. Any amount less than that, and you get zero, or maybe you slice a piece off of the pellet... Now open the meter up, and eventually you get a second pellet. You can be a tiny amount short of what is needed to get that second pellet, and no change. Then make the rest of the adjustment to get a second pellet, and bang, big change. The next thing is that the meter does not always fill as efficiently as we would hope at all settings. You have several places in a powder meter that might not fill cleanly, so you might make a small change and get a "too large" change in powder charge... Between quantum behaviour and fill efficiency, this stuff happens. That is life in the powder meter. Billski

We use plastic barrels as cover and as props between targets. In general, when a barrel is hit, the bullet drills right through, but sometimes they dent the barrel and the dents make me think that they have been deflected from their original trajectory by a pretty fair angle. So, does anybody know how much angle we should be protecting for? The most common sort of thing that I am thinking about would be a target with a barrel adjacent on the side wall near the front of a shooting pit. A shot striking the barrel that skips could be deflected beyond the 180 plane from the barrel. How much angle from the line of the shot should we be making sure that we have the berm covering? I would think that the shooters angle should be high enough that the deflected shot should not be no more than the 180 plane from the barrel. Any thoughts on this? Billski

The Kydex holster fully covers the business end of the pistol. What I think happened was I had a web belt with a GI mag pouch on in addition to my pants belt with the holster. It was a field expedient. I think that the web belt knocked the pistol around, but I can not be sure of it. All that the RSO said was that the gun popped out as I hit the ground. A more secure holster is the way forward here. A 6280 still looks like the right addition to my gear rack. Thanks for the comments. Billski

Thanks for the feedback. It looks like I will go with the 6280 as it is closest to the carry holsters and what I use for IDPA and USPSA. The holster that gave up my pistol is a Kydex (I forget the brand) that has two adjustment screws with rubber bushings between the halves, and significant bulges that fit into the trigger gaurd on my 1911 pattern pistols. I can do all kinds of gymnastics without losing the pistol. At the time I lost the pistol, I was wearing a web belt with other gear above my standard belt. This is the most severe test of a holster that I do, so for this sort of game, the more serious holster sounds like a good idea for me. Thanks again for the feedback. Billski

Last week I had the experience of diving into prone position and feeling my holstered pistol come out of the holster and hit my arm. I was horrified, as was the RSO and I was DQ'd from the match. Now, I know that I can do somersaults with this gun and holster, but the gun did come out, so I am looking for more secure equipment for this most vigorous game. Two holsters that look really good are the Blackhawk Serpa series and the Safariland 6000 series. The Serpa has the latch that you trip with the trigger finger, while the 6000 series has a shield that must be pushed down and rolled out of the way to draw. Reholstering appears to be a no brainer with both. I have not had the chance to actually use either. Please comment on the relative benefits and drawbacks of each. Billski

For under 100 yards, I load 55 FMJBT over surplus 4895. Don't expect MOA from these... For over 100 yards or precision work (not much of this in Michigan), I load 69 BTHP (Sierra or Nosler) over N135 or 77 BTHP over RL15. I use moly coated bullets because these loads are just carried over from High Power, when I did a bunch of testing and development and settled on using moly. I use Rem 7 1/2 primers. My cases show pressure signs before the primers do with Rem primers, so work up carefully. There are many folks that think CCI primers and Varget work very well together. In my testing (before I knew about the CCI/Varget interaction) I did not get good results with Varget (Rem, Win, and Fed primers), but got great results with RL15 and Rem primers. Billski

My Colt, Para, and Springfield (with the odd pivot pin location) were all handled the same way. Well, I did have to get out some stainless rod and do some welding on a Smith and Alexander grip safety for the Springer. But they all have the same process. Ihave always just removed a bit of material off of the safety, but not near the pin. Maybe I was not relieving as radically as you guys... I was just starting with the shape of the Ed Brown safety and blending to it, and then on the Springer, I just tried to duplicate it. Billski

I would look at the ejector hole in the bolt for burrs that remove brass from cases and then jam the ejector. Just becaue the carrier key bolts don't move does not mean that the fit is good. The carrier could be slightly loose, and the bolts staked there... I would clean the carrier and fire a few rounds, and then look for gas leaks around the joint. Leaks mean tear it down, lap the surfaces to each other, new bolts torqued and staked. No leaks at the joint? One possibility is a misaligned gas tube and thus worn. Easy enough to check. If the tube end is worn offset, replace it and tweak the end to make it slide on the carrier and key (no bolt) without drag. Another possibility is a small bolt tail and a large hole in the carrier that the tail goes through. Billski