Mexican Match 308

[Overkill]

I've been getting my rear handed to me at the 200 yard plus ranges with my M1A Scout shooting surplus ammo. I did a little accurizing on the rifle (shimmed the gas cylinder, put in a NM guide rod, and peened the rear sight) which helped a little but not enough. After I playing around with some better quality ammo I decided that the rifle and the shooter were better than the ammo, So for the last match I took a bunch of SA surplus and rebuilt it with match quality bullets.

The stock SA was chronoing about 2550 out of my Scout and shooting into 3-4 inches at a 100 yards sometimes an inch or two bigger but rarely smaller. The first round of testing I pulled the SA bullets, and ran a serries of test round using the factory powder with charge weights ranging between 38 and 42 grs and re seated a Sierra 155gr Palma Match King. Using this data I got a nice chart of charge weight vs. fps curve. For the second round I sorted cases and prepped the case necks and used the chart to predict a charge weight that would match M80 ball as closley as possible out to 300 yards using the heavier sleeker bullet (2700fps). It turns out that was about 42.3 grains of the SA powder. I'm not sure how much I gained by sorting the cases by weight and prepping the case necks; my impression is not much. But I did cull out a few cases that were well out side the range of weights that I was seeing.

At the end of the process I had some ammo that would shoot 3 or 4 out of 5 rounds into a half dollar sized group with a flyer or two that was probably my fault for sloppy shooting....least that's what it seemed like. The whole thing was kind of a PITA, but it got me good enough quality ammo for about 45 cents a round and I could always reload the SA bullets for hoser ammo at a later date.

Oh, and the ammo helped me take 1st place in the iron sighted division and a big fat $10 check! That's the first thing I've ever won at a match.