Yep it's another cast in AR thread. So I cast a bunch of the lee 55gn rcbs clone boolits up coww/ac, sized 225, checked, and felix lube. Went out for range trip #1, these were loaded with H4895 from 17gn - 20.5gn in .5 increments (did not know about dacron). Found function and what grouped well with my AR at 25 yds 19.5 to 20.5 gn of powder.
Trip #2 loaded up some more of the 55gn but coww/WD this time (still no dacron). This time I weight sorted boolits and sorted out only one brand of cases for this group of loads. Shot from 25yds and 50yds with mediocre results at 25 and dismal at 50yds.
Made a forearm change on the rifle requiring removal of gas block and flash hider. Between flash hider and barrel I found a fairly good amount of lead build up, while not finding any in the barrel. Changed out the forearm and cleaned the barrel crown, reassembled the rifle and proceeded to thoroughly clean the barrel with copper solvent (had not done this after firing the 50 rounds of federal FMJ factory for test fire). Cleaned barrel and action reassembled and went to work at the reloading bench. Also in this time I requested some heavier boolit samples from some of the great members here and received NOE 225-62-FN and NOE 225-70-RN boolit samples. Thinking that my 1:8 barrel needed some heavier fodder to be accurate I added these two boolits to the loadings for the next range trip. Also some extensive reading here led me to using dacron for a filler in the lighter loads for 556. My wife is a quilter so I quickly liberated a few feet of polyester batting (in sheet form) to cut into little squares for stuffing into the cases.
Trip #3 This time I had about 70 rounds loaded, five shots for each load. Here are the specifics and targets. Range was 25yds, shot from bench with front bag gusting right to left wind. Will handpick the best ones and reload stepping it out to 50 next trip.
Powder: Sized: Notes:
H4895 .225 Dacron filler was used in the 18 and 18.5 loads. These two loads were an after thought (read about dacron filler)
Originally this range did not reliably cycle the bolt and would not lock on empty.
boolits used:
lee 225-55-rf
PC/GC/Felix lube
Felix lube/GC
NOE 225-62-FN
Felix lube/GC
NOE 225-70-RN
Felix lube/GC
#1 and #3 are both in the top target. group 1 is a diamond around center with one shot at top right. #3 is around pretty small group around the top right of the diamond with one shot out to the right.
#4 top left. #5 bottom left. #6 bottom right. #7 top right. #8 center.
#9 bottom right. #10 bottom left. #11 top left. #12 top right. #13 center
All of these groups are better than any groups shot in the prior range trips. There are a few groups that had called fliers in them. I however have selected a few loads to carry on to the next phase.
Lessons learned:
- Water dropped or Heat treated coww no softer (with PC being the exception to this)
- Clean your barrel Dumb A.
- Dacron filler will help ignition thus creating pressure need to cycle the AR!
Questions:
- At what point should I stop using dacron filler?
Or just continue to drop the amount of filler used until case capacity is full?
- Does anyone else find this all rather maddening yet fun at the same time?
Thanks for listening I will provide the results from next range trip, any and all input is what we are here for and it's appreciated.