Might as well come out of the closet as a Novice with BP. Nothing impressive to report so looking for suggestions. I shot these in two rifles. The first being the Money JIM409400 in a Cody Ballard with a WIN chamber that I believe is much like the Shiloh chamber. I tried comparing two primers from stock-on-hand, CCI200 and Fed210. In the Cody, bullets out to throat/lands, finger seated, with .060 Walter’s Wad. Everything was in Olde Eynsford 2f. Started at zero or near zero compression and worked up by one grain. In the Marlin Pacific pretty much the same but worked up by two grains and had a little more compression (probably a wad’s worth) for starting load at 56gr. I didn’t bell cases any more than the step up on Lyman expander from BACo so did not lay any flair down with a sizing die.
All targets at 100yds. I usually do load development at 50yds due to some degraded vision from advanced Glaucoma. I reckon the outlayers could be attributed to that but hard to say and I've shot better smokeless loads at 100yds.
For the Cody/Money these first two targets with CCI primers were the best by virtue of some core grouping but in each case I had a pair of outliers. Sorry but all the pictures are laying on their side.
With the Fed 210 primers I only had one target with equal results but still nothing impressive.
So, give it some neck tension, change primers, lay what little flair might remain down, change seating depth? Don’t think OE 1.5f is the answer since I shot a couple loads there too and they were even less impressive.
I’ll post the Saeco/Creedmoor in the Marlin Ballard (Pacific) and results in the next post. Pretty much same results/questions. Any recommendations/observations appreciated.