BTSniper heavy 6.5mm 180 grain VLD bullet!!!

[BT Sniper]

I'm not worried about friction or baring surface at the moment. It is shooting well.

[BT Sniper]

I calculated bc numbers a while back, I'll have to look into it again and check against actual drop numbers on target at various range. I think the G7 bc number was around .350 an the G1 had to have been above .700

BT

[BT Sniper]

Here is some various pics of the development of these 178 grain pills.


300WM, 6.5WSM loaded long (I actually have to seat them .200" shorter then what is shown here do to the chamber throat), 178 grain bullet



6mmBR and 6.5WSM



cutting cores



Bleeding cores



Seating cores and forming boat tail



400 yrd group, sighter in lower left, was impressed with next shot in bull! 3" group.




600 yrd group, sighter low right hit stronger portion of steel, next three passed right threw.




2.75" at 600 yrds, I was pretty happy for the first group shot with these bullets at this range.

[BT Sniper]

Everyone I show these to seems concerned with the bearing surface, here is some numbers.......

.635" bearing surface length BTSniper 178 grain (measured)
.615" bearing surface length Hornady 140 grain SST (probably get to subtract a little for the cannalure) (measured)
.545" bearing surface length Berger 156 EOL (data from Berger)

Just to name a few. I could probably look up a few more bullet numbers.

The diameter of my bullet is a little undersized at the start of the bearing surface at .2632" then increases to .2641" just in front of the pressure ring, and .2646" at the pressure ring. I did the same thing with my 6mm 130 grain bullet. This slight undersize at the start of the bearing surface I bet decreases a little of the drag while the full diameter towards the rear of the bearing surface and then the pressure ring ensure full engraving of the rifling and accuracy.

BT

[Valornor]

Good info, thanks for sharing.

If it shoots well, it's hard to argue for changes. Personally I think 2700fps is something of a sweet spot when it comes to ballistic performance and barrel life.

[M.A.D]

Mmmmm Thats one nifty looking round....

[M.A.D]

If worried about friction you could always coat them with hexagonal boron nitride, tungsten disufide or moly. I would bet that Hi-tek coating would work as well. (I have coated several hundred jacketed and plated bullets and they all shot well.)

You want to be very careful playing with HBN..... Not just breathing it in, But you dont want it on the Case Body/Chamber walls.. disastrous results can happen...

[mtnman31]

How's the load work coming with these? Any updates on their performance?

[BT Sniper]

Just got back from deer hunting trip. Was hoping to get some terminal performance results but didn't see any horns entire season. Oregon deer numbers are very low it seems. Elk season starts in a week. Will be out shooting it some more before then. So far target work has been pretty good. Found some slight temp variation with my RL-33 loads affecting fps ever so slightly, but need to do more shooting to verify. Did a bit of shooting with it at 400 before deer season and was easily hitting small clangers about 6" wide by 18" tall (just approximate guess on size, I didn't walk down to measure).

So far the bullets and cartridge have been shooting above any and all my expectations, wish I had more to report, just have not had the time yet. Did get to the point now I am firing fire formed brass. Loaded up to 66.5 grains of RL-33 for the cold weather in hopes to get back to the accuracy I had at warmer temp with 65.5 grains. These are pretty stout loads and need to do a bit more load development.

I'll keep posted hopefully with a bit more shooting before elk season starts in a week.

BT

[BT Sniper]

My second outing with load development showed good results with 65.5 grains of powder at 3020 fps.

For some reason the next time I went out with this load it showed a beautiful horizontal group, the vertical spread on these 4 shots was less then 1/4" at 200 yards yet horizontal was about 2", it was a perfect little row of bullet holes, got a pic of it I'll have to post. I thought it a bit strange. I checked fps and compared these results to previous outing. What I found was the horizontal group was there before with the 64.5 grain load. It also showed the same slightly slower 2998 fps. The only thing I could figure was the difference in temp of about 10-15 degrees cooler outside must have slowed things down slightly knocking me off my accuracy node. I wouldn't think 10 degrees should affect that much and haven't heard RL-33 to be that temp sensitive???? It certainly was interesting and again, I'll have to do a bit more shooting to test this out.

[hockeynick39]

Very interested in this thread. Please keep us posted, thank you.

[BT Sniper]

Finally uploaded a video that shows a bit of my shooting with this bullet on a 6" target at 750 yrds! Video has a lot of other great BTSniper swage on it too.

Enjoy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwNQ...ature=youtu.be

BT

Ah... Heck! All that work and I misspelled "Confidence" in the opening credits! I never claimed to be good at spellen, might as well just call me confi"dunce"

[M.A.D]

So hows the 6.5 WSM coming along? Have you had a chance to really stretch it out , Well at least to 1000 or 1 mile? A few guys on the Long range (1 mile plus) forum were nearly wetting themselves when i first told them...

[BT Sniper]

I just got the barrel back from nitride. I'll be anxious to see if there is any increase in fps.

My long range shooting spots is *** deep in snow right now.

I took her out to 900 yards and first shot was right on but just missed top of 6" plate by about an inch. She has been one of the easier long range guns and load I have shot yet.

I'll certainly keep posted as soon as I get a chance to shoot again.


Oh... actually just yesterday I finished prepping 200 rounds of new win brass for her, made a custom insert for the WFT trimmer that worked well at trimming this 6.5 WSM brass. Last week I made custom die to ensure proper alignment for inside neck reaming the brass.

BT

[M.A.D]

[QUOTE=BT Sniper;4787286]I just got the barrel back from nitride. I'll be anxious to see if there is any increase in fps.

My long range shooting spots is *** deep in snow right now.

I took her out to 900 yards and first shot was right on but just missed top of 6" plate by about an inch. She has been one of the easier long range guns and load I have shot yet.

I'll certainly keep posted as soon as I get a chance to shoot again.


Oh... actually just yesterday I finished prepping 200 rounds of new win brass for her, made a custom insert for the WFT trimmer that worked well at trimming this 6.5 WSM brass. Last week I made custom die to ensure proper alignment for inside neck reaming the brass.

I can trade you some 120f for some snow ... Be nice to have a white christmas here....

[BT Sniper]

Got the gun back together with the nitride finished barrel! Will be shooting again soon.

BT

[BT Sniper]

Been thinking about the 20-30 fps loss I experienced in post #30, I think it may have been a difference between full sized brass at the start and fire formed brass shot the second day???? I'll have to look into it a bit more...

[BT Sniper]

Got a chance to do some shooting this week with the newly nitrided barrel.

Here is what I learned or reaffirmed....

1. Nitride (QPQ, Black Nitride, Melonite, etc.) processing reduces friction in the barrel which reduces pressure.

With reduced pressure you get less fps from a given load, just like applying molly coating or the new borium nitride to bullets. You therefor must increase the powder charge to get the previous fps you where shooting. Where I was getting 3025fps from 65.5 grains before I now need 68.5 to get same fps but all indications seem to show that I am getting less pressure yet same fps with the higher load and looks like I can still go with a bit more powder, yet I'm starting to run out of room in the 6.5WSM case with my long 178 grain bullet seated so deep..... further testing yet to go.

2. Slow burning powder will burn rather dirty at reduced pressures leaving large amounts of carbon fouling in barrel.

I reduced my loads, as standard reloading precautions would suggest, after making the change to the nitride processed barrel. This reduced load, combined with less pressure and the very slow buring RL-33 powder (maybe even combined with the slightly lubed bullets) all combined to make for a dirty barrel clean up. I had already cleaned the barrel before first use as the nitride processing requires a little clean up before use. My bullets where going as slow as 2800 fps with my reduced load of about 63 grains and having accuracy difficulties either due to unstable conditions at slow speed or carbon build up in the barrel.

I did not notice any carbon build up or problems in this barrel before Nitride processing with RL-33 powder and my heavy bullets, I am pretty certain this is because the barrel was not nitride processed and therefore had much more friction in the barrel with higher pressures allowing the RL-33 to burn more cleanly.

3. Carbon fouling greatly affects accuracy and ability for bullets to hold together.

Was getting indications of unstable bullets and a few that even broke up. I hope I can contribute this to the dirty carbon fouled barrel.

4. Shooting bullets that still has a light layer of lube on them may actually reduce copper fouling along with a coating a barrel with Loc-ease before first shot vs. a Kroil lubed barrel and clean bullets. Not sure about accuracy differences yet.

My first outing was with bullets that still had a light layer of lube on them and shot threw barrel that was coated with loc-ease first, even though I got a lot of carbon that evening cleaning the barrel the amount of copper build up was very light. I'll have to check just how many rounds I shot, think it was about 20-30 or so. My second outing I loaded to higher fps with clean bullets and a barrel that had been coated with Kroil. That evening I again noticed a lot of carbon but this time also a much more noticeable amount of copper fouling. I fired 50 rounds that second outing, not sure if there was a connection or not?????

5. A rough chamber will cause sticky bolt lift and can be mistaken for signs of pressure.

This was a for certain proven theory in my shooting over the last few days, I had never really experienced sticky bolt lift before, as we know a sticky bolt lift can be one of the signs of pressure. Given that I shoot custom made BTSniper bullets with a lot of my loads there is no published load data of course so I must work up my loads carefully watching for pressure signs. Well this particular barrel I did notice significant sticky bolt lift and contributed it to a sign of pressure. Well this week I loaded brand new "pretty" brass and again noticed the sticky bolt yet even more noticeable was the markings and scratches on the body of the brass. This bothered me a bit and after a bit of research I decided after the first day of shooting to take the barrel off and polish the chamber a bit. Now of course this should raise some red flags for some of you, polishing a chamber can probably result in all sorts of negative effects if one is not careful. After pulling the barrel I took a close look at the chamber and did in fact see the rough finish and excessive scratches left over from a poor chamber job. Well I have had a lot of practice with polishing cavities in Nitride hardened steel and I was confident in my ability to smooth this one out without going to far. I used one of the fired pieces of brass, neck sized it since I didn't want to polish the neck of the chamber, drilled out the primer pocket with a 1/4" bit and soldered a 1/4" diameter piece of brass from base to neck of the case leaving enough sticking out of back to grip on to. Worked perfect. Chucked barrel in lathe and using same polishing compound as I do for my dies was able to lap and polish out the scratches. Measured before and after cases showed less then .0007 of material lost at the back of the chambering.

My second outing with the polished chamber was smooth and perfect bolt lift and extraction of the brass, it was great! Now where I was getting sticky bolt lift at 65-66 grains of powder I am at 68.5 grains with no sticky bolt lift or pressure signs!

[BT Sniper]

Continuing on with post above....

I'm still working to get back to my accuracy and find that perfect load again. I think I am close and have identified a couple potential problem areas I must keep an eye on.

First I got to figure out how to reduce potential carbon build up. Either by cleaning barrel more while in middle of shooting or hopefully just simply increase powder charge to get pressure back up to levels that will allow RL-33 to burn cleanly again. Or worst case, find a slightly faster/cleaner burning powder, don't really want to do that as I was doing so well with RL-33 before I nitrided the barrel.

My next outing I will test loads from 67 grain to maybe as much as 70+ grains of RL-33, or as high as I can go till I either hit max pressure or run out of room in the case. I hope this will solve the carbon issues and return accuracy to where it should be. I was starting to see some progress with the 67-68.5 loads from previous outing, 68.5 was the highest load I had loaded and it showed a fps of 3035 which was just about where I was shooting with great accuracy before..... so..... hopefully with a clean barrel and hotter loads I should be back on track.

I did notice on my second outing that my first 10-15 rounds from the clean barrel was accurate and no flyers or blow ups, this was with a 66.5 grain load at about 2950 fps (used to be 3025 fps before nitride) but then I started testing some lower charge weights and results just kept getting worse, I think/hope because of the carbon build up starting.


Now for potential testing, or potential changes to make to my loads.......

1. Primmer? I have been using CCI BR primers. I noticed with my 6mm-06AI with RL-33 and even my 6.5x55s they shot best with this primer, considerably! in the 6mm the BR shot great yet a Mag primmer was not good at all. Same with 6.5.

I wonder????? with my need to burn RL-33 at higher pressure to ensure a clean burn would a mag primmer help? Only one way to find out.... this will be my next test. I have some CCI mag and Federal GM mag primers to try.


2. Seating depth of bullet in case? I have been shooting my 178 grain bullets with a .010" jam into the lands. It has been posted by many shooters that the RL-33 does best with a good initial pressure spike, jamming the bullets slightly in the lands seems to help and certainly shows for me on target, the 6mm-06ai shooting 130s starting driving nails once I jamed it .025" into the lands with RL-33. So I may just try a .020"-.040" jam and see what happens.


I think a slightly higher load of RL-33 and possibly a mag primmer may just be the answer I'm looking for, then possibly the seating depth. I may already be there with the 3035 fps load of 68.5 grains, just need to do so from the start in a clean barrel.

More testing to go.... I'm kind of interested to see just what max end fps I can get now with these 178s in the Nitride barrel, if I don't run out of room in the case first.

Swage on!

BT

[BT Sniper]

They say this 6.5WSM is a potential barrel burner, which is why I had the barrel Nitride processed, with this treatment it is possible to extend the life of a barrel many times over. In the 100 rounds or so I put down the tube before Nitride I noticed no ware in the throat of the rifling. This is the first time I had done so much load development before sending in for Nitride of a barrel. All my previous barrels, most started out new, shoot 10-20 rounds with good cleaning break in process then Nitride and start load development when barrel returns. Of course the Nitride processing will change the properties and harmonics of a barrel and therefor require a bit of load development but it is a little nerve racking to take a barrel that was shooting so well and then change it with the Nitride. Of course my previous barrels I had no idea of potential accuracy before Nitride as I never really did any testing before hand.

I have many barrels now that have this Nitride processing done and many, if not all of them shoot amazingly well! I'll have info for the shop that does all my Nitride work to post here soon. They are doing some pretty nice work and I can certainly recommend them to others.