I recently finished some load work up with a 200 gr. noe in the whelen using imr 4350 powder. I've been wanting to work with a true heavyweight and after having such good luck with the 200 gr. i ordered a 358009 280 gr. noe mould double cavity with one pb and one gc.
I'm truly excited about this boolit. Could'nt have asked for a better fit in the throat and bore....seated in rem. cases trimmed to 2.486" i wound up with a overall seating depth of 3.182". This keeps the bottom of gc even with the base of the neck and gives .151" contact with rifling on the bore riding nose and also keeps about half of the nose band contacting in throat. The cases are full length sized for the most part, but the die is backed off about 1/2 turn.
This depth puts about 1/3 of top lube groove sticking out of case. I took the flare off the case mouth after seating. but used no crimp.
Boolits are sized to .360" and lubed with Ben's Red. This boolit has 3 grooves but i only lubed two. I can seat to the nose band on this boolit and still have good fit, but i lose a good bit of nose band contact doing that. Since this is for a single shot rifle (tc encore), i went for all the contact i could get and still not pull boolits when unloading.
I've only had two range trips with it so far but had very good luck with the first load i tried with 4350....Haven't chronoed anything yet, but will in the near future.
So far with the gc boolit: All loads shot at 100yds.
(1) 29 gr. 4759 no filler...about 3" 5 shot group....supposed to be about 1811 fps.
(2)30 gr. 4759 no filler... about 3.5" 5 shot group...no joy so far.
(3) 48 gr. imr 4350...1.354" 5 shots with foul shot....then 4 shots in 1.070"
There was hardly any to absolutely no case stretch with this load.
Next range trip i forgot to take the flare off case mouths and didn't realize it till i got to the range and noticed they chambered a bit tighter. Figured with that kind of line up in the chamber they would shoot even better but no such luck.
(1)48 gr.imr 4350... 5 shots 1.662"
(2)49 gr imr 4350...5 shots about 1 3/4"
(3)50 gr. imr 4350...5 shots about 3"
(4)51 gr.imr 4350...5 shots in 3.5"
(5)52 gr. imr 4350...5 shots in 2.2" I'm going to shoot this one again without the flare.
With the 200 gr. boolits imr 4350 shot really well at 50 gr. and then again at 54.5 gr. So i'm hoping the same thing happens with the 280 gr. and it shoots well again at 52.5 gr which would be 4.5 gr. up from the 48 gr. load. That would be the same 4.5 gr. spread as with the 200 gr. boolits. We'll see.
The most fun came with the pb boolit and 10 gr. of unique...5 shots in 2.278" @ 100 yds.
btw...rifle twist rate is 1:14