.30-06 reloading question
Question:
Hi All, I am going to be reloading some Remington cases in .30-06 for my Remington Model 700BDL. I was using 175 grain Speer Grandslams with Winchester primers and HMR 45?? powder (sorry I forgot the rest of the number). Anyway, I am looking for a better hunting round. I want accuracy and penetration. I hunt blacktail and mule deer in the Western states (California, Utah, Arizona). Can someone please recommend a potent bullet, primer and powder that will work well with the Remington cases I have. This will be the first time these cases have been reloaded. Thanks in advance for the help. Cheers, Leonard — Leonard D. Perez Sr. Subcontract Administrator SRI International 333 Ravenswood Ave Menlo Park, CA 94025 Tel: (650) 859-4804 Fax: (650) 859-2027 Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/ To leave the Hunting listserv list, send a message with SIGNOFF HUNTING
Response:
# # # — # –Truston Humphres I think the 30-06 is a good gun but i think the 25-06 is better Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/ To leave the Hunting listserv list, send a message with SIGNOFF HUNTING
Response:
Interesting to see someone claim that the 243 and 25-06 are both ‘better than the 30-06′. Probably true only if you limit your hunting to animals smaller than deer. Once they are deer size or bigger then the only real advantage in the lighter calibers is lighter recoil. I have read about the old hunter taking a bull elk every year for 20+ years with a single shot from his 243, but that doesn’t make it a real elk gun, it just meant that the old hunter spent the whole season in the woods and didn’t shoot unless he was close, the animal was standing and a nice broadside shot was presented. You can’t seriously compare the 243 with the 30-06 for all around hunting ‘big game’. The same is true with the 25-06 unless the 117-120 grain bullets are adequate for what is hunted. Note that I said adequate, not optimum as everything bigger than deer is probably better handled with the heavier 308 bullets. This statement is from a hunter who has never used a 30-06, but has used a 243 on antelope and uses a 270 for everything up to and including caribou. Have fun, after all it is your nickle. Jim
# # A 30-06 is a good gun but a 243 is better Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/ To leave the Hunting listserv list, send a message with SIGNOFF HUNTING
Response:
#I am going to be reloading some Remington cases in .30-06 #for my Remington Model 700BDL. I was using 175 grain Speer #Grandslams with Winchester primers and HMR 45?? powder #(sorry I forgot the rest of the number). Anyway, I am #looking for a better hunting round. What, exactly, is wrong with the load you have now? #I want accuracy and #penetration. Well, you’re certainly going to get penetration with Grand Slams. What kind of accuracy have you been getting and what level do you seek? #I hunt blacktail and mule deer in the Western #states (California, Utah, Arizona). Can someone please #recommend a potent bullet, primer and powder that will work #well with the Remington cases I have. This will be the first #time these cases have been reloaded. No doubt you’ll get a few pet loads, but I’m going to give some general advice on reloading regardless of cartridge or calibre. None of what follows is new, and I don’t claim any of it is original either. But it’s an opportunity for me to put something back into rec.guns. :-) The key to accurate ammunition is uniformity, or put another way, the elimination of variables. Don’t buy inferior (i.e. cheap) components. Start with decent materials, and which the loading manuals indicate are suitable for the cartridge and intended application. You’re Rem cases, Speer bullets, and HMR powder are fine, nothing wrong with them. I’d be inclined to use Rem 9 1/2 primers with your Rem cases. I would not use magnum primers. Any bullet from the big four manufacturers should work fine. You don’t need ‘premium’ bullets to obtain good results. In general, the cartridge case is the component on which you should direct your attention. You can’t do much to the bullets, primers or powders you buy, but you can improve your cartridge cases. Some of these are worth doing for a factory sporting rifle, and some are only worth doing for a custom rifle. Of course, if your cases are rubbish to start with, you won’t make bad cases good, but you can make good cases better. Primer pockets are not all the same size. Using a "primer pocket uniforming tool" you can square up bottoms of the primer pockets and get them all the same depth. Then the primers will all be seated to the same depth and thus the blow imparted by the firing pin will be the same force and hence, as close as we can get it, the primers should ignite the same. I use a Sinclair series 8000 uniformer and a powered screwdriver. Other brands are available. For seating the primers, use a decent tool. Don’t use a press mounted primer tool because, generally, they don’t have good feel: it’s all too easy to crush a primer – and then it won’t be uniform. RCBS make a bench mounted priming tool that lets you ‘feel’ when the primer is seated, and the Lee Auto-Prime is a hand operated tool that privides good feel. RCBS also make a hand tool. The flash hole is produced by striking the cartridge with a punch: it isn’t drilled out, for example. On the inside of the flash hole will be burrs. (You can feel these if you use a small drill bit and turn it by hand.) These burrs are random in nature and alter the direction of the hot gases from the primer in a random pattern: hence here is a variable we can eliminate. To remove the burrs we use a "flash hole deburring tool". I use Sinclair’s tool. Do not use a hand drill. You say these are new cases. I *always* full length my cases, even new ones. I adjust my dies so that they push the shoulder back by exactly 0.001". You can determine this easily by resizing a case and chambering it in the rifle. If the bolt is stiff to close, then the ‘headspace’ is too long. (For the 30-06, this is the length from the case head to the shoulder.) Seat the die in a bit farther until the bolt just closes without force. (For a normal die, screwing the die in by 1mm will lower or raise the die by 0.001"). The cartridge headspace will then be 0.001" under the rifle’s headspace. If you push the shoulder back too far, and 0.015" is way too far, then you will get failures to fire due to insufficient blow from the firing pin. (I have.) A set of arbor shims (available from Sinclair) are very handy for adjusting dies on a press. These are a large collection of shims from 0.001" to 0.100". You can raise or lower the die a precise amount without actually adjusting the lock nut on the die. Very handy if you reload for different rifles that use the same cartridge (note: note 30-06 is not a ’calibre’ but a ‘cartridge’) or different bullets for the same rifle. Use good quality dies (use good quality kit throughout, don’t buy cheap kit, it is a false economy.) Mostly I use Redding or RCBS dies: I don’t use Lee or Lyman dies. Some people use neck resizing dies (for resizing after the ammo has been fired in a particular rifle and is to be fired again in the same rifle). I don’t neck resize. I’ve done no tests to determine which makes the better ammo, and there are plenty of people who will swear that neck resizing is better. They’re entitled to their opinion. I accept Bart Bobbit’s opinion that FL resizing is better. It returns the case to a known uniform condition. When a case is resized, the die squeezes the case mouth in by maybe 0.010 to 0.015", and then the expander ball stretches it out again. This "works" the brass, normally by much more than is required, and this is bad for case life and accuracy. In a sporting rifle (one that is not hard recoiling) we only need a few thousandths of interference fit to hold a bullet, so if the case mouth internal diameter is 0.005" less than the diameter of the bullet it will hold the bullet good and tight. (I NEVER crimp bullets in their cases, it isn’t necessary and it’s another variable we can eliminate.) So to avoid too much grip on the bullet (which increases operating pressure during firing) one option is to open up the die where it resizes the case neck, by removing material from inside the die. (This can either be done by a specialist machinist or I’ve heard of people using a dowel, abrasive paper and a power drill.) Once the die’s neck is opened up a bit, the expander ball can be dispensed with since the case neck is squeezed down only enough to hold the bullet, and no smaller. You need to make careful measurements of your chosen bullet and case if you decide to do this. Be aware that different case manufacturer’s make their cases to different thicknesses. For example, Rem cases have thin case walls compared to Norma cases, so the resize die will squeeze the Norma cases more resulting in a narrower internal case mouth diameter than the same die resizing Rem cases. Be careful. You should ensure that your cases are all the same length. This means always measuring your cases for length and, if necessary, trimming them down to the "trim to" length. I used a Lyman trimmer for a long time and it works well but now use a Forster trimmer (because it can do other things as well). By trimming your cases you will produce rough edges at the case mouth. These MUST be removed. The burrs on the outside will place the bullet in a random position relative to the axis of the barrel’s bore (bad) and, on the inside of the case neck, the bullets will be scraped and damaged. Damaged bullets won’t fly as well as undamaged bullets. So the burrs must be removed. Any of the "case mouth deburring tools" will do the trick. Use these lightly: the purpose is to remove the burrs, not to produce a knife edge on the case mouth. As an aside, I’ve found that the case length before and after deburring differs by 0.001" — the case gets longer. Odd. Various tools are available for measuring case concentricity. I use the RCBS Case Master which is a decent tool (but better, more expensive, more specialist tools are available). It tries to be a jack of all trades, which it is, but it can’t be a master. But for most people’s uses, it’s fine. It’s fast when checking case length, or case neck wall thicknesses, or concentricity. On that subject, some cases have one wall thicker than the opposite side. (When fired, these produce banana shaped cases which is one reason I full length resize). But also, depending on whether the cartridge is loaded at "6 o’clock" or "12 o’clock" the thick or thin wall will be downmost in the chamber, and the bullet will be high or low relative to the barrel’s axis. Not good for accuracy because we want the axis of the bullet to be exactly in line with the axis of the bore. So we want concentric cases. The RCBS is a moderately priced tool for measuring case concentricity. Using this, you can measure your cases and reject those that have excessive runout. I have found that Norma and Lapua cases are better than Remington’s. With the Lapua brass, 80% of the cases have a neck runout of no more than 0.003" whereas fewer than 50% of the Remington cases had a runout of no more than 0.004" (note 4 not 3). Scandanavian brass is far better than US brass in my experience. SO, filtering out (culling) bad cases has to be done. Case neck turning involves skimming the external surface of the case neck wall to make the neck wall a uniform thickness. For a sporting rifle, the objective of neck turning is to remove bumps and high points. Neck turning isn’t essential and for a factory rifle it is way down the list of things to do. Bullet seating depth seems to be one of the easiest ‘quick wins’ in the accuracy game. An example: a .243 Ruger M77 of mine was shooting 3" 5 round centre-to centre groups at 100 yards. Simply by seating the bullets much closer to the lands (the start of the rifling) I reduced those groups to under an inch ctc. I didn’t change anything else. You need to be careful when moving the bullets closer to the lands because pressures do increase and we don’t want to explode the gun and kill anyone. So we need to know
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Response:
Comparing the .243 to the 30-06 is like comparing the 30-06 to the .375 HH. Each gun has it’s own range of usefullness. I wouldn’t use a .243 on an Elk. And I wouldn’t use .375 on an Antelope. So on and so forth. There is no perfect gun for all situations. That’s why there are so many guns just waiting for us to buy them! Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/ To leave the Hunting listserv list, send a message with SIGNOFF HUNTING
Response:
#In addition to everything that Jonathan Spencer wrote, it is also essential #to: # #Measure the powder for each and every load. The normal powder thrower can #vary the load thrown by 0.1 to 0.3 grains either direction depending on the #powder. Get a powder trickler and weigh every single charge. I’ve done that too, and not noted one iota of difference in either accuracy nor velocity compared to ammo where I didn’t weight the charge. These days I set the powder measure to throw the charge I want, and that’s it. #I measure the length of every loaded round. I can then segregate them into #three categories : prime (used for hunting) +- 0.001" sighting in loads #+- 0.005" other (fouling shots, plinkers, reset bullet seating to one of the #above) The OAL of the loaded round isn’t good enough. You need to measure where the bullet will hit the lands (start of the rifling). This is some predefined point on the bullet’s ogive (curve). You see, especially with soft point (exposed-lead tip) bullets the length of each bullet varies. The diameter of the ogive where it strike the lands doesn’t vary. So use a tool such as the RCBS Precison Micrometer to determine what this point is, and you can seat the bullet a **precise** distance from the lands – the distance that suits your rifle. Your seating die shouldn’t vary the seating depth much at all, far less than the OAL categories you list above. –Jonathan Spencer Keith Borer Consultants – Forensic Scientists Mountjoy Research Centre, Durham, DH1 3UR, England tel: + 44 191 386 6107 fax: + 44 191 383 0686 Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/ To leave the Hunting listserv list, send a message with SIGNOFF HUNTING Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/ To leave the Hunting listserv list, send a message with SIGNOFF HUNTING
Response:
In addition to everything that Jonathan Spencer wrote, it is also essential to: Measure the powder for each and every load. The normal powder thrower can vary the load thrown by 0.1 to 0.3 grains either direction depending on the powder. Get a powder trickler and weigh every single charge. I measure the length of every loaded round. I can then segregate them into three categories : prime (used for hunting) +- 0.001" sighting in loads +- 0.005" other (fouling shots, plinkers, reset bullet seating to one of the above) — Karl Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/ To leave the Hunting listserv list, send a message with SIGNOFF HUNTING
Response:
#In addition to everything that Jonathan Spencer wrote, it is also essential #to: # #Measure the powder for each and every load. The normal powder thrower can #vary the load thrown by 0.1 to 0.3 grains either direction depending on the #powder. Get a powder trickler and weigh every single charge. I’ve done that too, and not noted one iota of difference in either accuracy nor velocity compared to ammo where I didn’t weight the charge. These days I set the powder measure to throw the charge I want, and that’s it. #I measure the length of every loaded round. I can then segregate them into #three categories : prime (used for hunting) +- 0.001" sighting in loads #+- 0.005" other (fouling shots, plinkers, reset bullet seating to one of the #above) The OAL of the loaded round isn’t good enough. You need to measure where the bullet will hit the lands (start of the rifling). This is some predefined point on the bullet’s ogive (curve). You see, especially with soft point (exposed-lead tip) bullets the length of each bullet varies. The diameter of the ogive where it strike the lands doesn’t vary. So use a tool such as the RCBS Precison Micrometer to determine what this point is, and you can seat the bullet a **precise** distance from the lands – the distance that suits your rifle. Your seating die shouldn’t vary the seating depth much at all, far less than the OAL categories you list above. –Jonathan Spencer Keith Borer Consultants – Forensic Scientists Mountjoy Research Centre, Durham, DH1 3UR, England tel: + 44 191 386 6107 fax: + 44 191 383 0686 Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/ To leave the Hunting listserv list, send a message with SIGNOFF HUNTING
