What I thought I knew...what I now know

[petey]

So let me set the stage:

Age 10, I begin reloading by instruction of my father. First it starts off easy and simple, shot shells with a lee-load-all. The year progresses, so I move on to rifle and handgun reloading. Lots of fun finding accurate loads, far better and cheaper than any factory ammo you could purchase.... I never looked back, never shot factory ammo again, aside from .22LR and shotgun shells for spring gobbler or rabbit/upland bird. I still loaded my own shot shells for shooting clay birds.

I often switched bullets, mainly b/c I wanted a bullet that would do the job better on deer or elk or bear. Maybe that last animal I shot the year before ran further than I expected. Choose a different make/model, weight and style....now find the best load (which normally meant 3/4" at 100 yards) I kept every target, have them today. It's funny to look back at what I did...

How did I find the load?, simple load three up of a certain powder charge, shoot for group...go up or down .5 grains...repeat. Choose the best, start moving seating depth, only by measuring OAL of cartridge (boy how silly I was) How many rounds did this take? Well a lot, sometimes upward of 100 or more rounds down the barrel to find that so called "perfect" load for that bullet.

How many factory barrels have I burnt up?.. well a few, depending on the caliber. I know one .338 in particular I smoked beyond accuracy repair.

Move on a few more years...get into some real "in depth" reloading. I'm gonna kill a critter out past 1000. Lets buy a RUM or two start pushing the biggest badest bullet I can find as fast as it can go. Yeah I killed a few out there..search the history and read those stories. I didn't even know what a meplat or ogive was

Hey I'm using your standard run of the mill equipment, beam scales (accurate within .1 grain) single stage presses, etc...

Move forward 26 years from where I started: Now lets start shooting competition at 1000 yards. MAN what I've learned...

Have what I've been doing for so long, been so wrong? Well maybe not. To what level of accuracy are you trying to achieve? In those days, sub 1" 3 shot groups at 100 yards were fine to take animals out to even 5-600 yards. How I got to that point probably cost a lot more money and components by doing things the standard way, not knowing there's way more efficient ways of achieving the same or better results. So dealing with this 1000 yard game, where you have too many other variables, the one thing I've learned is that your gun and it's loaded round can not be another variable.

First off it's all about repeatability. If one thing is different, it can change the course. How much? Depends on the "thing" that is different and by how much. I no longer can be happy with .75", 3 shot groups at 100. That's 7.5" at 1000 in perfect conditions, and only 3 shots to boot. Folks I'm talking environmental chamber conditions too. Good enough to kill a deer or elk? Yup...good enough to compete with the rest...ha ha ha ha... when is it ever "perfect" in the real world? I look for .1 or .0X's in the 5 shot range. Folks we're talking putting one bullet inside the other, inside the other, inside the other, inside the other at 100 yards. You have to, or you're not even close to the same level as the guys down the line. How do you accomplish that? Well first off, you need good steel. If you don't have a good quality barrel and a competent smith, it's not going happen. I do a lot of research on what works for others, what the champs are using, what the top 20 shooters in the world used last year and everything that goes with it. I've chosen good so far, every barrel I own that goes on my bench gun shoots in the 1's or less. Bartlien, Krieger are among the top..Google it and see. Why I shoot both. Doesn't mean that a Hart or Lilja or Douglas isn't good, but the numbers tell you what the best are using and why I choose to use the same.

So this is all about reloading...assuming you have a descent barrel/rifle combo (building that rifle can be a gunsmithing topic), what changed in my 27+ years of how I reload?

I'll keep coming back to this, but it's about repeatability. Everything must be the same.

1. All about the equipment you use. If you use digital or a balance beam with .1 gr accuracy and that's what you use the measure things, well don't expect to be any closer than within +-.1 grain, which by the way is a .2 grain spread. Me? I got scales that help me measure to within .02 accuracy, yes that's 2 hundreths of a grain. Why? you'll find out how much I use it to measure EVERYTHING. Everything must be the same!

2. Brass prep. If you think you're going to just buy a bag of brass, tear it open, run it through your sizing dies and load them up expecting the same results your joking. First it starts with buying the best brass, which means the most consistent. Then you must make them all the same. Primer pocket uni-forming, flash hole de-burring, (oh yeah and this isn't RCBS stuff...this is machined tools to make each and every brass have the same hole/chamfer) All about repeatability, right? Everything MUST be the same and you need the tools to make them the same. This isn't run of the mill, mass produced tools you get at Walmart. They are machined tools to perfection. Ok so you trim, chamfer, anneal, turn necks to make them all uniform...then sort.

There's lots of opinions on weight sorting brass. This is all my opinion of course and feel free to give your own. I do it my way b/c it's something I can physically measure, easily. I weigh the brass on a scale that gets me within .02 gr. Many state that you must sort by volume.. OK smarty, how do you do that consistently and not take over 5 minutes per brass? What holds the liquid in? A spent primer? How do you know it's not different from the next case's spent primer? Using packing putty? OK how do you know you didn't put too little or too much in this one or that?.. you don't, period! Get my drift? Too many variables...yes there's variables with weighing, like where's the extra weight come from, inside or out? On the neck or in the web? Well I can't tell you other than I can measure it, easily. And when I'm done sorting my "prepped" brass I have a stack of brass that looks like a bell curve. Some high, Some low...and the vast majority right in the middle. I throw out the highs and lows or use them as cull cases and shoot the ones in the middle. They are close to the same. Doing it this way on over 200 pieces of 6XC, I have 170 cases that are within .4 grains. I still keep them separated by .1 grain increments but guess what? To my knowledge, they are all pretty darn close to the same. Does all this really matter? Maybe, maybe not,but I know I should have repeatability, b/c I have a baseline measurement that are as about as close as you're going to measure.
So I spent a lot on brass, there's a reason for that it's IMPORTANT. What's the 4 components of a cartridge to make it go bang? Brass ,Bullet, Powder, Primer. Notice Brass is first. It's the vehicle that houses everything else and it matters.
I Anneal every brass, every 2 firings, again consistently the same way so I have repeatability. Can you get away from not? Well yeah, but watch your accuracy fade away as you don't anneal. You tell me brass doesn't matter for accuracy, I'll prove you wrong every time.
I could talk for days about each and every step I do, and why, but the end result.. repeatability

3. Bullet prep. What the heck, man? You don't open a box of bullets and start going to town? You're crazy if you do, I'll tell you that much. So I buy in bulk, whatever the make/model, same lot's so I'm not having to deal with another variable. There's enough variables involved in mass produced bullets to begin with. Bottom line, most select bullets with superior BC to buck the most major variable in shooting long range The WIND. If you've ever done a true bullet sort you would be amazed at the differences you find. First and foremost, bearing surface. What is in contact with the rifling? The bullet right, so we want to make sure that our bearing surface is the same on all strings of bullets we're shooting. So if I'm shooting for a group or for score and sighters I may need 12-14 rounds. I want every one of those bullets to have the same bearing surface. You know what? I take that nice fancy scale and even weigh them to the nearest .02 grain, but not yet. In a box of 100 bullets you may have 5 different piles of bullets in .001" bearing surface increments. Yup that's 1 thousandths, and you need a tool that can measure that.
After sorted by bearing surface I want to uniform the point and in front of the ogive, so I trim the meplat then run every bullet through a pointing die. By trimming the meplat you decrease the BC of the bullet, but I end up ahead of the game by repointing it better than it was. Yup I,ve just modified this bullet and all its brothers to be exactly the same.. Repeatability right?
Now I weigh, just to make sure I didn't screw something up when I measured bearing surface. At the end of the day, there's normally a direct correlation with bearing surface length and weight normally after my pointing trick. I may find one a little off, and it's cast aside. Repeatability right?