Part of the range report Some velocity readings added

Starting off with an unusual thing: the third bad primer.  CCI Large Rifle Magnum in a black-powder load.  And that's third out of two boxes of 100(so far, still working on the second box).  Either I'm doing something that sometimes messes with them, or QC ain't what it used to be.

On to results.  I'll throw in two things: windy as the dickens the other day, and I wasn't shooting my best with irons; I may have to go to a bigger target and see if that helps.

Note: I was able to set up the Chrony, but I haven't averaged things out yet, I'll add that later.

In no particular order, tried a couple of loads using a 300-grain flat-nose bullet had from Midway on sale, to use for a light practice load.  Over 10.0 of Unique,

 I'm calling that vertical probably my fault.  Light recoil, but hit roughly the same POI as full-power loads at 100 yards.  Average velocity 1098fps.  Then, to see if it made any difference, same load with a pasteboard wad to keep the powder down near the flash hole

 Damn.  I call that a negative result.  Reason for trying this is some have reported better results using the wad.  Average velocity 1126

Speaking of, same bullet over 11.0 of Green Dot

 Fired six here, because I had three tightly grouped and two spread out(again, probably me), so I threw one more in, which landed in the tight group.  Average velocity 1240fps.

Heavier stuff
Black load, 68.0 2f (Graf & Sons) under the 500-grain Lee bullet.  I could've sworn I had a good hold, but still got this stringing

Average velocity 1107, low of 1097, high of 1113.  Very consistent velocity.


On a brighter note, I've mentioned before(I think) that the Lee 405-grain bullet doesn't have lube grooves deep or wide enough to work well with black powder, so decided to try it paper patched.  The first try was the last trip to this range, it was so-so but promising, so upped it from 68 to 69.0 grains, the bullet cast of pure lead, sized to .452", two-wrap onionskin patch, then wiped with lube and sized to .459

 Considering my shooting that day, that's not bad.  This bullet is short enough that with this charge there's very little compression.  Average 1126fps.  I'm going to try the full 70 grains next time and see if that bit extra compression evens the velocity out, it spread quite a bit more than the 500/68.0 load.

With smokeless using the 330-grain Lyman hollowpoint, my load for it is going to be this: 29.5 A5744, the bullet cast of pure or 30-1 and paper-patched with the same procedure as the 405 grain.

 Best group of the day.  I did shoot the same load using this bullet without the patch, just sized .459 and lubed; there's no picture because even for that day the group was bloody awful.  With the paper-patched, used just enough crimp to barely hold the bullet at the base of the first grease groove, the bare bullet had a heavier crimp.  Maybe need to try the bare bullet with the 'barely there' crimp and see what it does. 

Oddly, the bare-bullet group averaged 1596fps, but only got one reading for the paper-patched, 1461fps.  Apparently the position of the target put the bullet path right on the edge of the Chrony being able to detect it as the other four shots all had an error reading.  The one time previously I was able to chrony that load it was ~1530fps, so either an anomalous reading or something strange with that one.  I'll be trying it again, and will make a point of getting better velocity readings.

The rest of the shooting that day was zeroing the .338 Federal project rifle after installing the new risers and rings, and some 'just for fun' shooting.