I've a bruised shoulder today. With the snow gone and a free weekend, I finally returned to the problem of working up loads for pushing 185-grain bullets at relatively high velocities. (Chapters 1-6 of the saga are in this reloading forum.) The Saturday series resulted in loads running about 3050 fps on the chronograph.
A quick check of loading manuals shows that 180-grain bullets at that velocity are the province of the 300 Win Mag. 3050 is above the velocities for 180s from the 300 Rem Saum, 300 Win Short Mag, and 300 H&H.
The problem is that the little bolt gun weighs only about 7 lbs, and it has a hard plastic butt plate. Quite hard. Really quite hard. Really most sincerely hard.
My spouse was not sympathetic: "Who was it loaded the ammo and pulled the trigger? Poor little bubula!" (She's a Jersey girl, you understand.) I'll do a few more tests and write another chapter.
I also just obtained some 185-grain hollow point jacketed bullets by Prvi Partizan to try out. Since they're designed for about 1500 fps max, it will be interesting to find whether they come apart on the way to the target. Such disintegration was predicted on the calguns thread a year ago when I proposed working with 185s, which is why I chose the fully encapsulated SWCs. The new bullets measure only 0.4495" in diameter, instead of the true 0.451" dia of the encapsulated SWCs that I've been playing with to date. I'm not sure what the effect of this will be.
The photo on Graf's web site (attached below) shows a cannelure for the bullet. I had hoped to combine this feature with a side crimp, but the cannelure is absent from the bullets in the shipment I received. I'm disappointed. We shall see how things work out.
--Bob