earlwb wrote:I thought I had a reply post, but it wasn't appearing.
Anyway I was using Hornady brass, 33.9 grains of Lil Gun, 230 grain XTP HP Hornady bullets, .451" diameter, OAL was 2.10". Winchester or S&B small rifle primers. Both primers seemed to have the same effect and it did it with both types.
The crimping is a little weak, I did use a Lee Factory crimp die. I had made up a few dummy rounds to use for testing when I was fixing my magazines up to work. The magazines didn't work at first. But while testing I had noticed the bullets creeping out as I repeatedly used them to test the magazines. So that resulted in more aggressive crimping of course. But although it alleviated the problem of the bullets creeping, it could still happen some after repeated use in testing.
I was originally going for a light load with the idea of not causing the bullets to come apart at speed. In looking at the targets the bullets are all making nice clean round holes without any shrapnel happening too. The rifle does cycle OK with the mild loads though. It will fire three rounds Ok out of both magazines no problem now after I fixed the magazines of course. Granted it does the same with the factory loaded 250 grain rounds too.
Anyway so far I agree with you guys. The propellant charge is too light. The crimp likely is not good enough either. It is possible the primers may not be all that strong for ignition too. But the primers work fine in my .308 Win, .300 BLK, .22 TCM and 223 Rem.
I do appreciate your input too. Thanks guys.
Earl, this is a mostly humble forum. The members who choose to reply to posts, do so because they feel compelled to help, not brag or elevate themselves by belittling others. That cannot be said of all forums. There's probably no bullet, powder or load that you can think of for this caliber, that someone here hasn't already tried. You can benefit from those experiences.
You can't compare reloading this caliber to other bottleneck rifle calibers. I learned that lesson well, shortly after I got mine back in 2010. Back then, there was a lot less accumulated experience so it was a longer learning curve. For me, that was actually fun because there was plenty of unexplored paths to take.
Lets break down your loads starting with the bullet. There are two kinds of bullet profiles that we use. Smooth sided and cannelured or in the case of Barnes, ones with driving band grooves. As you would expect, a smooth surface is harder to hold onto than one with surface irregularities. By choosing the XTP as opposed to the XTP Mag version of Hornady's hollow points, you wound up with smooth sided. Never mind that they are less sturdy. Its not like you're going to see a puff of grey and no impact downrange. This isn't a 3k+ fps caliber. Regardless of whether its a hollow point, round nose fmj or some form of ballistic tip. Hanging onto a smooth walled cup and core bullet is going to be a challenge in this caliber. The XTP Mag versions of bullets are like night and day in terms of ease of hanging onto them since they have a cannelure. All bullets pull as a result of inertia, otherwise inertial bullet pullers wouldn't work. Its discussed ad infinitum here that you don't repeatedly load and unload a cartridge in this caliber without checking them for pulling. Doubly so with the smooth sided bullets. Its the main reason that I shy away from the 230fmj bullets, despite them being affordable and plentiful. If someone made that bullet with a cannelure, I'd be all over it. That's why I like the 225gr FTX for plinking. Its easy to impart a crimp down into that cannelure, that hangs on to them. nuff said...
Your choice of powder is spot on. nuff said...
As I said earlier, the Winchester Small Rifle primer is a good choice. nuff said...
Crimping is as much art as it is science in this caliber, especially with short bullets that don't seat more than a half caliber. Look at your bottle neck calibers. How would that .308 do in an autoloader if you only seated a smooth sided bullet .154 down into the neck? It was wise that you chose to over-crimp your dummy rounds that you were using to work out your magazine tuning. You can now buy magazines that do not need tuning, but they're not nearly as cheap as the ones that do. Back when it was first introduced, all 450b mags needed some fussing with to get them to perform reliably. You couldn't buy your way out of it. That tuning process is also well documented within this forum. I own a Lee FCD for just about every caliber that I reload for. The way they are implemented in those cases is not the way we need it to work on the 450b. We need an FCD that works on the entire surface area of the bullet, not just .10-.15 down from the mouth. I hope their new 450b FCD die accomplishes that without compromising the fact that this caliber headspaces on the mouth. That is why a taper crimp die is fairly effective in this caliber. Personally, I like the one that Hornady provided, but it is not as effective with short, smooth sided bullets. To effectively predict how your crimp will perform and for the sake of repeatability, you need a a micrometer or tightly spec'd caliper to measure with. You see us refer to diameter ranges from .474 to.478 at the mouth. I close my jaws on the .451-.452 bullet and push the mouth up to where it does not pass through them. I then painfully, slowly open the jaws until the case mouth lips just eases past the jaw lips (One of the reasons that your cases need to be deburred). I do not just close the jaws down upon the case, near the mouth. The cases get thicker the further back from the mouth you measure. Whatever method you use is fine as long as you use it that way for every reloading session. The fact that not all members agree upon how to measure their crimps requires you to read between the lines when trying to duplicate their load recipes. At least you know how I do mine now. A crimp not only needs to be effective, it also has to be repeatable if you want to keep your velocity SD as low as possible. nuff said...
OAL / COL. If you already have a Stoney Point (now Hornady) Overall Length Gauge, consider getting a 450b case for it. It's great for many reasons but also for seeing what OAL/COL you need to use to get the bullet in to at least a half caliber (personal minimum) seating depth before you're actually loading rounds. The bullets need to start off straight WRT the case centerline before ignition forces them into the leade if you have any hopes of good groups. After over 2500 450b loads, unlike many bottle neck calibers I also load for, I have yet to realize a benefit from seating the bullets in to where they touch the rifling. Just assume you need a jump in this caliber. Resistance is futile. As long as they strip and chamber, there is no minimum OAL/COL.
Best advice: Get a different bullet to learn reloading for this caliber. One with a cannelure to drive the taper crimp down into. The XTP Mags have them is you like a hollow point. The 200 and 225 FTX have them also. My experience has been that the Hornady 225 FTX is an easy peezy bullet to load with great results using Lil Gun and either a Rem 7 1/2 or WSR primer. On their worst day, they are no more than 2 MOA 5-shot groups at 100 yds and at the optimum load, they can
reliably achieve .75 MOA 5-shot groups at 100yds off of a good bench setup. Not to mention, they are affordable and doubly so if you catch on a Midway blemished sale. The last boxes of blems I got were something like 15¢ a bullet. When members spot a good deal, they are generally good about posting it here
after they place their order Hoot
-writer of long posts-