Working up a load

[winchester70]

When your working a load to achieve accuracy and you start with the start point out of the book what kind of increment do you step the grains of powder up in?

[dk99358]

For 'big' cases (308, 270 etc) I jump 1 grain for the first 2 loads then 0.5 grains at a time. For 223 size stuff, I jump .3 gr the whole way.

Over the years, I have found that the best accuracy is usually somewhere around 1/2 or 2/3 of the spread between bottom and top charges. Never at the very bottom. If it was at the bottom, I would try another powder.

Dale

[winchester70]

That's pretty much what i have been doing just curious how other people do it. Do you ever notice any accuracy differences from one primer to the next?

[Lycanthrope]

I run increments of .3 gr.

Some primers make a difference, but it all depends on your definition of accuracy and how meticulous you are.


Lycanloadslongusuallythrope

[dk99358]

I generally don't mess around with primer changes. I kind of settled on Winchester for centerfire, CCI for large pistol and Remington for small pistol. With different box colors and logos, it's obvious if I grab the large pistol primers while loading large rifle shells.

I have read that Ramshot powders like hot primers (WLR or the magnums) and that they tend to work better at top end charges. One of these days, I'm going to give TAC a workout in several cartridges but haven't got around to it.

Dale

[max384]

I used to work up in specific increments, but realized there is no numeric increment that fits every load, so what I do is take the min to max load range and divide by five and whatever increment that gives me is what I use.

For example, if I was loading 10mm 180 gr bullets over AA#7 powder:

min: 9.5gr max: 11.5gr
11.5 - 9.5 = 2.0 gr.

2.0 / 5 = 0.4 gr increments

The reason I chose to divide by five is because that leaves six, maybe seven columns of load data (depending on how it divides out, whole number or not). I only have enough room in my reloading log book for about 7 columns without taking up more space on another load data section (yeah, I know, very scientific reasoning for it! ). I also found that works pretty well for most loads. If I'm trying to make a real accurate round than I can play around with smaller increments once I find a good load using the increments determined earlier.