[Searoy]

Hi guys,

I purchased my own reloading gear, a Lyman T-Mag (the old slanted version) including #55 measurer, scale and trimmer. I set up a bench and had a big time.

Taking my most accurate load of 18.4g WSF as a center point, I loaded 50 rounds, 5 each starting ay 17.8 through 18.7 at .1 grain intervals.

I reduced my crimp on the first 2 lots from 1 1/2 turns on my Lee Factory roll crimp down to 3/4 turn. After that I upped it to 7/8 turn.

I also took some bad brass (45LC and 454C) and turned them down into scoopers for powder. The tallest measures 20.0 grains of WSF. I haven't trie the smaller 2 yet, but I will.

I should be test firing these loads this Sunday weather permitting. I'll let you know how it goes. This time I'll make sure to test the Chrono before we take off so that I can get some fps data.

I've included pics again. The first 3 are from the first batch with the too heavy crimp.

See the old post in February and March "Rookie Reloading" for background on this.

Now I'm out of bullets. I need to buy some more. Yyippie!

http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/sgtsearoy/lst?.dir=/Reloading&.view=t

 

[kciH]

Searoy,
although the I can't see the pictures that well, they look much better than your initial crimps. Good luck with your load development, and most of all have some fun shooting.

As a side note, you may want to increase your powder increments to .2 or .3 grains when developing loads in a case of this capacity. This will save you time and resources and provide data that is just as meaningful as the .1 grain increments. With the case capacity on the .454, I predicit you will get "chronograph data hypnosis" when trying to discern between the loads with as small a incremental change as you mention. The more your develop loads, the more you'll value that chronograph as a tool used for safety and information. I'm not being critical here, just trying to help you make your shooting tests more productive.

 

[Searoy]

Thanks for the reponse. If you recall, my first batch (of overcrimped loads) were seperated by .3 grains from 16.0 to 18.7. I found that 18.1 to 18.4 was about the most accurate of the loads, so I thought I would do a tighter range this time to see where the best point is.

I would have liked to get better pictures, but it was late. I'll add some later, maybe this afternoon.

Since I've got a shooting buddy, the way we did it last time was the shooter merely concentrated on shooting. The buddy was a spotter and was to write down the fps of each shot, recording which lot was in the gun that time. Maybe this time it'll work that way.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the results. Somewhere in there I'll get to 1400fps. Hopefully this will be at or near my most accurate load as well, as I expect it to be my hunting load. Using a 300 grain XTP, 1400 fps has plenty of stopping power out to 75 yards for anything I'll shoot. Then I'll make another scooper just for that load. I'd like to use the #55 measurer, but it varies the load widely with WSF. Out of about 50 trials I made, the range was from 17.0 to 17.3 grains, averaging about 17.2. That's just not tight enough. And me without a trickler yet.

I also need to buy my own dial caliper. Now that I have a good trimmer I can make better use of the caliper and get all my loads into a tight tolerance lot. It won't be long now before I've spent $1000 on this shooting hobby.