The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

BTW for me check weights are a must.

That would be excellent news if that's the case, the groups are pretty loose with Privi. What moa did you achieve in the end?

Dombo63 wrote:You might be surprised how good your 303 is as well. Mine produced significantly tighter groups with HPS target ammo (174gn SMKs in HXP brass) than with privi or S&B, and that's with only me shooting it.

That's good to know thanks.

dromia wrote:Hornady dies are really first class and the bullet seater is excellent, giving negligible run out, they will not disappoint.

When you get round to loading for a rifle that needs very fine tuning of the boolit/bullet seating depth then it will be time to get the Forster micro adjust seating die.

Don't worry they're still on the list!

dromia wrote:BTW for me check weights are a must.

Got to say, I might drop the TargetMaster powder trickler off the list for this month and put a Extreme Rebel 17 Wet Tumbler on instead. Not cheap, but it does look like it's probably worth it.

They're both excellent bits of kit but if it was me I'd get the Target Master first, far better to have accurate powder charges than extra shiny cases.

In the absence of a tumbler you can just put them in a thick sock and bung them in the washing machine, 30-40mins at 30c does a nice job (but don't spin dry them unless you want to wake half the street!)

phaedra1106 wrote:They're both excellent bits of kit but if it was me I'd get the Target Master first, far better to have accurate powder charges than extra shiny cases.

The powder charges would be just as accurate from manual trickling so surely the difference, if a choice has to be made, is between hands-free trickling into dirty cases or hands-on trickling into shiny ones.

..

Hopefully I wasn't going to sacrifice accuracy, it just meant I'd do it by hand for a while. I've read about the sock trick before, but I wasn't sure if it was a joke... I guess not. :lol:

I've just been looking at the cost of making a tumbler myself and for the time it would take me to mess around with it, I don't think it's worth it. The rubber lined barrel is the expensive part and looking at rock polishing or jewelry barrels doesn't reduce the price enough.

phaedra1106 wrote:They're both excellent bits of kit but if it was me I'd get the Target Master first, far better to have accurate powder charges than extra shiny cases.

In the absence of a tumbler you can just put them in a thick sock and bung them in the washing machine, 30-40mins at 30c does a nice job (but don't spin dry them unless you want to wake half the street!)

HALODIN wrote:That would be excellent news if that's the case, the groups are pretty loose with Privi. What moa did you achieve in the end?

Dombo63 wrote:You might be surprised how good your 303 is as well. Mine produced significantly tighter groups with HPS target ammo (174gn SMKs in HXP brass) than with privi or S&B, and that's with only me shooting it.

So far only 3.5, ie 7 inches at 200 yards but with practice and my own loads in brass fire-formed to my rifle I hope to get that tighter. Interestingly the COL of the S&B and prvi rounds were all over the place but the HPS fairly consistent at almost bang-on the book minimum COL so i'll use them as benchmark and bracket around.
Fascinating stuff.

Thanks for the info. My .303 groups certain shots and then others seem wildly out sometimes, I figured it was my eyes rather than the ammo so that's really helpful. I suppose that's the good thing about reloading, you can disassemble a know accurate round and copy most of it. Will look out for HPS if my FAC ever comes back!

Dombo63 wrote:So far only 3.5, ie 7 inches at 200 yards but with practice and my own loads in brass fire-formed to my rifle I hope to get that tighter. Interestingly the COL of the S&B and prvi rounds were all over the place but the HPS fairly consistent at almost bang-on the book minimum COL so i'll use them as benchmark and bracket around.
Fascinating stuff.