thump_rrr
Member
Sorry for the long post but I’m trying to give a little background.
I have a Savage 10BA in 308.
This rifle was my first ever precision rifle and has served me well for the past 12 years.
Over its lifetime it has been re-barreled 2 times by me with the last being about 3 years ago.
It was fed a steady diet of 175gr and 180gr SMK’s.
If I did my part the rifle shot between 0.4moa to 0.6moa.
As we all know since 2020 availability of components has been hit or miss especially north of the border.
Having run out of 175 SMK’s I went out and bought 2,000 Hornady 178 BTHP’s.
I also bought 8lbs of the now discontinued IMR 4166 Enduron powder.
Having acquired a 6.5 Creedmoor in that timeframe then another, then a 6mm BR the 308 load development fell by the wayside.
I would try 50 rounds here and there but never really gotten anywhere with it.
Results were always around 1MOA sometimes worse but never really better than that.
I even added a Cortina tuner brake to see if it would help. I found a repeatable sweet spot with the brake but the improvement was minimal.
In the last few weeks I decided that I wanted to get the 308 shooting well again so I made another ladder and went to the range last week.
It was windy and the groups were horrible so I blamed the wind and a bad day on my part and threw the targets in the trash and vowed to go back again this weekend.
I went back on Saturday armed with some wind flags and it was quite windy to the point I didn’t want to shoot the load development ammo but I did bring with me 8 rounds made with Berger 185 Juggernauts that I had found cleaning up.
Those were loaded with 43.7gr of Varget.
Despite the wind conditions I shot the 8 rounds
1 sighter for rough correction and 7 for grouping at 300M.
Convinced that the IMR 4166 was the problem I also put together 10 rounds of the Hornady 178 BTHP’s with 41.8gr of IMR 4895 in Lapua brass that a friend swears works well in all 4 of his rifles.
These were the results of those 10 rounds.
A once again underwhelming 1.1moa and 1.3moa.
Convinced that this was a powder issue I went back to my trusted Varget.
I loaded up 5 rounds each of 42.5, 42.8, 43.1, and 43.4, with the 178gr BTHP’s.
This morning just before leaving I loaded up a ladder with some 168SMK’s that I keep for my M1 Garand and some Varget for the hell of it.
By the time I finished shooting the 2nd group I wanted to tear the complete rifle apart right then and there. I checked the action screw torque, scope base torque, ring to base and ring torque just to ease my mind.
If you stop reading right now you would be inclined to say that it’s a bad scope but it’s a S&B PMII 5-25x56 that has been tall target tested for tracking on another rifle not so long ago and it shot the Bergers on Saturday reasonably well.
It also went on to shoot the 168SMK’s below.
Is it just that this bullet doesn’t shoot well?
Maybe it can be made to shoot better with a different seating depth or powder?
Any suggestions would be appreciated since I have 1600 of them swapping bullets right now would be the last resort.
I have a Savage 10BA in 308.
This rifle was my first ever precision rifle and has served me well for the past 12 years.
Over its lifetime it has been re-barreled 2 times by me with the last being about 3 years ago.
It was fed a steady diet of 175gr and 180gr SMK’s.
If I did my part the rifle shot between 0.4moa to 0.6moa.
As we all know since 2020 availability of components has been hit or miss especially north of the border.
Having run out of 175 SMK’s I went out and bought 2,000 Hornady 178 BTHP’s.
I also bought 8lbs of the now discontinued IMR 4166 Enduron powder.
Having acquired a 6.5 Creedmoor in that timeframe then another, then a 6mm BR the 308 load development fell by the wayside.
I would try 50 rounds here and there but never really gotten anywhere with it.
Results were always around 1MOA sometimes worse but never really better than that.
I even added a Cortina tuner brake to see if it would help. I found a repeatable sweet spot with the brake but the improvement was minimal.
In the last few weeks I decided that I wanted to get the 308 shooting well again so I made another ladder and went to the range last week.
It was windy and the groups were horrible so I blamed the wind and a bad day on my part and threw the targets in the trash and vowed to go back again this weekend.
I went back on Saturday armed with some wind flags and it was quite windy to the point I didn’t want to shoot the load development ammo but I did bring with me 8 rounds made with Berger 185 Juggernauts that I had found cleaning up.
Those were loaded with 43.7gr of Varget.
Despite the wind conditions I shot the 8 rounds
1 sighter for rough correction and 7 for grouping at 300M.
Convinced that the IMR 4166 was the problem I also put together 10 rounds of the Hornady 178 BTHP’s with 41.8gr of IMR 4895 in Lapua brass that a friend swears works well in all 4 of his rifles.
These were the results of those 10 rounds.
A once again underwhelming 1.1moa and 1.3moa.
Convinced that this was a powder issue I went back to my trusted Varget.
I loaded up 5 rounds each of 42.5, 42.8, 43.1, and 43.4, with the 178gr BTHP’s.
This morning just before leaving I loaded up a ladder with some 168SMK’s that I keep for my M1 Garand and some Varget for the hell of it.
By the time I finished shooting the 2nd group I wanted to tear the complete rifle apart right then and there. I checked the action screw torque, scope base torque, ring to base and ring torque just to ease my mind.
If you stop reading right now you would be inclined to say that it’s a bad scope but it’s a S&B PMII 5-25x56 that has been tall target tested for tracking on another rifle not so long ago and it shot the Bergers on Saturday reasonably well.
It also went on to shoot the 168SMK’s below.
Is it just that this bullet doesn’t shoot well?
Maybe it can be made to shoot better with a different seating depth or powder?
Any suggestions would be appreciated since I have 1600 of them swapping bullets right now would be the last resort.
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