Don't forget to anneal your case necks regularly.
Even Lapua cases don't like more than four times reloading without annealing; leading to inconsistent neck tension and vertical stringing.
To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
nope not mucking about with oal just wanted them to fit my mag mate . from what av seen and been reading a lot of people don't seem to bother crimping bolt action bullets will prob give it a go once av found my ideal load have to say though am loving it but i need to get myself a decent scale i have the lee scale and i bought a second hand lyman 505 and it seems pretty cack you don't get the same reading twice of it
cheers del
Annealing is ideal if you can get it right and consistantly, otherwise you end up with less consistant tensions than without. Lapua anneal with electric induction where it is easy to get the temps and loc 100%.
Del, as regards crimping mate.
Folk dont crimp because they believe that it is only used to prevent bullets coming loose and keeping things waterproof in military ammunition made for automatic weapons....and to a point they would be right, however.
As I said, many have found that when loading to mag lengths, crimping has given a more consistant release pressure leading to tighter groups. I certainly improves the groups past the optiomim for non crimped loads in all of my rifles.
I'm a maggot in another life you know
I would only anneal with hard to get, Re-formed cases or those that are very expensive, 223 is very easy to get and not expensive compared to most other cases, when you start to get split necks bin the lot and buy new brass.
TB.
I hope I'm not derailing this thread, but I do have a related question which concerns N140 and 77gr SMK. Both Vihtavuori and Sierra (Edition 5) suggest a range of N140 from 21.0 to 24.7gr and 22.3 to 24.5gr respectively. Both also suggest OAL of 2.26". Now, I'm not particularly interested in maximum loads, but there's no way that I can squeeze 24gr of N140 into a .223 case with a 77gr SMK and get an OAL of 2.26". The most I can get in is 21.5gr for that OAL, which is right at the bottom of the weights suggested by both the powder and bullet manufacturers.
Have I missed the blindingly-obvious somewhere along the line?
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I use this load for shooting on the local range to 600 yards. I use 24gr of N140 and col of 2.650 in my Tikka T3. I don't think its compressed.
Have you measured your rifle's ideal COL? Could be it will give you the room for those extra grains.
Or just load a test round (not primer or powder) to 2.650 and see if it fits in the mag and chamber. If so, try to see how many more grains you can get in
Remember to measure it again when you take it out of the rifle to make sure the bullet hasn't been pushed in a bit.
That's interesting, thank you. A COL of 2.650 will not fit the magazine, but I have tried a couple of other cases (Remington) and now it looks as though 24gr N140 will go in with slight crunching and give COL of 2.280". A good reason for checking case capacities In the first place! I'm not comfortable with compressed loads though so will abandon this idea which was to use the longer, heavier bullets for 600 yard shooting (in an AR-style rifle, hence the need to use the magazine).