Tikka T3 243

[Coxy383]

Hi all. In acouple weeks I have an opportunity to buy my mates .243. It's been sitting in his safe doing nothing. It's 7 years old but minimum use and has a Swarovski 3x10 on-top. I've been watching a crap load of YouTube while waiting on this licence to come in and have heard about twist rates and how you need the right one to stabilise heavier bullets...thing is he has no idea what twist this rifle has. It's going to come with 6 boxes of 100 grain Winchester super X. My research says that most 243.have 1 in 10 twist rate and won't stabilise 100 grain bullets. Am I thinking about this too much as a newbie or is this pretty relevant. Ill only be hunting fallow to max 150m.

Thank you

[bladeracer]

Hi all. In a couple weeks I have an opportunity to buy my mates .243. It's been sitting in his safe doing nothing. It's 7 years old but minimum use and has a Swarovski 3x10 on-top. I've been watching a crap load of YouTube while waiting on this licence to come in and have heard about twist rates and how you need the right one to stabilise heavier bullets...thing is he has no idea what twist this rifle has. It's going to come with 6 boxes of 100 grain Winchester super X. My research says that most 243.have 1 in 10 twist rate and won't stabilise 100 grain bullets. Am I thinking about this too much as a newbie or is this pretty relevant. Ill only be hunting fallow to max 150m.

Thank you

You can measure it roughly for yourself by pushing a tight patch through and measuring how far the rod goes through in one revolution. Or simply fire one into a paper target at 50m and see if the bullet hole is circular, you'll also want to confirm the ammo shoots well in the rifle and is zeroed before going hunting.

Stability is about bullet length not weight. Ten-inch twist will stabilise bullets up to around 1.100".
Looking at the website it seems new T3X models should be 8"-twist, but the old T3 does seem to be 10"-twist.
https://choose.tikka.fi/usa/group/tikka/t3x-hunter?caliber=243%20WIN
https://media.sako.global/image/upload/v1692946330/Hunter_euf2dx.pdf

Hornady's 100gn BTSP is 1.066" so should work okay. Sierra's 100gn SGK is similar (not the TGK, even the 90gn is too long). Speer used to do a 105gn SP (1.090" I think) that might work okay but I think they were discontinued a while ago. No idea about Winchester bullets.

[Coxy383]

Hi all. In a couple weeks I have an opportunity to buy my mates .243. It's been sitting in his safe doing nothing. It's 7 years old but minimum use and has a Swarovski 3x10 on-top. I've been watching a crap load of YouTube while waiting on this licence to come in and have heard about twist rates and how you need the right one to stabilise heavier bullets...thing is he has no idea what twist this rifle has. It's going to come with 6 boxes of 100 grain Winchester super X. My research says that most 243.have 1 in 10 twist rate and won't stabilise 100 grain bullets. Am I thinking about this too much as a newbie or is this pretty relevant. Ill only be hunting fallow to max 150m.

Thank you

You can measure it roughly for yourself by pushing a tight patch through and measuring how far the rod goes through in one revolution. Or simply fire one into a paper target at 50m and see if the bullet hole is circular, you'll also want to confirm the ammo shoots well in the rifle and is zeroed before going hunting.

Stability is about bullet length not weight. Ten-inch twist will stabilise bullets up to around 1.100".
Looking at the website it seems new T3X models should be 8"-twist, but the old T3 does seem to be 10"-twist.
https://choose.tikka.fi/usa/group/tikka/t3x-hunter?caliber=243%20WIN
https://media.sako.global/image/upload/v1692946330/Hunter_euf2dx.pdf

Hornady's 100gn BTSP is 1.066" so should work okay. Sierra's 100gn SGK is similar (not the TGK, even the 90gn is too long). Speer used to do a 105gn SP (1.090" I think) that might work okay but I think they were discontinued a while ago. No idea about Winchester bullets.

First thank you very much for the effort in explaining that to me. Yes there won't be an issue in getting out to see how it fires at 50 . I watched him take a coke can at 100 but he was shooting 80 grain varmint rounds and hasn't used the 100s . Cheers

[bladeracer]

First thank you very much for the effort in explaining that to me. Yes there won't be an issue in getting out to see how it fires at 50 . I watched him take a coke can at 100 but he was shooting 80 grain varmint rounds and hasn't used the 100s . Cheers

In the old days when all the common bullets were very basic jacketed flat-base hollow-point or soft-point designs it was easy to refer to bullet weight as the limiting factor, there's not much difference in length between HP, SP or RN of similar construction. But nowadays we have long boat-tails, very long ogives, long polymer tips, and monolithic copper or brass bullets (far less dense than lead), so it becomes more important to refer to bullet length rather than weight. A nice flat-base round nose 110gn bullet would probably be fine in a 10"-twist, swap to a polymer-tipped VLD/ELD bullet and you might be stuck to 90gn max, swap to a tipped, boat-tailed brass bullet and you might be limited to 80gn. Hornady's 90gn ELDX and their new 80gn CX and the old 80gn GMX copper bullets for example are all just over 1.100" and should work okay in 10'-twist, but they're pushing the boundary. Outer Edge's copper 69gn ball-bearing-tipped .243" bullet is the longest they offer for 10"-twist, their 72gn bullet specifies 9"-twist.

[Coxy383]

First thank you very much for the effort in explaining that to me. Yes there won't be an issue in getting out to see how it fires at 50 . I watched him take a coke can at 100 but he was shooting 80 grain varmint rounds and hasn't used the 100s . Cheers

In the old days when all the common bullets were very basic jacketed flat-base hollow-point or soft-point designs it was easy to refer to bullet weight as the limiting factor, there's not much difference in length between HP, SP or RN of similar construction. But nowadays we have long boat-tails, very long ogives, long polymer tips, and monolithic copper or brass bullets (far less dense than lead), so it becomes more important to refer to bullet length rather than weight. A nice flat-base round nose 110gn bullet would probably be fine in a 10"-twist, swap to a polymer-tipped VLD/ELD bullet and you might be stuck to 90gn max, swap to a tipped, boat-tailed brass bullet and you might be limited to 80gn. Hornady's 90gn ELDX and their new 80gn CX and the old 80gn GMX copper bullets for example are all just over 1.100" and should work okay in 10'-twist, but they're pushing the boundary. Outer Edge's copper 69gn ball-bearing-tipped .243" bullet is the longest they offer for 10"-twist, their 72gn bullet specifies 9"-twist.

Sounds like I'll need to buy a few and see how they go. Pretty sure he bought the 100s for hunting because it has a deer on the picture implying it's a deer round. I'll be honest that's what I would have done also. Big learning curve ahead as I'm learning by myself.

Thanks again.

[Blr243]

Factory ammo by ppu has 90 grain soft points that hit hard . So do the 87 v max