bladeracer wrote:I've had a neighbour in this week for some tips on reloading for his .30-06 ADL (one of the better poly stocks I've yet seen).
He has some Remington once-fired brass (150gn, 155gn and 180gn bullets) and grabbed some 180gn Interlock SP's and CCI No.200 LR primers.
He likes what the factory ammo does already, so I tried to work up something equivalent to that for him to start out with.
I decided AR2209 offers good case fill, good velocity and good pressure behind the 180gn bullet. Extrapolating from ADI data gave me a 56.0gn charge to give him the 2700fps specified by Remington for their 180gn CoreLokt load. He hasn't got any factory ammo that we can confirm their claimed velocity with. He'll be over tomorrow to test shoot them to see if they're good, then he can load the rest of his brass up and get back out in the bush.
We had some fun. I had him start off with some of my light loads to warm the bore. Unfortunately, his rifle doesn't like these much at all. At 100m four-rounds grouped about 90mm, but they were 150mm low and right from the full-power loads, not much good for anything except coup-de-gras at point-blank ranges. But he enjoyed shooting them, no hearing protection required and barely any recoil. I might have to make up a bunch of them, maybe 10gn to 18gn and see if we can find a load that'll drop directly below his full-power load so he can use it for small game.
Then he shot a four-round group of 50mm right on target. With his 7-power scope he was more than happy with the results of his first reloads. I had him come back to 180m as he doubts he'd take a shot further than that, just to see what the drop is. He found the scope pretty weak at that range, and couldn't find a comfortable position, so his shots opened up to about 150mm. Drop is only about 90mm though.
He doesn't shoot much .30-06 so I don't see him getting into reloading until he gets himself a .223, but I think he's hooked