Quote:
Originally Posted by heretohunt
I am an intermediate reloader. I currently do not own a chronograph but I’m starting to believe it is a missing link. I’m guessing my load development time and money could be cut in half if I had one?
The way I work up my loads is to shoot three shots going up in half grain increments for the bigger cartridges and .3 for the smaller one. Then I take the most accurate loads and by retrying the best Loads/groupings I choose. I have had good luck out to 500 yards but not great after that It could be my shooting or...?
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This is the same method I started with and it works but a chronograph can save you an awful lot of time and money. On more than one occasion I ended up with a fluke 3 or 5 shot excellent group that I couldn't replicate. So I adjusted and started shooting way more groups to verify, to the point that things got a little silly. When you want to check 6 charge weights and are shooting 3 5 shot groups of each charge it basically an entire box of bullets before you even get to the second phase.
I use the method that dubious explained, here's a more detailed explanation.
https://www.65guys.com/10-round-load...t-ladder-test/
This way I can load up 10 charges in .3gr increments. When you shoot these over the crono you will look for 2 or more adjacent charges that get you similar velocities. Here's an example with made up numbers:
50 2100 fps
50.3 2170 fps
50.6 2200 fps
50.9 2204 fps
51.2 2235 fps
Now this alone doesn't tell you a thing about accuracy but usually you will find that that nice flat spot between 50.6 and 50.9 is going to be consistent. Now that we have that you make up 10 rounds with a charge weight of say 50.7 and head back with your chrono to verify. If all 10 of those rounds are close to each other in velocity, with an Extreme Spread of < 20fps then you can go ahead and start shooting groups. Tweaking the seating depth and brass prep will probably tighten up your group at this point as well.
Right there the chrono has saved you a ton of time and money. As I use a magnetospeed I need to shoot a bit more for those groups, it throws stuff off a bit when it's on the barrel. The labradar would allow you to accomplish both in a single step but at a significant initial cost.
One other note for shooting at 500 and beyond, the most important thing here will be consistent velocity. I'll take a load that has a low velocity spread over one that makes smaller groups for that scenario 100% of the time.