Badger has two very different days...

[meles meles]

On Saturday we took a pawful of non-shooting friends shooting.

On Saturday afternoon we went to dust a few clays at Cockett Farm. ( http://www.cockettfarm.com ) The sun shone gloriously and we undertook a round of 50 sporting clays. We provided a soupçon of tuition and an o/u break barrel, a fine English Damascus barrelled side by side and a fantabulous French Darne butterfly action, all in 12 bore. Everyone had a great time, each shooter finding a particular gun that suited them and all managed to break a respectable number of clays. Most shot best with the s/s but all loved the weirdness of the Darne, and one total newcomer did frighteningly well with the o/u - ie we were scared he was going to dust more clays than us, and that would never do !

On Saturday evening we went to one of our clubs which was holding a guest night on an indoor 25 metre range. This allowed the group to experience the difference between shotguns and rifle shooting: plenty of Desmonds were fired from some blacktical semi-automatics for the pure fun of it, followed by a little more serious shooting using centrefire rifles with reduced power loads and cast bullets. Everyone enjoyed it enormously and we feel we may have made a few converts to the two sports.

Sunday, however, was not such a good day. Flushed with success from our recent foray into pawloading for our .303" Lee Enfields and P14, we had loaded 250 rounds of 7.62x51 with similar reduced power loads (circa 18 gns of powdah behind a 165 gn cast bullet) for use at 250 mards in our DTA. Unfortunately, we forgot to allow for the fact that the cast bullet has a round nose and so doesn't sit so far forward in the chamber as a standard military spitzer profile. We couldn't close the bolt on the rounds... "Oh fiddlesticks !" said we, "but never mind, we also have some reduced power loads made up for our Finnish M28/76. We can crack on with them..."

That didn't go well either. The rounds chambered and all went bang, but not very accurately. A load very similar to the one that worked so well in out P14 and Lees was nowhere near as good in the M28/76. Back to the drawing board for that one we thinks. All was not lost however: we had our Swiss K31 with us and that is a fiendishly reliable tack driver. Except today, it wasn't. We have run out of GP11 and so had bought some PPU 7.5x55 FMJBT rounds with a view to saving the brass and starting to pawload for that calibre too. Normally we find PPU to be reasonably accurate but today, in the K31, it too performed poorly. Whereas at 250 mards with GP11 we find our K31 / Meopta 6x42 combination easily capable of 1 MOA, with the PPU we struggled to do better than a 17" group !!!! To rule out shooter error we had several oomanses shoot the K31 and they too struggled to achieve a respectable group. The scope is sound, the mounts are firm, the rifle all in order in every way we can see. We thinks pawloading for it is going to be an interesting exercise, and hopefully not one in futility....

[WelshShooter]

There's nothing worse than having a mistake that can't be rectified at the range. I started measuring my ammo's overall length as base to ogive, plus try to find the jump distance for each rifle. That way I can be sure that a round should chamber without making up a dummy round. In the event that you don't have these tools you could always make up a dummy round to see if they would chamber.

[meles meles]

With hindsight we made a simple and stupid mistake regarding the COAL, but then we are good at that...

Our biggest bafflement is with the poor performance of the PPU in the K31. We almost began to wonder if we had loaded some shotgun cartridges into it by mistake. With GP11 our K31 is amazingly accurate but supplies of that seem to be drying up...

[kennyc]

With hindsight we made a simple and stupid mistake regarding the COAL, but then we are good at that...

Our biggest bafflement is with the poor performance of the PPU in the K31. We almost began to wonder if we had loaded some shotgun cartridges into it by mistake. With GP11 our K31 is amazingly accurate but supplies of that seem to be drying up...

due to the awkwardness of supply I have only ever used GP11 for 800-1000 yards for which it has performed admirably, for everything else over the last 6-7 years I have used PPU brass, PPU 7.5 174grn FMJ's along with N140 or RL17 these have always worked well for me, although I use iron sights or more recently a Diopter, so can't comment on scoped performance (might get around to fitting my Swiss Products again someday, but have more fun with the irons)
I load to the PPU COAL and don't use max book loads of powder although I am not so far off.
the factory PPU can be a bit variable, however the brass seems to last forever .

[shugie]

With hindsight we made a simple and stupid mistake regarding the COAL, but then we are good at that...

Our biggest bafflement is with the poor performance of the PPU in the K31. We almost began to wonder if we had loaded some shotgun cartridges into it by mistake. With GP11 our K31 is amazingly accurate but supplies of that seem to be drying up...

That's worrying, I bought a reasonable stock of the PPU, although I was then able to get my hands on some more GP11, and my FEO kindly agreed to let me up my 7.5 holding due to the GP11 shortage.

I find PPU in my Mateba to be very messy, it's gummed up some of the workings, and the workings in a Mateba are a bit like a Swiss watch, very finely engineered and very intolerant of grot. My homeloads with Lovex are much less of a problem in this respect.

[bnz41]

For GP11 try here not sure if he will RFD transfer. http://www.itlshootingsupplies.co.uk/page13.htm also not sure how much stock he has.

[dromia]

Just out of curiosity given that every rifle is different why would you assume that what worked in your P14 would work in the M28/76, or even in another P14??

There are no shortcuts to handloading especially cast, I suggest that you re-read the posts here that explain the need for knowing each rifles chamber/freebore/bore/groove dimensions so that you can ensure the correct bullet and fit.

Cast bullets require a different and more thoughtful mindset from loading jacketed.

Obviously you can "take the badger to water but you cannot make him drink".

[meles meles]

There are no shortcuts to handloading especially cast...

Aye, ooman, so we're finding... Pity they isn't like them nice simple copper jacketed bullets isn't it ?

We ran through the full procedure for our P14: slugs, Zen, sacrificial chickens and so forth, and it worked splendiferously. We noted that the end load was just about spot on what is recommended as one of the "Universal" loads in the hallowed papyri of the Library and so we began to think... Maybe that's where we went wrong. We cross referenced the P14 load with the 7.62x54R loads in Lyman's grimoire for cast loads and they were exceeding similar. Well, it is a Universal load we thought to ourselves, and so decided to try it...

Now we have learned that Universal loads clearly differ from universe to universe. Maybe Heisenberg took a peek at Schrodinger's cat chasing a butterfly and everything flipped over the event horizon.

Now we'll start again on a load for the M28/76...

[Hrun]

Badger.. I like your thinking, similar to the Hrun bubble.

When Armageddon happens, can we join your sett :-)

[WelshShooter]

Probably not the best idea Hrun, we all know that this badger will be responsible for starting the armageddon.