The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

Yes they are however manufactures usually build to SAAMI specifications and your rifle may have a slightly longer throat or distance from bolt face to lands so it is worth checking individual rifles. I usually measure mu COAL and then back off to a .005" jump with Lapua, with Berger targets I jam .005" into the lands.

One other factor is what the magazine will take and many rifles will not take full length loads.

It seems that everyone uses N140. I'm a big fan of Alliant Powders, especially for my 6.5x55se. (Rel22). In my 308win stalking rifles I always used Alliant Reloader 15

It is interesting that the US 7.62mm long range M118 round is charged with Rel15.



Reloder® 15
Smokeless medium rifle powder
The best all-around medium speed rifle powder. It provides excellent .223 and .308 caliber performance. Selected as the powder for U.S. Military's M118 special ball long range sniper round.
•Broad caliber range
•Consistent in all temperatures
•High velocity varmint loads


Jenks

Jenks, I've tried a fair few powders for my .308 including RE 15 and some of them have given me pretty good results but so far for me N140 has been the tack driver, I've never had a deer complain yet about it

For my .223 rifles 24.6 grns of Varget tack drives the rounds home as well. Then again you know how fickle guns can be, each gun has it's own little thing that it likes and dislikes. My .308's just all seem to like N140. Saying that though I still love to tinker around trying other bullet makes and powders, end of the day mate it's all trigger time and any trigger time is the good times.

Blu

I often wonder if powder choice is a geographical and/or peer thing, at my old club everyone seemed to use Varget as it was locally available and used by a couple of the top shooters so people rapidly followed their leads. I had to travel so I chose one I knew. Vihtavouri. If I had my way we would only have one powder make in the house however we usually run Vihtavouri or Hodgdon with Vectan for plinking and I suspect Christel could swap her S4831SC for N560 if she was ready to do some more load development.

Blu wrote:Jenks, I've tried a fair few powders for my .308 including RE 15 and some of them have given me pretty good results but so far for me N140 has been the tack driver, I've never had a deer complain yet about it

For my .223 rifles 24.6 grns of Varget tack drives the rounds home as well. Then again you know how fickle guns can be, each gun has it's own little thing that it likes and dislikes. My .308's just all seem to like N140. Saying that though I still love to tinker around trying other bullet makes and powders, end of the day mate it's all trigger time and any trigger time is the good times.

Blu

Blue since I packed in stalking I chucked away most of my 308win related data, besides I wasn't really concerned about obtaining super tight groups. As long as I could get 1''-2'' groups at 100 hundred yards I was more than happy. more than good enough for stalking out to 150yards Plus. With a 150grn bullet and REL 15 this was easily achieved. However with my 6.5X55se i was a tad more fussy and would strive to get the smallest groups possible. I did get some spectacular results. I think the best I ever achieved was a three round group the size of the group escapes me. Five pence coin

Thats a impresive group my freind.
I use Vitavouri powders because they are available from local dealers.
Other powders seem to be hard to get hold of for some reason.

I have all but converted to Vihtavuaori powders now for "security" of supply and my loads are none the worse and some better for it.

I only miss my Hercules (Alliant), Hodgdon, Winchester, IMR etc powders for nostalgic reasons

I think powder manufacturer differences are not really relevant any more, the secret to accurate powder is the appropriate burning rate for the load and rifle. Most manufacturers now provide such a good spread of burning rates that is is really possible to shoot well with one manufacturers range of powders.


Now let the dog see the rabbit.

Hope you don't shoot wabbits with 308win...that would be overkill!

:geek:

Rob

Not really, a 115gn cast boolit over 4 - 5 gns of VV N310 does for the pesky wabbits nicely.

Splatt...where dit go!

Rob