SmallCaliberCentral

I started a thread a few days ago about the 2 new 204 Rugers that I had gotten and I received some requests to pass on my results. Well, yesterday I had a chance to get them sighted in and today I shot some test loads that I had made up. Here are the results of my first load testing. I did not test velocity today as I just wanted to get in the ballpark of where I'll start running into pressure problems, which by the way, didn't happen with any of the loads.

I'll start with the Remington 700 SPS that I've had for 8 months or so and just got around to testing it.

The first load I tested and by far the most accurate of all my load testing today was a 32 grain V-Max pushed along with some surplus WC844 (H335). I was simply astonished at how accurate this load shot right off the bat. All the groups for this combination were pretty close in size but my last one was really nice. At .430" it seems I might have found the load for this rifle right off the bat....Now I know things change but these results are encouraging.



The next load I tested was a 39 grain Blitzking pushed along by some Varget. This was not a good load combination. It appears that my SPS isn't going to like the heavier bullets. It key holes really bad with 40 grain Vmaxes and the 39 grain Blitzkings are pretty bad too. Needless to say I won't be shooting heavy bullets out of this rifle. Notice the elongated holes....not good.



Next up I tried the same exact loads in my TC Encore pro hunter 204 barrel. No load really stood out with this barrel but all shot respectably. I'll be able to work with these for sure.

Here is the 32 grain Vmax loaded with the aforementioned WC844 powder. This group measured in right at 1".



The 39 grain Blitzking and Varget load shot fine from the TC barrel. Which is fine by me...@ 28" this is going to be my reach out and touch me rifle. I can get max velocity out of the heavier bullets with the extra few inches. This group measured in @ .875". Plenty good for my initial tests.




A few things to keep in mind. The Remington has had a trigger job and it breaks @ around 2.5 lbs. My TC frame has had nothing done to the trigger and it's a little on the heavy side. I expect my groups to improve once I get the trigger where I want it. And these 2 rifles do not like factory Hornady ammo at all. It's a good thing that I reload.

All these groups were shot from a bench off a bi-pod @ 100 yards.

Also, I am posting this in several different forums so please excuse the repetition. I had a lot of folks wanting to know how this turned out.

Thanks for the post. I'm also shooting a Remington 700 SPS and had similar results, finding the 32 V-max to give excellent accuracy at any load, but settled at 28.9 grains of H4895. Only modification to the rifle has been the addition of a Boyd's Thumb hole laminate stock.

Great posts! 32gn VMax's always printed well for me. I could reckon on 0.3" 5-shot groups (if I was shooting well) with my savage VLP...

Care to share how many grains of powder you're using in the 32 grain Vmax?

Bodei wrote:Care to share how many grains of powder you're using in the 32 grain Vmax?

Sure....The load is just under max in a couple of my manuals. 28.0 grains of WC844 which a surplus powder that uses H335 load data.

Here are the specs:

RP brass
32 grain V-max
CCI small rifle primer
28.0 grains WC844
COL of 2.260"
Velocity average for 5 shots = 3850 fps...Not as fast as I'd like but very good in the accuracy department.

Judging from my velocity and no issues with the brass I've got a ways to go before I run into pressure problems. According to my manuals the load should be almost 200 fps faster than it is. But every rifle is different and it could cause problems in your particular gun. So a good starting point would be 26.0 grains which my manuals list as minimum.

I hope this help

Thank you, I just bought 8 lbs of H335. Loaded up some test ammo tonight with the Z Max 32 grainers. Will see how they do in a few days.