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First reload data for my 7mm08

7mm08

7mm08

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In a river hopefully!
This project started about a year ago. Buddy of mine built a reloading bench in his basement and we have gotten the components together to make our own deer rounds. He had some experience in the past reloading so I am not going in blind on this experiment.

My best group at 100yards
Barnes 140g TSX
Varget 44.0g
Winchester primers
Shooting Chrony Beta
Remington 700 with new Timney trigger

Last group of the day with 90+ weather and 5MPH crosswind


Load data
 
MOA shooting is always good.

Question, how was recoil??

Your seating length is out to the lands?

Was it shot 1,2,3, or 4 that touched the black?

Good shooting.
 
Thanks
Recoil was minimal for me, but it's hard for a 7mm08 to push 300# of fat around on a 6'6" frame! HA! They say a 120g has way less recoil than the 140g. I had no fliers but the 44g was the tightest. Funny thing is the 42 and 42.5 were more dead center the target? I don't understand that.

My lands are questionable. I/we are wanting to learn about how to exactly measure that. I made the bullet to match the same height as some custom Barnes TSX bullets made for my other 700, A Remington Mountain DM. This is for a 700 Rem Buckmaster. I am sure no two guns are the same but it was a start at getting the length somewhat close.

I think it was indeed my last shot, so a really hot barrel on a hot day.

Now to load 44.0g and go shoot a cold barrel and see what happens. Maybe find someone that can show me/us how to properly measure lands.
 
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that if your bullets are magazine length or shorter (2.80" OAL for a 700) the bullet isn't anywhere near the lands.

There are several different ways to measure the depth of the lands with a given bullet, easiest probably being loading them long and coloring the ojive of the bullet with a sharpie and incrementally seating the bullet deeper till the bullet no longer touches the lands. Few other ways to do it but that's the easiest to describe.

Barnes bullets tend to prefer a jump though.
 
Black Sharpie is what I use. I seat a bullet and then measure COL. Then I turn the adjusting screw on the seating die one complete turn and remeasure. I repeat several times. Now I know how much one turn pushes the bullet deeper into the brass. There is math for this, I hope someone can post that up.

I trim all my brass to same length.

I seat a bullet in the brass. No primer.

I paint the bullet black with my Sharpie.

I drop the round into the chamber carefully, close the bolt. Carefully remove round, inspect ogive for scratches, adjust die.

Barnes will tell you what ideal jump is...
 
Mr. Big, reason for that is the FPS (and subsequently SD) are more consistent, is that correct? I did not ddo the math, the 44 gr ladder looks to have smaller SD
 
yea it looks like the numbers are tighter at 43,,it may not show up at 100 yards but a wild shot 50-60 fps higher or lower than average will go haywire at longer range,,

I will take a round even looking group a little bigger than a group with 4 in one hole and one outside the group even if it is smaller than the round even looking group,,
 
DaveB said:
Now I know how much one turn pushes the bullet deeper into the brass. There is math for this, I hope someone can post that up.
Click to expand...
It depends on the thread pitch of the seating stem. Divide 1" by the thread pitch of the stem and that will give you the distance the stem moves per turn. Several different pitches are used though so you might want to count the threads or buy a set of thread pitch gauges. Or Google it.
 
Thanks for the info guys. I just came in from taking the first shots with my Tikka 08. Factory 140 gr pills of the winchester variety to start. I just wanted to shoot it and zero the scipe, and relieve a little stress ;) Next up is better rest on some bags and a couple more brands of ammo to see what difference might be, then I'll be reloading the brass after that. So far, I'm liking it, and Dang this rifle has to have a 1lb trigger I believe! I'm used to factory triggers I guess being 3-5 lb, but I can just about mentally pull this trigger!
 
Rubberduck270,
Give that man a cigar and come down off the limb!!! I will post some numbers later but our OAL is 2.775 and we are short. I will post some more info when I get time. Thanks for all the outstanding info!
 
280longshot said:
7mm08

Thanks for the information,
I'm experimenting with some loads for my 7-08 also.
Are you FL resizing or just neck sizing?
Click to expand...

Just Full Length resizing for now.

Data for reloads... Length
Length of Reloads I just made 2.775
Using a Sinclair Seating Depth Gauge (after the fact)it should be ............. 2.833
Remington Corelock 2.781
Custom TSX Ammo for the other 7mm08 I own. 2.783
From Barnes manual for 140g TSX. 2.735

So I think I will load some at 2.825, 2.805, and 2.785 and see how that goes (unless you guys with experience think I should do something else) I will probably just load 43g as suggested by Mr.Big as why argue with the expert! HA!

BTW...I worked up the load data as well for the Varget:
42 g Average 2764 SD 18
42.5 Avg 2791 SD 23
43 " 2818 " 17
43.5 " 2849 " 27
44 " 2875 " 24
 
no expert but I have had my feelings hurt to many times relying on one group as an indicator to what is a good load,,chrono data is a very good indicator as to which load will actually average out to be the best load for a certain rifle,,
 
I like the 43 gr load from your data.

I will tell you that RL-15 and a 120 Barnes ttsx is where you want to be.

44.5 gr and 3,020 @ 2.805". Sub-2" @ 400 yards in my re-barreled A-Bolt.

Lilja 9 #4

A friend said to kiss and find pressure. That is what I did.

Luck-
 
I hear you and understand. I want to try a few powder loads but I think my COAL is short and need to work that up with one powder load and see if that effects my results, then tweak the powder a bit.

Thanks for the advice.
 

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