I cannot believe the SDs and ESs that this rifle?? brass? primer? powder? all of it? is giving me. Week after week, every load gives great SDs and ESs.

My 90gr TNT and 140 CustComp mag length loads were worked up in my bullet trap with enough powder to fire form the brass, that is it, no development, with the 130 and 140 hybrid land loads all I did was pick a charge at the bottom of a velocity plateau.

4 different bullets, 4 different charges(all near 100% load density), some with heavy neck tension some with .002", some fire formed, some unsized with -.015" headspace, some near the lands some way off. This is with my 24" 6.5 Grendel AR, my 18" .223 with the same powder, primers and brass were nearly twice as bad, these are better than I get with my bolt gun loadings.

I was hoping for good ES and SD numbers to make up some for the poor groups I was expecting with my cheap Brownells barrel, this will really help me on the far end. The 130Hyb 10 shot groups average 1.052moa and the 140Hyb 10 shot groups average 1.098moa so I can use the low velocity spreads. I wont be tuning the loads, if they maintain that's good enough. The 140CustomComp load had a 1.046moa 16 shot group today, too bad their BC and MV are low.

This has all been Lapua brass, I will be loading the 90s and 140CCs in some Hornady brass it will be interesting to see the results.


These are results over 3 range trips, the powder temp is listed with F







Individual MVs

Good stuff, indeed.

What powder are you using? I'm assuming from your previous posts that it's W748 or similar?

I built up a Lilja-barreled Grendel a couple years ago and abandoned the project for several reasons, not the least of which was not having adequate ranges to stretch it out and see what the fuss was all about.

That was also before I had a Magnetospeed, so I don't have any data to compare against, but doubt that anything I worked up would have been as good as the results you're getting.

I was using 123 Amax's and 123 Noslers with both CFE 223 and 8208 XBR, but never could get the rifle to consistently hold under 1 MOA at 100 yds.

Yes W748 in all the loads, Wolf SRM primers.

The Lapua brass has annoyingly small flash holes, I assume this may have something to do with it. Had to grind down my decaping pin to get it to fit through the flash holes.

If it was a better barrel I would seek out smaller groups but once you start getting past 500yds group size matters less and less unless you are shooting sub moa targets, and are an excellent wind reader.

I too stumbled onto the magic recipe this weekend. I was doing a load workup with 175 rdf's with 8208xbr and br2's es sd were in the 20's and 10-14 on the sd. switched to 210m's and bam! had one load (42.1gr es 0 sd .1 blew my mind unfortunately it was over moa) my final load 42.7gr was .61 moa and es 1 sd .8 said F-it I'm done (shot .49 moa with br2's but es 21, sd 12). I picked up 47 ft/sec as well with no signs of pressure vs the same charge weight with br2's. the rest of the specs for those interested. 3x hornady match neck sized with lee collet, 2.85" coal. 2577ft/sec 18.5" savage with a douglas barrel 1:10


sorry OP for the hijack

No hijack, share.

Had a real good one today. SD of 3 ES of 11 
Attached File

I can't wait to hear how the vertical looks when you go out to 1000 yds.

Those SD numbers are pure gold. Those neck tensions, primers, and powder charges are clearly working together!