Looking for a good starting place to work up some handloads. Bullets I have on hand are Hornady 168 amax, 155 amax, and SMK 155 CCI br primers mixed Hornady black hills lc brass. Powders I have on hand are varget, IMR 4895, ram tac, IMR 4064.

Rifle is a 16" windham weaponry ar 308

Separate the military surplus brass - Lake City - IMI etc. Also separate the Federal commercial brass. Federal commercial brass is soft and will not last very long with full power loads. One or two reloads and it's toast. The military surplus has much thicker case heads and case walls and powder charges have to be reduced 2.0 full grains to approximate chamber pressures for Winchester commercial brass.

41.0 grains of IMR-4064 is a good working load (near or at maximum) with Lake City 7.62x51mm brass and 168 grain match bullets seated at 2.800".

41.0 grains of IMR-4064 will also work fine with the Federal brass and allow it to last a little longer.

Winchester commercial brass can be loaded with 42.0 to 42.5 grains of IMR-4064 using 168 grain match bullets seated at 2.800". This will duplicate the velocity of Federal Gold Medal Match (2600 fps =/-) from a 24" barrel and is a known accuracy load. You have a little room to go higher but you don't need to.

Start a little lower with all these loads and work up in .5 grain increments.

40.5 grains of IMR-4895 and 168 grain match bullets seated @ 2.800" is a maximum in Lake City brass.

41.5 grains of IMR-4895 is a known accuracy load using 168's in Winchester brass.


I would try 40.5, 41.0 and 41.5 grains of Varget in the Lake City brass with 168 grain bullets seated @ 2.800".

You will be able to work up to another 1.0 to 1.5 grains of powder when you substitute the 155's.

Use only lake city brass as the AR will chew the crap out of commercial brass. 4064 will serve you well. Thats what I used when I had my AR308 with a 16 inch barrel. Varget may be a bit to slow burning for that barrel. I use 8208 in my 12.5 inch AR308. Faster burning powder. You could give it a try but thing 4064 will be your option.

Thank you for the replys!

Not a starting point; I'd back off by a couple grains and work up, but most-used load in .308 gas rifles is 42.0 IMR 4064 with 175gr Noslter CCs in IMI and Prvi brass. I stopped using federal brass in auto loaders. 2520fps at 60F out of two difference 18" gas rifles. Anything heavier or slower powder seems to beat them up a bit.