Quote History Originally Posted By MSC182:
The recommended charge is from 39.8-43.5. Should something in the middle 40.8- 41 be appropriate? I’m trying to get as much life out of the barrel as reasonably possible so I was staying away from max loading. If it isn’t obvious, I’m pretty new to handloading. Thanks for the response.
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I would work upward from your current charge by .5 of a grain until your brass cleans up and your SD/ES tightens up and your groupings stay tight..as soon as all of those are good, you have your load since you don't want to push velocity...I will say worrying about barrel life is not a good reason to not build good loads...Ideally how fast you take each shot will likely have more affect on barrel wear than shooting a full load will..Heat kills barrels, but single round heat, as long as the barrel is given cooling time between rounds, even on full hot loads doesn't do near the damage as fast repeated firing does..
To give you an idea, I shoot a hot load in 300rum, to the tune of a 230 grain berger bullet at 3220 fps, most average people, even shooting just factory ammo(180 bullet at 3200) are lucky to get 400-600 rounds out of a rum barrel, yet shooting a much hotter load we average about 1500 rounds before the groups open up to 1MOA... How do we do about triple the life, easy we try to give at least 2 minutes between every shot for a max of 5 shots, then let them cool 10-15 minutes to remove all heat..that simple to prolong barrel life even while shooting hot loads...
Here is a pretty good video about barrels....
Mirage/Bullet Jump/Barrel Life