1 grain increments are pointless in small cases.

Even in a .308 Win or .30-06 I would stick with 0.5 grain increments.  Otherwise you'll never find a tuned load.




It's possible that 1 load per charge weight might meet your needs if you are looking only for a particular muzzle velocity at safe pressures, and there are some gun writers that advocate that for "hunting" loads.

But as always, a fast miss is still a miss.

However, load tuning can be taken to extremes that will quickly ruin the barrel in a gun, so some balance is needed.  At first, no less than three loads per charge, up to about 5 loads per charge should be used, and these should be either shot in good conditions or with a wind flag, otherwise you're never going to figure out how the combination of gun, ammo, and shooter is doing.  A flag can be a 2 foot long streamer tied to a stick in the ground about 1/4th to 1/3rd the distance to the target; anything to help judge when the wind is blowing the same for every shot is better than nothing.

In my experience working out loads for pistols, more loads at each charge are better, 10 to 15 at least.  I test at 25 yards off a home made leather sand bag and this is the only way I get a true reading of the gun's accuracy.  The hardest part of this task is focus on the front sight and it doesn't take long for fatigue to take over.

My club has a Ransom rest, maybe I otter use it!

The problem with shooting so many loads in a high power rifle is the wear and tear.  Some cartridges that work out fine for hunters that shoot one box of ammunition every two or three years will shoot the throat out in just a few hundred rounds, and someone that goes to the extreme of trying every possible primer, powder, and bullet combination soon finds themselves with an inaccurate rifle in need of a new barrel.

This is the reason I almost never use start loads below 10% down from the maximum shown in a load manual especially if it's a cartridge I am familiar with loading, and when I change one of the components in a load I've already been shooting, I reduce the load 5% for a quick check.  Most likely, two loads that produce the same muzzle velocity will also produce the same accuracy from the rifle unless the peak pressure and time history changes radically.

This is also the reason I stick pretty close to one make of brass and two or three bullets in any particular firearm.  One of the cool things about .223 Rem is the huge range of bullets available and it's tempting to try them all.  That's okay if your goal is experimentation and just shooting, but it's not necessary for practical applications, or it wasn't until the recent shortages.

This also seems like a helluva argument for buying Savage rifles, armoring tools, and PacNor barrels.