Lots of ways to skin this cat….and all work. I don’t like to waste powder or components so I do it this way…
1. Start at a safe powder charge and a seating depth of 0.020 off the lands.
2. Work up 0.5 grains of powder for each subsequent round.
3. Shoot these rounds, allowing your barrel to cool between shots (or at least after ever 2-3 shots). I prefer 2-3 minutes between shots depending on ambient temperature.
4.after each shot, look for pressure signs on your brass. If you see pressure signs…..stop immediately and know that is your max load. (Pressure signs include flattened primers, heavy bolt lift, ejector or extractor marks, blown primers, primer dimpling, etc.)
5. Watch your target for trends in POI. Document every shots location.
6. Hopefully you can chronograph each round to track velocities.
7. Find a node with the velocities or the POI trends and pick your starting load.
8. Now you can load 3-5 rounds and shoot for group. You can fine tune your groups in 0.2 grains of powder increments and with seating depths working away from the lands (jam) in 0.002 or 0.003 increments.
Don’t hesitate to ask for clarification. I typed this on my phone so I tried not to be to wordy.
Ok, I was finally able to get out and do a step test on the BondStrikes. There doesn’t seem to be lots of published data on them so I started with a very close round and worked up from the lowest charge in half-grain increments all the way up the max. I used
@jrebel’s advice with the only difference being that I loaded up 3 rounds at each grain increment.
This created more questions though; the rounds never showed even the slightest amount of pressure, not one sign that I’ve seen or read about showed up. Also, I chrono’d each of my rounds and they were all at least 300fps slower than the published data said they should be; I understand published data isn’t gospel, but it should fairly close, right? At the max grain amount, the bullets were goin slower than the speed that the book said they should be going at the minimum charge weight.
So that brings me to the big question, should I keep going up in .5 grain increments, above book max, until I reach signs of pressure? The book max is 70.5, at which weight the data says the bullet should be going ~3025fps (actual round speed was ~2770). My round groups seemed to tighten up both in velocity and POI as my grain weight approached the max recommended weight. my smallest group was the 70.5 with a little less than 3/4” group @ 100 yards.
Or should I switch up the powder completely and try some’m else!? Thanks in advance fellas.
Sorry if this made no sense, this felt like a novel to type up on a mobile phone.
