OK. So I know this topic has been beaten to death but I had a sudden urge to dust off the old Savage and play around with some light loads. Years ago I got hold of a Handloader (157) article called "Petite Loads For Squirrels" by Glenn Stewart and at the time I had a great little TC Contender custom carbine barrel. It was hard to make that thing shoot a BIGGER group than 1" @100yds. So I made bunches of loads and seemed to find that my 223 loved H4198. With anything from 40-55gr VMaxes and 14ish to 20ish grains of H4198 it semed to hold pretty near 3/4" at 100 yds. I had never experienced such consistency before or since.
In years since I've messed around with 800X, 2400, Blue Dot, I think maybe even Bullseye for "slow" loads. I have ben warned not to reduce loads of slow rifle powders and that seems to be consistent regardless of who you're speaking to. I assumed that H4198 worked well becasue it is relatively fast for a rifle powder.
So now I have a Savage with a 1 in 9" barrel and I'm thinking of working out some similar loads but I happen to have a big jug of AA2200 (DATA POWDER). I've gotten down to 14gr with some 75gr AMaxes and it's grouping pretty well at 50 yards. I haven't chronoed them but I should be getting down around 2000 fps, and it's getting quiet. Big question: Am I going to blow my own face off?
In years since I've messed around with 800X, 2400, Blue Dot, I think maybe even Bullseye for "slow" loads. I have ben warned not to reduce loads of slow rifle powders and that seems to be consistent regardless of who you're speaking to. I assumed that H4198 worked well becasue it is relatively fast for a rifle powder.
So now I have a Savage with a 1 in 9" barrel and I'm thinking of working out some similar loads but I happen to have a big jug of AA2200 (DATA POWDER). I've gotten down to 14gr with some 75gr AMaxes and it's grouping pretty well at 50 yards. I haven't chronoed them but I should be getting down around 2000 fps, and it's getting quiet. Big question: Am I going to blow my own face off?