Thread: 6.5 Creedmoor load development

Big thanks to Gibo for the 130gr Berger VLD hunting bullet samples!
Loaded a few up today for testing. From what Ive been told and what I have read this Berger bullet design likes to be seated very close to the lands or even touch for them to group at their potential.
In my rifle this came with a couple of hiccups.. firstly the seating depth of 5 thou off my lands only put about 75 thou (2mm) in the neck which meant not a lot of neck tension and it made it very hard to seat them concentrically. Alongside my other chosen bullets it has a much shorter bearing surface from top of the boat tail to the ogive which also means less generated pressure and more powder room in the case.




Left to right: 130gr Berger VLD, 136gr Lapua Scenar L, 130gr Sierra TMK, 123gr Lapua Scenar




It also put them at the absolute maximum mag length which had the tips getting caught under the feed ramp.
It would require a small grind if I wanted to feed them from the mag.








So once happy with that I put my same 44gr of RL16 behind them as I use with the 130gr TMK and the CCI BM-4 primers and put it over the chrono.
As expected with less bearing surface and more space under the projectile the pressure and velocity was slightly lower than my TMK loads.





I bump the load up to 44.4gr hoping to get closer to the 2910 -2920fps which the 136gr Lapua and the Sierra TMKs seem to respond best to in my rifle and took 5 rounds to the 100y range.
There was a light wind but it was consistent not gusting but as usual I put 5 rounds of my control 130gr TMK loads on paper to check conditions and warm the barrel (and because I never get sick of seeing them do this) Note: the barrel had a few fouling shots over the chrono.





The velocities for this groups were 2898, 2904, 2892, 2890, 2893 and there were faint shiny ejector marks so Id call it a max load.



Not the best group by any means but I can't help but feel I was responsible in limiting its performance with my throat mod. What works for some bullets clearly doesnt work for others.
Sure I could probably work up a load that may shoot them better, different powders etc or even go against Berger trends and seat them deeper but Im not sure Ill get the same consistent results as the TMK and Lapua bullet offerings which even before fine tuning a load recipee still punched sub moa groups at 100y.
I have 3 VLDs left so maybe Ill load them tomorrow and seat them with a 50 thou just and 44gr to see how they respond.