Thread: First attempt at reloading. Thoughts please.

OK, so after many years of wanting to reload i finally got my ass into gear and collected the required kit with a bit of trading and bargain hunting here there and every where.
I have wanted to learn to reload for years but the cost of getting set up and a nagging feeling that it was all beyond my ability caused years of procrastination. Luckily in the last few years i spent some time with a couple of good blokes who where happy to share their knowledge and a lot of time reading books, magazine articles and following the threads on the forum, i finally decided that come hell or high water i would/could learn the dark art of reloading.

So. figured the 7mm 08 would be a good place to start. As opposed to the 7mm wsm. Easy to find brass, plenty of suitable powders etc and lots of data around and others loading for the same cal in a short barreled Tikka T3.

Brass was located and a big bag of once fired PPU was snaffled off TM for the grand total of 25 dollarydoos and 870 federal 210s were found on TM for 150 dollarydoos. Add to cart. Gunworks had 140 grn BTs so they seemed like a good start. 2208 was located and also added to cart.

Brass was sized to be 2 thou smaller than a fired case once I figured out imperial measurements and what the hell 1 thou etc actually looked like on a set of calipers.

The brass was measured and trimmed and chamfered etc.

A modified case was made and with the help of the hornday OAL gauge i decided that max length was either 2.945 or 2.944 after multiple checks. The BTO with the comparitor was 2.374. After reading Nathan Fosters book i decided to start at 20 thou jump.

A bit of reading of the instructions for the hornady dies and a bit of trail and error got me a nice dummy case with 20 thou jump to the lands. And i also had to figure out how to use the inertia puller when i got it wrong.

Now for the tricky bit. Cross referenced three sources and max load with 140/139 grn projectiles seemed to be anywhere from 41.5 ( hornady ) 42.2 ( adi ) 44 ( nick harvey vol. 1 ) so carefully calibrating the frankford arsenal digital scale that was recommended here on the forum i decided to start at 40 grns. The digital scale was double checked against the ohaus beam scale with a selection of random 30 cal projectiles that had been recovered out of animals and where all different weights and shapes. The digital scales agreed with the beam scales so i felt confident that they where fine.

Loaded up 3 at 40 41 41.5 41.8 42 42.2 and finally 42.5 and then managed to get away to the range with an hour daylight left and no wind. The boss was at home with the kids so i was a free man for a hour or so and i was the only person at the range.

Set up the newly purchased chrony and marked out the dots with the load weight and i had written on the cases with a marker so wouldnt accidently loose track of what i had loaded.

Time was of the essence a bit as the light wasnt going to last long but halfway through the ladder i stopped and checked another rifle to try and let the tikka cool a bit. The heat shimmer off the barrel was making things a bit tricky but i could spend hours up here either.

The chrony data was as follows

40 gr 2478/2437/2446
41 gr 2487/2487/2515
41.5 gr 2559/2569/NA
41.8 NA/NA/NA
42 gr 2544/ 2539/2554
42.2 gr 2614/2549/2578
42.5 gr 2583/2594/2604

Will put up a photo of the three shot groups in the next post.

My question is for all the experienced loader is what is your thoughts on the decrease in speeds when going from 41.5 to 42?
41.5 was one raggedish hole but obviously its only three shots and the barrel was getting pretty hot towards the last group. 42 grns has a spread of 15 fps and 41.5 10 fps but wasnt totally captured.
The other thing that I'm curious about is that the primers where flattening out at 41.5 but at 42.5 they went back to being round again with no sign of pressure what so ever. Do i carry on up to 43ish or load 42 or 41.5 again and have a play with seating depth changes at 3 thou at at time with a bit more time to let the rifle cool down.

The barrel is only 15 inches so not looking to set any speed records and its a bush rifle so any of the loads tested will work fine, its more the process that I'm working on and trying to understand better the what and how. The goal being to get the best performance out of my gear and develop a solid process that will see me right for the future and the other rifles in the safe.

Its been a fascinating process and I've learnt a shit load. The 7mm wsm will be next.