Post by GLSHOOTER on Mar 9, 2019 15:44:14 GMT -8
After many months of waiting and planning the original American 30 reamer as designed was obtained last November but a delay in getting head space gauges slowed things down by quite a bit. Once those came in a barrel was spun up by Tactical Ordnance for Ritch. He shot it a bit but didn't have time to wring it out so off to Utah went my parts. Two weeks later FedEx made an appearance and I started bolting things on the upper. The barrel is a 16" mid length. The profile is a flare so it is a lightweight basically taking weight off behind the TO gas block. The hand guard is from Chandler Hardwoods and is basically a Matrix look alike. The scope is a Bushnell 4X12. The lower is an OLY I've had for years and was one of the last pre-ban lowers coming from them in 1994 and has a Timney drop in trigger. Operating surfaces are enhanced with the bolt catch from Wilson. Magpul did the slector and the enhanced trigger guard. Stock is of course an ACE skeleton. Nothing fancy but then it's designed as a quick brush gun. Very quick to hand with good weight distribution between the hands.
Brass is formed out of 6.8 SPC. In the photo below left to right is a full 6.8 case, case run into 30 Herrett dies held off the shell holder, the formed case trimmed to length, a fired case and a loaded round with a 125 Sierra Pro Hunter.Time to produce 100 cases was right on one hour.
I loaded the cases up for the first shake down trip using Sierra 110 Varminters and the Sierra 125 pro Hunters. Having shot my original A-30 I had plenty of load data, 175 + loads, available so knew what would probably work using RL7 and, RL 10. I had some minimal data on the AA 1680 and it looked good on one of my spreadsheets so I decided to give it a whirl. Case forming on this is like falling of a log. Lube it and run it in and trim. One step expansion from .277 to .308. All bullet seating was done with a generic Hornady 30 caliber seater with the floating chamber.
Range day was delayed two weeks by a little thing called rain and the obligatory life in the fast lane for an old retiree with a family. I fought rush hour traffic to the range in South Phoenix where I am a member so a 30 minute drive only took about 70 minutes. No sense delaying the trip down as rush hour is about three hours long here. I had only mounted the scope on this one so off to the little public range that members can use when it is closed. I just grabbed one of my mild 110 loads and put three rounds downrange adjusting to get close to the dot. Finished there it was off to the 100 yard area with nice benches and a cover. I had the 22-NXS to work with so the A-30 was second in the rotation. Temperatures had warmed up to a pleasant 72 when I started with the A-30. No wind and no cloud cover was there to botch things up. The LabRadar was up and running so down to the work out.
As I mentioned I had shot three of my low powered RL 7 sighters earlier and only had two left on that load. More than enough to get zeroed in. I had a dozen targets down range on the board so picked a dot in the middle and let it fly. The shot was about four inches higher than I anticipated but thought maybe it was cold bore rise. Bullet number two was dispatched down range after its brother. After I dropped the hammer and I saw exactly nada bubkiss change whatsoever in the target array. I fought the urge to go look closer but I just had to laugh I'm to old to walk that far every two shots. I knew that bullet didn't go away!! I'll find it soon enough. The speed was nice at mid-2600.
I dialed in four down and loaded up the next five on the charge weight at 0.5 heavier than the sighters. and started working the trigger as best I could. Five later and I could see a reasonable looking group formed up with a leaker out the bottom. I had five more of that load left and they formed up decently with a cluster. Looking good so far as the speed was up to low 2700 and I was smiling there.
Third and final group with RL 7 was a full grain up on the lowest weight. I'd been higher before in the other barrel so wasn't concerned about it. Of course I'd looked at the primer and case head on every shot fired at that point and they were nice and round on the edges and zero markings from the ejector and extractor. No issues so far. Five loaded up and five down range showed me that I seemed to have this bullet running nicely. The speed was now up to 2769 and that was certainly decent and looking at the group I saw a smiley face looking back like that disappearing cat in Alice in Wonderland.
Here's the proof of my endeavors with RL7 on this trip. I believe it portents a good future. The top one was throne that I laughed at when the hole didn't get bigger on the sighters.
I was pleased with what I was seeing so I started in on the RL 10 loadings on the 110's. It ran well with all three levels doing easy three and four shots under 0.7. I did have one outstanding four shot batch at 0.496 right up until I yipped the fifth one..LOL For my efforts with the RL 10 I saw speeds exceeding 2800 as I expected with the slower powder. Out of a 16" barrel this was exceeding a standard 30-30 load that is clocked out of a 24" tube. 3,000 out of a 20" should be doable with a powder change. Below is pretty representative across the board with this bullet powder choice. A better driver would make this one set up and bark.
Out of the 110's I took a break and had my iced honey bun and some cold coffee while jawing with a fellow that had done up a 6 BR on a Ruger action in a Boyds stock. It was a very pretty rig. Break over it was back to the bench. First up was RL 10 with the 125 Pro Hunters. My fouler was a tad high but I expected it to do something weird. Oil in the bore does that. The next four settled in nicely but were vertical. Moving on up the charge still gave me some vertical but they were settling n a bit getting rounder.. They were decent with four always being under an inch through the scope but just not what I wanted. Final charge weight at 31.9 gave me 2582 FPS. Not the fastest I've gone but still over the equivalent 30-30 load by about 100 FPs . These looked better with the first one being something that was usable and the final five gave me what I was at least looking for but still telling me it wanted more go juice. Nothing earth shattering but here it is.
Last powder for the day with this rifle was the aforementioned AA 1680. I haven't used it much but this quick trip does show promise. The first group on a new powder is always throw away as the barrel needs the new powder coating if you aren't cleaning between powder/bullet changes. The first two round went to the left and then I placed the next three into 0.984. Not fantastic but not bad. Speed was a bit over 2600 so I thought I was onto something there in that department. Going up 0.5 to 30.4 gave me some nice speeds at 2613 and things were tightening up. I had only loaded eight of the last two charge as I was running out of bullets so the first five went into a nice vertical string a bit over 1" but the last three were outstanding at 0.464. I was happy there but once I had that one at home I did smile.
The final loading of 30.7 of the 1680 was a nice round five shot endeavor but a bit wider than I liked. I only had three rounds left so I sat down for another bit of coffee and let things cool off. The barrel, as I mentioned, is a flare profile so it does warm up. I really had not seen anything to indicate I was over heated but I just knew there was one itty bitty group hanging out in that bore and I wanted to see it. After about ten minutes l I sat down and started setting everything up again. Of course at this point a light zephyr kicked up and I let it subside before getting down on the gun. I'm use to psyching myself up when the money is on the line more than normal so I dug deep on this one and tried to Zen those last ones down range ala Caddy Shack. Three rounds with three pulls at a very methodical pace and a peek through the scope told me to put the gun away. It looked dang good through that 12 power. Only the micrometer would tell me. Below are the two that I was happy with for my work. The bottom group was the last three shots. I'd say it would do in a pinch. I'll never snort at a 0.388.
Overall I was very pleased. Velocities are up slightly over my other 16" barrel and accuracy is up a bit also. The cartridge has already taken several mule deer at 300+ yards and this one would be my go to if I had a shot at deer in the near future. I don't feel this was a blind hog thing concerning accuracy today with this barrel. I was consistently getting three and four shots under a nickle and many dime sized. With a better driver I cannot imagine what these groups would have been like. The AR by design isn't benchrest level by any means but occasionally everyone runs into a barrel that likes to make a shambles out of those that disparage the accuracy potential of the platform. I'll be shooting more of this soon. I'm looking to do some 150's per request and I want to try some 130 TNT's if I can scare them up. Additionally I may possibly do a few sub-sonic loadings as I've done that previously with some 200's.
Greg
Brass is formed out of 6.8 SPC. In the photo below left to right is a full 6.8 case, case run into 30 Herrett dies held off the shell holder, the formed case trimmed to length, a fired case and a loaded round with a 125 Sierra Pro Hunter.Time to produce 100 cases was right on one hour.
I loaded the cases up for the first shake down trip using Sierra 110 Varminters and the Sierra 125 pro Hunters. Having shot my original A-30 I had plenty of load data, 175 + loads, available so knew what would probably work using RL7 and, RL 10. I had some minimal data on the AA 1680 and it looked good on one of my spreadsheets so I decided to give it a whirl. Case forming on this is like falling of a log. Lube it and run it in and trim. One step expansion from .277 to .308. All bullet seating was done with a generic Hornady 30 caliber seater with the floating chamber.
Range day was delayed two weeks by a little thing called rain and the obligatory life in the fast lane for an old retiree with a family. I fought rush hour traffic to the range in South Phoenix where I am a member so a 30 minute drive only took about 70 minutes. No sense delaying the trip down as rush hour is about three hours long here. I had only mounted the scope on this one so off to the little public range that members can use when it is closed. I just grabbed one of my mild 110 loads and put three rounds downrange adjusting to get close to the dot. Finished there it was off to the 100 yard area with nice benches and a cover. I had the 22-NXS to work with so the A-30 was second in the rotation. Temperatures had warmed up to a pleasant 72 when I started with the A-30. No wind and no cloud cover was there to botch things up. The LabRadar was up and running so down to the work out.
As I mentioned I had shot three of my low powered RL 7 sighters earlier and only had two left on that load. More than enough to get zeroed in. I had a dozen targets down range on the board so picked a dot in the middle and let it fly. The shot was about four inches higher than I anticipated but thought maybe it was cold bore rise. Bullet number two was dispatched down range after its brother. After I dropped the hammer and I saw exactly nada bubkiss change whatsoever in the target array. I fought the urge to go look closer but I just had to laugh I'm to old to walk that far every two shots. I knew that bullet didn't go away!! I'll find it soon enough. The speed was nice at mid-2600.
I dialed in four down and loaded up the next five on the charge weight at 0.5 heavier than the sighters. and started working the trigger as best I could. Five later and I could see a reasonable looking group formed up with a leaker out the bottom. I had five more of that load left and they formed up decently with a cluster. Looking good so far as the speed was up to low 2700 and I was smiling there.
Third and final group with RL 7 was a full grain up on the lowest weight. I'd been higher before in the other barrel so wasn't concerned about it. Of course I'd looked at the primer and case head on every shot fired at that point and they were nice and round on the edges and zero markings from the ejector and extractor. No issues so far. Five loaded up and five down range showed me that I seemed to have this bullet running nicely. The speed was now up to 2769 and that was certainly decent and looking at the group I saw a smiley face looking back like that disappearing cat in Alice in Wonderland.
Here's the proof of my endeavors with RL7 on this trip. I believe it portents a good future. The top one was throne that I laughed at when the hole didn't get bigger on the sighters.
I was pleased with what I was seeing so I started in on the RL 10 loadings on the 110's. It ran well with all three levels doing easy three and four shots under 0.7. I did have one outstanding four shot batch at 0.496 right up until I yipped the fifth one..LOL For my efforts with the RL 10 I saw speeds exceeding 2800 as I expected with the slower powder. Out of a 16" barrel this was exceeding a standard 30-30 load that is clocked out of a 24" tube. 3,000 out of a 20" should be doable with a powder change. Below is pretty representative across the board with this bullet powder choice. A better driver would make this one set up and bark.
Out of the 110's I took a break and had my iced honey bun and some cold coffee while jawing with a fellow that had done up a 6 BR on a Ruger action in a Boyds stock. It was a very pretty rig. Break over it was back to the bench. First up was RL 10 with the 125 Pro Hunters. My fouler was a tad high but I expected it to do something weird. Oil in the bore does that. The next four settled in nicely but were vertical. Moving on up the charge still gave me some vertical but they were settling n a bit getting rounder.. They were decent with four always being under an inch through the scope but just not what I wanted. Final charge weight at 31.9 gave me 2582 FPS. Not the fastest I've gone but still over the equivalent 30-30 load by about 100 FPs . These looked better with the first one being something that was usable and the final five gave me what I was at least looking for but still telling me it wanted more go juice. Nothing earth shattering but here it is.
Last powder for the day with this rifle was the aforementioned AA 1680. I haven't used it much but this quick trip does show promise. The first group on a new powder is always throw away as the barrel needs the new powder coating if you aren't cleaning between powder/bullet changes. The first two round went to the left and then I placed the next three into 0.984. Not fantastic but not bad. Speed was a bit over 2600 so I thought I was onto something there in that department. Going up 0.5 to 30.4 gave me some nice speeds at 2613 and things were tightening up. I had only loaded eight of the last two charge as I was running out of bullets so the first five went into a nice vertical string a bit over 1" but the last three were outstanding at 0.464. I was happy there but once I had that one at home I did smile.
The final loading of 30.7 of the 1680 was a nice round five shot endeavor but a bit wider than I liked. I only had three rounds left so I sat down for another bit of coffee and let things cool off. The barrel, as I mentioned, is a flare profile so it does warm up. I really had not seen anything to indicate I was over heated but I just knew there was one itty bitty group hanging out in that bore and I wanted to see it. After about ten minutes l I sat down and started setting everything up again. Of course at this point a light zephyr kicked up and I let it subside before getting down on the gun. I'm use to psyching myself up when the money is on the line more than normal so I dug deep on this one and tried to Zen those last ones down range ala Caddy Shack. Three rounds with three pulls at a very methodical pace and a peek through the scope told me to put the gun away. It looked dang good through that 12 power. Only the micrometer would tell me. Below are the two that I was happy with for my work. The bottom group was the last three shots. I'd say it would do in a pinch. I'll never snort at a 0.388.
Overall I was very pleased. Velocities are up slightly over my other 16" barrel and accuracy is up a bit also. The cartridge has already taken several mule deer at 300+ yards and this one would be my go to if I had a shot at deer in the near future. I don't feel this was a blind hog thing concerning accuracy today with this barrel. I was consistently getting three and four shots under a nickle and many dime sized. With a better driver I cannot imagine what these groups would have been like. The AR by design isn't benchrest level by any means but occasionally everyone runs into a barrel that likes to make a shambles out of those that disparage the accuracy potential of the platform. I'll be shooting more of this soon. I'm looking to do some 150's per request and I want to try some 130 TNT's if I can scare them up. Additionally I may possibly do a few sub-sonic loadings as I've done that previously with some 200's.
Greg