Boyd Allen
Active member
A while back, I was given a remnant of some faster Canadian powder that some of you may be anticipating the commercial release of. (If you have to ask, no need to bother with this thread.) After a series of schedule delays, I finally had a chance to do some preliminary testing, at the range. In the course of this initial work, I started with a charge that was purposely lower than I would ever anticipate using, and did a sort of mini ladder/pressure series with .3 gr. increments, up to where the effort to open the bolt became higher than I want to use for regular group shooting. At the bottom, of the range, there was some inconsistency that showed up with large vertical, shot to shot variations, but after the charges got to a more normal range of pressure, this went away, and things settled down, and I saw shots stack pleasingly close in at two half grain wide sweet spots that were within my pressure requirements, and another that while similarly accurate, required more bolt lift effort than I like. All cases were FL sized for every shot. Somewhere along the way, I became impatient with the wind ( at the lowest node I think) and decided to hold off about a bullet, and found that although the flags told of the need, the target showed much less sensitivity than I would have expected. I believe that I will be doing some more exploring of that in the near future. The sum total of the shots fired, without cleaning, was over 30, and although I don't usually go that far, there was a method in my sloth, I wanted to see if the fouling caused any kind of dramatic drop off in accuracy, which it did not. I did notice that the inside of my case's necks were more black than the translucent gray that I am used to seeing with 133, even after a light brushing with a recycled bronze bore brush. Several days later, I am just finishing cleaning the barrel. After setting up the rifle in one of my rifle vises, I short stroked a moderately loose patch (1 3/8" sq. on a .22 cal Sinclair piercing style jag) soaked with Butch's. Normally, with 133, I expect this first patch to be tighter and rougher. in this case it was not, feeling more like a third of fourth patch, even though the amount of black that I was getting with each of the four that I short stroked before brushing was slightly more than I am used to, the amount of color diminished as I would have expected. At that point I wet a fairly new, very tight brush and gave the barrel 15 careful cycles, up and back. Then I two more wet patches through, and I am waiting to do one more, and to dry the bore and chamber, as I write this. It seems that the fouling is slightly more than with 133 but perhaps has less effect, and seems to be easy to clean, posing no special problems. While doing all of my patching, I paid particular attention to the feel when I was drawing the patch back through the throat, and did not feel the slightest indication of any buildup in this area...good news, this after giving things a chance to set up, and do their worse, as it were. I know that this is a long ways from any sort of complete test or writeup, but I thought that it might be of interest. One thing is for sure, the highest pressure loads, with a 68 gr. bullet, seated lightly into the lands, did not require special measure technique to fit in the case, and the low node loads filled the case enough that there was no concern about too much empty space. It may be that some of those 62 grain Watsons that I have had for a number of years, will need come off of the shelf. It should be interesting seeing the numbers, when I get around to setting up the 33. That is all for now. Back to the garage to finish up. So far, it seems that this powder may be more forgiving as to variations in charge weight, than what I have been using, but is is still too early to reach any final conclusion.
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