TPM - Precision Rifle Reloading - 5 Things to Improve the Consistency and Accuracy of Your Reloads 

You're welcome! Thanks for watching. -Shawn

Thanks for watching!

Thank you, appreciate the comment! -Shawn

Thank you. Ya, I still haven't found large rifle primers, of God forbid large rifle magnum primers in probably a couple years now. I'm actually getting low to the point that I have to watch what I reload and plan for matches and hunting. No good. Hopefully they come back soon.

@@triggeredprecisionmachinellc There is some lrp around rn. Not mag though

Thank ya sir, and thank you for watching. -Shawn

Great points, Todd. I've never done any specific testing to see how shoulder bump effects velocity, but that makes perfect since. I'll typically see slightly lower velocities with new, un-fireformed brass which probably has the same effect - using pressure to expand the case to the chamber. Interesting. The inside the neck stuff is actually something I am playing with now. Just for grins, I've recently shot loads with nothing done to the ID of the necks, vibratory cleaning, wet tumbling, then experimented with each of those coupled with different lubricants - dry moly powder, Imperial wax, and Hornady One shot. I did this with a pretty limited number of rounds and it was far from scientific. I was mainly experimenting to see what had a noticeable effect, if any, on the chamber pressure of a semi-hot load. I found the un-altered necks and the dry moly were very similar in velocity, essentially the same with no pressure signs. The case wax actually seemed to reduce the pressure which was evident by an effortless bolt throw, absolutely zero stick like a powder puff load would have. Velocities were slightly lower. The super clean brass from the wet tumbler had pretty severe pressure signs, to the point where I shot two rounds, stuck a case and called it quits for the rest. The velocity was considerable higher than all the rest. I did not do any accuracy testing and like I said, i only fired 3 rounds for each which is hardly statistically significant, but interesting nonetheless. I will revisit this someday and do a more detailed accuracy test. The bench-rest crowd has some serious magic they put into those rifles and the ammo they shoot. I have to admit, some of the stuff seemed downright superstitious but you cannot deny the results they get. I'd like to get involved with that someday, I'd imagine there is a ton to learn that could transfer back to the practical / tactical rifle shooting I enjoy. A Primal Rights primer seating tool is on my list of tools to accumulate. From what I understand, the bench-rest guys even use load cells to measure the pressure it takes to seat the primer, so they are all seated at the same pressure similar to how they seat bullets in an arbor press with the chamber type dies. Pretty amazing stuff. We still have so much to learn about getting truly perfect consistency and accuracy. As always, thanks for the contribution Todd! Great stuff! -Shawn

@@triggeredprecisionmachinellc That's great that you've done some experiments on inside the case neck preparation! Thanks for sharing your findings. I haven't heard about the benchrest people watching primer seating force. Some may do that and I just haven't met one yet. 🤪 There are some that watch the bullet seating force though. You can wait to try benchrest when you get to be an old guy. 🤣 Have fun with the action shooting sports while you can. My early experiences with benchrest seem like it's a mostly mechanical activity. The gun, ammo, and rests do the shooting part. Although reading the wind and making corrections is a big part of being successful. I still have a lot to learn. I haven't participated in a match yet to get humbled.

🤣🤣🤣 Oh man, you got me laughing pretty good when I read the part about holding off from benchrest until I was an old guy. Haha! Does feeling like an old dude count? It sounds interesting, a whole new approach to shooting I've yet to experience. Some day.... Please share the tidbits of info as you come upon things that make you go, "oh wow." I'm truly interested. Thanks Todd.

I'm a relatively new reloader and new to 100yd benchrest. I'm using liquid Molly inside the neck and on the bullet. Haven't compared over the chrono yet. Witch Doctor on RU-vid has done some in depth testing on the subject.

Interesting.... how is that working out????

Any time! Thanks for watching!

Sounds very similar to the learning curve I went through. I never got any dies custom honed but what I am considering now is ordering the corresponding "sizing" reamers for the calibers I have reamers for, and turn my own sizing dies. The sizing reamers are set up to make the perfect sizing die for that particular chamber reamer. Interesting point on letting the brass "set" while its inside the sizing die. Makes sense to me. Thanks for the comments, great stuff. -Shawn

100% accurate and great point. If I’m going for .002” neck tension, I usually under size the OD with a bushing .003 - .004, then use the .002” under mandrel to bring the ID back up. I get very consistent neck tension, but I’ve discovered that proper lube is key.

My thoughts exactly.

Spot on, that is better than I could have put it. Speed is nice, but I consider it a pleasant byproduct of a good load if it is there. If not, no sleep is lost as long as I have a tac driving rifle. I've never lost a match because I wasn't shooting as fast as the next guy. Thanks for the reply, I really need to get one of those SAC dies to try out. they get solid reviews from everyone who uses em. -TPM

I use the “one bullet diameter” for field rifles, you can get away with less on a dedicated target or bench rifle.

Yup, we often forget that. Very important!

Yessir, consistency is key.

Sometimes we get lucky like that. That is awesome. How do you like the Forster dies in general?

@@triggeredprecisionmachinellc I think Forster is top notch. They are always my first choice in dies. You can actually have the F/L die reamed to have specific neck tension as a service from Forster.

I'll have to give them a go. I feel like the dies from Forster, Redding, RCBS, and Hornady all come down to brand loyalty, like a Ford vs Chevy thing. I have always used Redding dies but I recently had some issues with a sizing die. My first problem in over 20 years with their dies.

Ended up 4th. Strong start, dropped one point in the first 3 stages, fell apart in the middle, cleaned up the last two without a miss. Lol. I need to brush up my mental game.

I haven’t been able to find any, but LR Mag is what I’m really after.

Absolutely, I could not agree more. A lot of people get sucked into the rabbit hole in the search for perfection and lose sight of what it actually takes to be a solid shooter. I sometimes wonder if some of those folks enjoy the reloading process even more than shooting. I think that may be the case sometimes, which is perfectly ok. It's pretty fun playing around with this stuff.

@@triggeredprecisionmachinellc precision reloading is certainly more fun and more zen than spitting out 600 rounds of 9mm per hour on a Dillon 650, like I used to do when shooting ipsc.🙂

🤣 Yessir, you got that right. When I was shooting a lot of IPSC and USPSA I was loading on a Dillon 550. I definitely enjoy the "science" behind precision rifle reloading.

@@triggeredprecisionmachinellc do you think you have been sucked into a rabbithole in pursuit of perfection while attempting to weigh powder charges to the third decimal? Just how much does half a kernel of Staball6.5 weigh? Do you use a miniature version of a pharmaceutical pill cutter to cut granules in half? My opinion is that the sweet spot for the powder charge isn't a spot but a window and the bigger the case, the bigger the window. Try Creighton Audette's version of a ladder test once and you'll quit weighing powder to the 3rd decimal real fast. Thanks.

I’d say weighing powder to the 3rd decimal is way over kill. If I said that in the video that’s incorrect. I keep my powder charges to within two hundredths of a grain (.02). That is one physical grain of extruded powder like H1000 and Retumbo. Doing that doesn’t cost me any extra time or heartache. When tuned properly, the Auto Trickler with the FX120i scale I use will throw easily to within .02 grains in about 15-20 seconds. I’d say it has an overthrow maybe every 20 cycles. In that case I dump it back in and let it do it’s thing one more time. I agree with the “window” of powder charges for close range accuracy, but in my experience having more variation in powder charge weights rears it’s ugly head in vertical dispersion at distance. I’ve done a ton of testing with this in a few calibers. When you run a bunch of incrementally increasing powder charges over the chrono, sometimes you will see a velocity flat spot for a couple charges in a row. I’ve never seen enough of a positive correlation between this velocity flat spot and accuracy to say they go hand in hand. I have eliminated a lot of the time consuming stuff with reloading. Holding a fairly tight powder charge doesn’t take much more effort and it’s a variable I can easily control. There’s a lot of stuff we can’t control so I believe it’s important to have control over, or at least understand the variables we can control.

Consistency and precision are #1. Speed is a welcome byproduct.

😂 That is definitely one option. No one wants to shoot in the bad weather. Up here we have a half of a year of it so the ranges are pretty empty. All good with me! 😁

I absolutely do!

@@triggeredprecisionmachinellc SO ? ANOTHER VIDEO?

I've been lagging. Rifle builds and fumbling through tax stuff had me tied up. Back at it! 😁

No, sir, I did not.

@@triggeredprecisionmachinellc I sent it through your site. I’ll try again

Finally got it Matt. Settin' up to respond back. Sometimes the messages through the website get delayed for some reason.

@@triggeredprecisionmachinellc good deal…got h1000,magpro, and some more 175smk comin this week to load more 6.5,and .308…we’ll keep in touch brother..

H1000 is one of my favorite powders. Did you find some for sale online?