Length?
Or performance.
You have a choice
Tag: .308 win
Afternoon at the range, and other sundry stuff
Yeppers, dredged up the AR 10 and shot some of the donated PPU brass today. 168 g. Speer Target Match over the usual Varget load. Very windy from left to right and in your face. Without bragging (well, yes), I shot very well, and/because my wind calls were very good. At 528, I was holding 5 MOA left, at 900 I was holding 14.0 left! I shot 6 targets, three of them first shot hits, and expended 20 rounds. I wasted several at 1107 ( though I had one go center an inch or two high) – I maxed out the scope and was doing an 8 MOA holdover and 19-20 left.
It felt good.
I was still glowing when a Statey flashed me for going slightly fast into town. After noticing the Glock 21 on the passenger seat, and my immediate disclosure of returning from the range and being a board member, we talked about my AR and his upper and lower he regretted selling.
Just a smiling warning from NH’s finest. I’m glad I was wearing my desert tan jacket with camo American flag, etc.
In other news, an observant and knowledgeable reader had concerns about the tracks on the Hornady brass.
Yeah, it looks bad. I was saying, oh, dear, myself. But there is no actual marring of the brass; it’s more just highly polished. I used thick and slick camo duct tape on the jaws of my pliers. When the brass slipped, it left teeth marks but never broke through. I’ve tried to hold brass with my finger pressure only while reaming, but it was just too much torque. I’ll follow the brass through the next rounds of shooting.
And I don’t think too much brass is being removed. Swaging just did not work for me.
Only bad thing was that I noticed my eye relief seemed off.
Lot of recoil with this platform; I’ll retorque tomorrow.
Brass Work
The down side of all that free once-fired brass is that it still has to be worked – trimmed, deburred, chamfered. The primer pocket needs cleaning. And, in certain cases, needs more.
In this group, I got Federal, PPU, Sig and Hornady brass. I like Hornady brass, but when produced for the military, they crimp the primer into the pocket, like this:
You can see the ring around the primer pocket. This is mostly to keep a primer in place during automatic fire. But if you try to seat a new primer, the pocket is much too small. So, you swage (swedge) the pocket or ream it out.
I did not have much luck in my earlier tries with swaging, so I ream:
It takes a lot of pressure to ream out copper, so I jury-rig:
There’s a fair amount of torque involved:
And it’s still very tight, leading to some seating failures:
But, it was free brass! Tomorrow, I’ll load some up and see what happens.
Delta Sierra
No, I’m not having trouble maneuvering and my engines are not in reverse. This is a new addition to this site, where I encounter a “learning situation” and use it to keep you from doing the same. This is the Delta Sierra signal. Also known as the “DumbShit” signal.
I must throw the DS twice for yesterday. First, I had tumbled a bunch of brass, then immediately set about sizing it. After a few, my brain kicked in and said, “Wait. Don’t we anneal and rinse the brass first?” Of course we do, but I kept going, thinking that it couldn’t possibly be a problem if we skipped annealing just once. A few cases later, one needed more downward force on the die arm, then the next needed so much force on the upswing that the brass bent its rim and pulled itself out of the seater and jammed in the die. My very expensive full length 6.5 Creed sizer die.
I’m not sure, but I think the leftover media dust from the tumbler gummed it up, even with case lube. But maybe the decapper pin had worked its way loose. At least it was when I took the die apart. Regardless, I’ve only gotten brass stuck in a die once before, but I do have the kit to remove it. It ain’t easy. These pix are after the fact:
Mangled rim. Drill and tap the primer hole. Thread machine screw through removal cup and into case. Place die in vice, screw all the way down to case, exert great force on the tiny Allen head wrench and force brass out of case.
It works but is not easy.
So, that was the first Delta Sierra moment of the day. More tomorrow.
Long Range Reopens
Despite the best efforts of some ne’r do wells, the upper range opened today – I was the first to go up.
I did 6.5 CM and .308 Win. Lot of crosswind and difficult lone spotting, with damp berms. Still, got the 6.5 out to 533 and the .308 out to 750. No time to send the drone dowrange to spot for me. Tomorrow.
KatNap Fever! 