36gn Varmint grenades + 220 Swift = FAARRK
Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2009 11:56 pm
While I was doing some load development at the range with my pope gun this week a mate brought along his Ruger 220 swift laminate job to do the same. The main focus for him this time round was the 36gn barnes varmint grenades I gave to him for Xmas. Now right from the outset I had no great expectations with regards to accuracy with these pills at all. I can't remember reading anywhere of someone commenting on their accuracy.
Before I left home I did a quick calculation on the probable velocity of this projectile. When I came up with a figure of between 4600 and 4700fps my jaw dropped with disbelief! That was the theoretical but I expected finding the right powder that could do this would be harder in reality. We started out loading one round at a time with each powder load and running it over the chrony. We eventually worked our way up to this velocity without too much sign of pressure.
To say we were stoked is an understatement! We actually achieved an average higher than this but that just happened to be what was on the chrony when a cease fire was called so we could take a picture.
About then I was saying, who gives a s**t if this load doesn't shoot, we're gunna get right up close to something so I can video the crap being blown out of it!
After reaching this comfortable working load it was time to load a few up to shoot a group (pattern?)
Well bugger me! The look on our faces when this was the resultant 100yd group!
The wind was gusting across the range making things difficult but even so, shooting between gusts my mate managed to put down several 0.6 moa 5 shot groups with these pills.
We both had grins on our faces for the rest of the day that ya couldn't remove with a cricket bat.
Even though these pills have a lousy ballistic coefficient, running them through the ballistics program still shows a pretty respectable trajectory.
With them being a lot more wind sensitive than my usual 30+cal varmint rifles this will still be a very interesting load to try out on critters on the upcoming shooting trip though!
Before I left home I did a quick calculation on the probable velocity of this projectile. When I came up with a figure of between 4600 and 4700fps my jaw dropped with disbelief! That was the theoretical but I expected finding the right powder that could do this would be harder in reality. We started out loading one round at a time with each powder load and running it over the chrony. We eventually worked our way up to this velocity without too much sign of pressure.
To say we were stoked is an understatement! We actually achieved an average higher than this but that just happened to be what was on the chrony when a cease fire was called so we could take a picture.
About then I was saying, who gives a s**t if this load doesn't shoot, we're gunna get right up close to something so I can video the crap being blown out of it!
After reaching this comfortable working load it was time to load a few up to shoot a group (pattern?)
Well bugger me! The look on our faces when this was the resultant 100yd group!
The wind was gusting across the range making things difficult but even so, shooting between gusts my mate managed to put down several 0.6 moa 5 shot groups with these pills.
We both had grins on our faces for the rest of the day that ya couldn't remove with a cricket bat.
Even though these pills have a lousy ballistic coefficient, running them through the ballistics program still shows a pretty respectable trajectory.
With them being a lot more wind sensitive than my usual 30+cal varmint rifles this will still be a very interesting load to try out on critters on the upcoming shooting trip though!
Pretty keen to give em a go in my swift 