OK, I followed the loading guides and reloaded some ammo for my 2 .308's or should I say my .308 and my 7.62x51. The guides said that 47gr of Varget in commercial brass and a 150gr bullet would give 2937fps. So I loaded some with 42gr, some with 44gr, and some with 46gr to see wihch would perform the best. However I had some military brass to load also. All the info I could find suggested dropping the load approx 1gr due to reduced case capacity, but did not give approx fps for said load, so I loaded some at 42gr of Varget with a 150 gr bullet. Can anyone tell me what kind of performance to expect from this load? Just general info please, I know there are a lot of variables.
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Get a commercial brass case, fill it with water, dump it on your scale pan and weigh it. Then do the same for the milsurp case. (Don't remove old primers of course) There may or may not be a real difference. No difference means you could use the same recipe.
If there is less capacity in the Milsurp, I would certainly back it down a grain and start the whole process over to find a good loading.
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It's a good idea to seperate the different types of brass and work loads in seperate batches anyway, even if internal volumes are the same. the "workable" life of the lot will tend to be more equal among the batches of brass that way.
I tend to keep my loads on the lower side of the spectrum, so the difference in case volume doesn't become a safety issue - the slightly less volume of the surplus case will raise pressures a bit, but still within safe parameters. I also don't care for the recoil of 'hot' loads. Paper doesn't care about a 100FPS one way or the other.
I do make reduced loads using 7.62X51 brass for my Spanish Small Ring Mauser, and mark them as for that rifle specifically. All else is loaded to NATO spec or slightly under.
My hunting rifles are .30-30, so I do NOT load .308Win for hunting.
Gandog nails it, I too have reloaded everything but milsurp brass, it's on the table now, since all the .223 is reloaded, and what I've gathered, it is about1 gr lower on .223, and 1-1/2 gr on .308 to start. Work up slow. Mil-brass will reload longer, and is accurate. I've got WCC, Lake City, IMG and S&B. Laupa is best.
On that .308 150 gr. 46 is Hot. Start at 42, up to 44 gr. Good from 150 -180 gr bullets, normally.
I've slowed mine down to 42-43 grs 2750 or 2800 fps and got great results. Even less throat erosion.
Last edited by Deersniper; 11-25-2009 at 10:35 PM.
Get a commercial brass case, fill it with water, dump it on your scale pan and weigh it. Then do the same for the milsurp case. (Don't remove old primers of course) There may or may not be a real difference. No difference means you could use the same recipe.
This won't work if the case diameters of one is different than the other. If one case has a much smaller body diameter, it'll hold less water.
Best way is to just weigh deprimed cases. Cartridge brass is virtually all the same metalurgy regardless of who made it. it varies more by how it was annealed than anything else.
Lighter cases can have a bit more powder than heavier ones. Period.
bart hit it. unless you full length size and trim, i've seen mili cases with more case capacity.
take the stories of whats what with reloading with a grain of salt, the myths abound.
just like the myths about shooting cast bullets.
It's been a while since I have reloaded .308 but I still have my notebooks. Try this:
44gr. Varget
168gr. Sierra Match King HPBT
Federal Match primer
Set to 3.800" (I forgot to write down OAL, going on a tired memory here)
this is the exact load that Federal sells as their Premiere Match load. I loved it in a Savage 10FP-LEA2. Was achieving five shot 1/2" groups at 150yds.
