rifle – Bison Ops

New SW Precision 224 Valkyrie loads

May 8, 2022May 8, 2022 by Ben

Given the scarcity of smokeless rifle cartridge propellant, I think a lot of us have been motivated to try different things. Over the course of the last two years I managed to get a few pounds of Shooters World Precision Rifle powder. Having sat on this powder for some time I recently had a chance to try it with something I hadn’t planned on: the .224 Valkyrie. I have a Palma match coming up at the end of May and decided to give SWP a try in order to preserve my other propellants and to see how it would do.

Quickload predicted excellent muzzle velocity and safe pressures in my Starline cases, that averaged 32 grains of H2O capacity after being fired but not resized. A load of 24 grains under a 90 grain Sierra MatchKing bullet was predicted to give 2700 fps from a 26″ barrel with the rounds loaded at 2.36″ OAL for single round feeding during the Palma match, and 24.5 grains should give 2750 fps at 96% fill and almost 100% propellant burn. Not bad!

All loaded up and ready to go, I benched the 26″ rifle that I built. It has no gas system and I run it as a straight-pull bolt action using a side charge upper receiver and bolt carrier. A 3D printed handle helps work the action.

Right out of the gate, two things were apparent: This ammo has excellent accuracy, but velocity is well below prediction. The 24 grain load ran 2609 fps average and the 24.5 grain load ran at 2650. However this ammo was shooting 1/3 minute groups without trying very hard. I turned to Gordons Reloading Tool because it has a feature that will tune a powder based on real world results. In this case GRT predicted that 24.9 grains of SWP would result in 2694 fps at the same ambient temperature as the previous shooting session. So with the new ammo loaded up, off to the range.

Match rifle with 26″ 224 Valkyrie barrel for upcoming 1000 yard Palma match. Bench target on left was shot at 200 yards. Reduced MR Target was shot prone with a sling at 300 yards. Shoot-n-See is about the width of the 10 ring and the SNS 9 ring is about the width of the X ring of the reduced MR target.

In this case the ambient temperature was about 10 degrees warmer than the last shooting session, and GRT provides a field to account for this difference. The updated prediction was 2700 fps, for a difference of 6 fps. Shooting the ammo on a Lab Radar gave 2715 fps which is close enough in my books! Best of all, the accuracy remained excellent.

I shot on MR targets that were reduced to shoot from 600 yards down to 300 yards, which is the maximum distance at my rifle club. I shot many more X’s than 10’s and I think I’m ready for the Palma match. While the velocity is nothing to write home about for a 1000 yard match, I think the accuracy will play a more important roll, and the velocity is sufficient that all I need to do is make good wind calls in order to shoot well. I’ll report with range results after the match at the end of May.

308 Win Case Capacity and Muzzle Velocity

April 6, 2021April 5, 2021 by Ben

I conducted a brief study of case capacity and its effect on muzzle velocity this weekend. Such studies are easy because spending time at the rifle range is fun. They are also difficult because time is limited and it takes a lot of trigger time to get statistically significant results.

This study is not rigorous in that insufficient data was collected to prove any correlation between muzzle velocity and case capacity for a given brand of case, but enough data was collected to show a link over several brands of cases. The difficulty here is that there is more to muzzle velocity variation than case volume, but if the variation in capacity is great enough, we see the effects clearly.

Starting with the case capacity in grains of H2O between a selection of new and once fired 308 Win brass from Lapua (once fired), Federal (once fired), SSA (new), Winchester (new), and Hornady (once fired).

SSA has the lowest capacity while Hornady and Winchester were about the same at the highest capacity. Approximately 2 grains of H2O capacity separate the lowest from the highest. We expect that all else being equal (i.e. the same powder charge and bullet weight etc.), the cases with the lowest capacity will exhibit the highest muzzle velocity and vice-versa. Here’s the results from the range session shooting off-hand with an M14 (shot pretty well, one 10-round string was 96-2x)

In this figure clear correlation between case volume and muzzle velocity is apparent. Obviously other factors influence muzzle velocity besides case volume as there is significant variation in muzzle velocity that does not correlate with case volume. For example, the SSA brass (grey dots) has lower muzzle velocity than the Federal brass (orange dots) even though it clearly has lower case volume, which generally correlates with higher muzzle velocity.

Given that the powder charges were thrown by an Autotrickler to 41.2 +/- 0.02 grains of H4895, the powder charge is the most consistent thing besides bullet weight at 168 grains for the Sierra Match King bullets used in this test. Notice also that for each 10-shot group except for the group shot with Hornady brass, the variation among the group does not correlate much at all with case volume. This is to be expected with sample sizes this small. Even so, the correlation among the data in general agrees with the prediction made by Quickload between 20 and 30 fps per grain of case volume, all else being equal.

The Hornady brass did show good correlation between case volume and muzzle velocity so let us consider it more closely.

This correlates with the prediction given by Quickload but is still too small a data sample to be taken as strong evidence. And there lies the problem as always with load development and accuracy: the difficulty with which we obtain meaningful results due to the constraints involved in gathering statistically significant data. Barrels heat up, fatigue sets in, Lab Radars fail to register a shot, and so on.

Ideally I would turn necks and be very careful about neck tension, flash holes, and the rest, and then shoot 50 to 100 rounds of each brand case. I’ve also found that correlation is stronger if the volume of the fired case is measured before resizing and compared with the muzzle velocity from the previously fired shot.

So take the data as it is, a point from which we can move forward, no more, no less, and an indication that what we expect is true, so now we have to be more careful to prove it.

In an upcoming article I will discuss strategies for using case volume measurements to inform load development for match shooting at 600 yards and beyond.

Accuracy Analysis

February 19, 2018April 24, 2017 by Ben

I’m going to start posting results of range sessions once or twice a month as we get our accuracy analysis up to speed. Right now the plan for a given weapon is 3 10-shot groups, so 30 shots total. Time between shots 30 to 60 seconds, 100 yards, mild conditions (hopefully), and the 3 10-shot groups will be taken with no scope adjustments so that they can be compiled into a single 30-shot group. Time between groups could be 5 to 30 minutes and is not deemed relevant, except that the barrel will have had a chance for substantial cool down.

The following image indicates what I hope to produce for these updates, which will be used to characterize a given barrel and weapon:

That 100 yard 10-shot group is just an example as I’m still working on presentation. The group was shot with one of our 18″ .223 Fulcrum barrels with 77gr Federal Gold Medal Match ammunition. In the future I plan to measure bullet velocity with with my LabRadar unit. The Sigma values above indicate that this rifle and ammo combination is no worse than low Class 5, and probably Class 3. This is as much information as can be gleaned from 10 shots, which is one reason why 3-shot and 5-shot groups are dubious for gleaning weapon accuracy. I took 15 other shots with Hornady 75 grain match ammo and when both groups are centered and combined, just for example to get more shots in the group, I get the following retults:

In this case the Sigma value over a 95% confidence range tighten up from [.221, .433] to [.265, .397]. This indicates the rifle is no worse than Class 4, and could reasonably be Class 3 (especially given that I was the shooter and I’m not particularly good). Class 3 is realistically as good as auto-loading rifles get so this is the target, so to speak, for a competition gun like this one. For grins we can separate the two different groups and overlay to see how the different ammo shot:

I didn’t measure muzzle velocity of any of the shots, but that is planned for future analysis. In the future we can tag any given shot with a muzzle velocity and then analyze the results.

The important takeaway is that it takes a lot of shots to properly characterize weapon accuracy, and that even with a lot of shots, the accuracy potential of the weapon is hard to nail down with a lot of precision. Still, were confident that we can back up our Class 5 guarantee on our products, and that we’ll be able to zero-in on that number a lot better with more data.