v-rog wrote:(Continuation from Andy's post)...................And..........................Results? I want to see those sub-moa shot groups, Chris
Sadly, they did not happen.
I tested a bunch of different loads....everything from Black Hills 175 Match to some M118 (not "LR") to some handloads. What I found was that the hotter the load, the better the rifle liked them. The former owner told me that the Noveske barrel is "optimized" (whatever that means) for the M118
LR, which is not the same thing as the M118 cartridge. Both have 175 grain Match Kings on them, but the LR round is considerably hotter, "LR" standing for "Long Range." M118LR ammo is kind of hard to find these days, and it is pretty expensive when you do find it, because of the supply/demand economics of it. As I said, I did notice that it shot considerably more accurately with hot ammo. I have a handload consisting of a 175 grain Match King over 45.2 grains of Varget which it liked better than most of the other loads. There were two other decent performers. One was a 180 grain SST over a 42.4 grains of Varget. That's not even the hottest load for that bullet/powder combination in the Lyman manual, so I could pump that up quite a bit more and see how it does. The other good performer was, surprisingly (or not), the 165 grain Federal Fusion commercial hunting load, which is a kind of a hot load. I've always gotten pretty decent groups out of this ammo, in three different rifles now, and I'm pretty impressed with it.
Anyway, given that the rifle is supposed to work best with M118LR, and given that cartridge's rarity and price, I'm going to try and "reverse engineer" a handload which duplicates its ballistics to see how it does.
There was one other thing that affected my shooting that day (actually I shot it on Thursday, not Saturday), besides my unfamiliarity with the rifle, and trying to get the scope zeroed, etc., was that the gunshop that had Dura-Coted the barrel had also improperly mounted the YHM Phantom flash hider. They put the crush washer on the wrong way so that it wouldn't crush down all the way, and consequently the last 180º turn on the threads was not available to them. So the flash hider—which is also a compensator—had all of its vents pointing down and to the sides, instead of up and to the sides. Don't every let anybody tell you that one of these flash hiders is not really an effective compensator. Every time I pulled the trigger, the muzzle bucked upward in a fairly disconcerting manner and it began to affect my shooting. I remedied the problem last night by ordering a Smith Enterprises Vortex flash hider for it. These do not need a crush washer as the unit is self tightening each time you pull the trigger. These are also suppressor capable for the "Wind-Talker" series of suppressors.
I could have simply bought a crush washer and remounted the original flash hider, but then I would be torquing it against the barrel to get it seated properly, and I didn't want to risk twisting the barrel too much. So there it is.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
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