204Ruger

Has anyone tried to chrono factory hornady ammo? I just bought a nothin' fancy savage mod 11 22" barrel. I haven't tried working up a load yet due to lack of time right now, but I'm getting good accuracy out of the factory ammo I've tried. I set the chrono up the other day and checked some 32 and 40 grain factory loads. I'm only getting ~3700 fps out of the 32 grain (advertised at 4200+) and ~3500 fps out of the 40 grain. Wondering what the deal is? Has anyone else tried chrono'ing these particular factory loads? Thanks for the help

Probably about normal, when we shoot the factory ammo in our various rifles. Most companies use pressure gun/barrels and at least 26 inch ones. So when fired in factory rifles, with shorter barrels and all, you will rarely, if ever meet the advertised FPS that factories show. Bill K

You will probably have much better luck developing your own loads if speed is what you're after. I have some loads using Benchmark that chronny at 4300 fps. I developed those loads over about a year's worth of trial and error. Go slow and work up in very small increments always looking for the pressure warning signs. Speed is not worth your safety.

Thanks for the replies. I'm not really trying to get as much speed as I possibly can, accuracy is more important to me. I just wondered if something might be wrong being 500 fps slower than advertised. I'm new to using a chronograph and was just surprised at the results

I've never seen a factory 204 rifle that would show anything remotely close to the advertised speed on the boxes of factory ammo. The 204 in particular always chronos WAAAYYY low with factory ammo. ...and with handloads if you stick to published data. The problem is much worse with the 204 than with anything else I happen to have owned or been around a lot of examples of, which leads me to believe that production chambers are cut to be quite a lot different from those in the pressure barrels for this cartridge. That really doesn't make much sense to do, to me, but that's what _seems_ to be the case.

I've been working up loads for my 204 for about 4 weeks now and have been using a Prochrono to check velocities. As you are doing, I'm looking for accuracy first and will worry about velocities later. Following the charts from the powder mfg I'm getting anywhere from 2-300 fps difference than posted speeds. I also get up to 100 fps difference between shots of the same powder charge and bullet weight. This week I hope to have the final load figured out that I'll use for a squirrel hunt at the end of the month. I'll be taking about 400 rounds with me and will be trading off with a Henry 17 HMR so the barrel has a chance to cool down. So far, I'm getting some pretty good results with 30.3 grains of BL-C2 and 32 gr. Nosler Varmageddon bullets.
Something else to check is the light quality at the time of shooting thru the chrono. The manual that comes with it has some interesting things to say about lighting conditions. Good Luck-Randy.

I'm in MZ5's camp on this.
Back when the 204 first came into the world, I chrono'd over 200 rounds of various Hornady ammo. Closest was within 100fps of the claim, the worst was off by 350fps.

Another thing to consider and put into this equation is that not only do companies use pressure barrels, but they also use 26 inch barrels. Just about all of ours run around 21 - 24 inches.
, and that will also drop the FPS, from factory readings. Bill K

Bill K wrote:Another thing to consider and put into this equation is that not only do companies use pressure barrels, but they also use 26 inch barrels. Just about all of ours run around 21 - 24 inches.
, and that will also drop the FPS, from factory readings. Bill K

All true but a 21-24in. tube isn't going to be 100's of FPS slower than a 26.

Maybe or maybe not. I believe I read where the average lose is about 50 fPS per inch. Just saying. Bill K

I've never seen any gun or chambering lose/gain 50 fps per inch but anything is possible.

In some extreme over bore cartridges you could possible see loses like that but the 204 Ruger is far from being an extreme overbore cartridge.

Just to throw in my 2 cents, I shot a couple of factory Hornady 32 gr. V-Max which are listed on the box at 4225 fps at the muzzle and recorded 3867 fps however, the chrono was about 8 feet from the muzzle. My barrel is 22". Could be my chronograph but I have no way verifying it's accuracy. I've fired over 200 rounds with various bullet weights, designs and powders and haven't had anything record over 3900 fps. Not complaining about the speed as I'm getting really good groups out of some of the loads and some really lousy ones from the others. It pays to experiment to find what your gun likes. Randy.