204Ruger

WesF wrote: My problem with these loads is that I had to load them into my Savage 12FV one at a time as the hollow point of the bullet would hang up on the face of the chamber, I couldn't load them from the magazine. I'm wondering of this is a function of bullet seating depth or if my rifle doesn't like these bullets loaded from the magazine.

WesF, the seating depth of your loads is not written in stone! If you want to feed from the magazine, sounds like you will need to seat your bullets a little deeper. You may, however, need to retest your loads for accuracy. Seating depth will more than likely affect your group size. I only single feed my 204 rounds in my Howa, because I am only shooting from a solid bench with a good rest. This gives me the best accuracy for the loads I am shooting.

Thanks futuretrades. I'm not sure I want to go much deeper than SAMMI specs, but I'll try .001 inch or so deeper. I'm not wanting to increase my case pressure too much.

Seating bullets deeper (more jump to the lands) will lower your pressure; unless you get rediculouly deep.

Darkker, thanks for clearing that up, I was misinformed. I'll give it a run.

With a Savage, lord knows their QC isn't helping you Wes.
The Ruger Hawkeye predators never hiccup with them.

An update on the feeding problems I'm having feeding the Mid-South/Dog Town bullets. I've seated the bullets all the way down to a case overall length of 2.220" and am still having a problem with the hollow point catching on the face of the chamber. I don't know that I'm all that excited at the prospect of taking a die grinder to the chamber face. I guess the worst case would be for me to load these rounds one at a time as these bullets shoot "lights out" Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Just read thru this for the 1st time and noted the ? and comments on the Nosler accuracy loads. Brought to memory an incident from 3 yrs. ago. My wife got a Savage Lightweight hunter because I am getting old and don"t have a 260 Rem. Found a box of 100gr. Sierras and bought some 260 Lapua brass and went to camp where we have a complete loading bench and over 300yards w/ a bench. Well, someone took the sierra book home and we were 224 miles from ours. So we took the Nosler book, the 100 gr. 260 accuracy load and tried it. 5 rounds= .267. Went back to the bench and did 10 more. 20" pencil barrel and nothing over 1/4". This is not the 1st accuracy load from Nosler that has worked. Now if you want to see somebody fudging w/loads read the Hornady book seriously. Dick

if you are having feeding issues and deeper isn't helping, try seating them longer.

Remember that book data does NOT list component lot numbers, and 98% of the powder being sold to the US public won't list nominal variances. So do you have THE same burning rates, etc as what was tested in a book? Don't count on it.

Seating the bullets farther out is the next step. I'm not sure how far out I can go without the bullet just coming out of the case. I guess feeding these little prairie dog sleeping pills one at a time would not be all bad...my barrel would have a chance to cool off between shots.

Claimjumper: you say "Best powder for those 34's is X-Terminator 24-25 grains.) If I buy a pound and it shoots like crap, are you going to sent me the cost of buying the powder???