168gr 7mm Bergers...what's your speed?

T

tmas

New member
I'm shooting a 7mm Rem Mag with 168 bergers. I have a rem 700 with a 24" 1:9.5" twist tube. My gun likes a load at 62.5 gr h4831sc, and 64.5gr h4831sc. Both shoot about .5moa at 100 & 200. I'm Loading them at an COAL 3.375", quite far off the lands is where she likes em.
With my first baby coming this month I can't afford a Chrony, i'm wondering if someone is shooting something similar and could give me an idea what speed i'd be shooting at. I'm hoping to be in the neighborhood of 2900-2950. I just put my new Viper HS LR 4-16x50 on it and am anxious to start putting some distance to my targets.
I really love these bergers, i struggled pretty hard to find a bullet that this gun likes most went well over 1.5" and even some Nosler BT's wouldn't even go under 2". But these 168 bergers seem to fly great, most the loads i tried with them went around 1", with a couple mellow loads going 1.25" and a couple hotter ones going .4", i even had a 3 shot .332", but haven't duplicated that yet:rolleyes:
 
mrawesome22, thanks for the offer!
I went to the range today and was lucky to set up next to a great guy who let me use his chrony. Here's my results in case anybody is interested:
At 62.5 grs, which is .9 below Berger's max
5 Shots
High 2702
Low 2680
Avg 2690
Ext. 22
D 8


at 65 Grs, which is 1.6grs above Bergers Data
5 Shots
High 2824
Low 2777
Avg 2795
Ext. 47
D 19

Interesting to me how much slower my 24" barrel was than Berger's data with a 26". I believe that berger does their data with quickload, not real testing. I was hoping to be about 100 feet faster than that, i'm not sure how much higher i'll take my load but it won't be 100 feet i'm sure. I might squeeze another 50 out if the groups stay tight.

mrawesome22, if you're still willing to plug it into quikload, my case holds 86.2grs water. I'd be curious to see how close quickload would work with this gun, i've never used the software before.
 
7MMRemMag625grH4831SC.jpg



7MMRemMag65grH4831sc.jpg
 
Holy cow that is accurate! Thanks Mrawesome22... I may need to invest in that haha. So on the 65.5 gr load it reads that the estimated pressure is 51063. The Max SAAMI pressure I believe for the 7mm is 52000, so that should be right close to a true MAX load for my gun. I loaded som up at 65.7 and 66 gr and my FPS only went of less than 15 ft at 66 so i'm done at the 65.0, don't need to push the envelope for 15fps.
So if you feel like helping me out one more time, what would 59.0 gr h1000 perform like with all the other specs the same? Thanks again mrawesome22...
 
Sorry bout long response time. Quickload won't run on Windows 7 and the laptop I run a XP Virtual Machine on had a hard drive failure but I got it all back up and running. Anyway, stay away from Toshiba 2.5" hard drives. Failed in 6 months.

59gr of H1000 is awful.

7MMRemMagH1000.jpg
 
Haha...i'll make sure i stay away from the harddrives!! OOPS!! I accidentally wrote 59 instead of 69, i was confused for a minute there...that seemed so ssslllooooowwww. Haha thanks anyway, that quickload amazes me!
 
Interesting to me how much slower my 24" barrel was than Berger's data with a 26".
Click to expand...

You just have to remember that all barrels are not the same. It is not unusual for there to be 100 fps or more difference between 2 guns with equal length barrels.

I haven't tried any of the Berger's in any bullet weight, but was having fits trying to get my 24" 7 mag to shoot even close to what the loading manuals said it should be shooting until I tried some Reloader 25. I was working with Hornady 162 gr SST's and was only getting around 2890ish. A max load of RL25 pushed me slightly over 3000 fps with good accuracy.
 
Much better.

69H1000.jpg


Edit: Hodgdon's data shows a max of 71gr H1000 with a 170gr bullet so you may be able to go a little higher than 69gr.

I generally find Hodgdon's data to be spot on.
 
Try it with IMR 7828, Mrawesome and see how it reads, only use the 160 grn Accubond with 61.6 grns of powder with a coal of 2.800,( I zeroe my comparator after it on) just to give me an idead of pressures.:) 7mm rem mag of course, 24 inch barrel 1 in 9 1/2 twist.
 
7Mag160Accu.jpg


You sure about 2.8" OAL? Seems awfully short:confused:

Comparing the results with QL against my chronograph, I have realized that inputting the correct H2O capacity is critical to getting accurate output from QL.

So this may or may not represent accurate data for your gun.

For the best results possible, you take a fired case, weigh it, fill with water so the water is level with case mouth (no meniscus), weigh it again, subtract unfilled weight from filled weight, and this gives you H20 capacity in grains.

EDIT: I just realized you used a comparator. You need to measure from case head to tip with just the calipers to get the correct OAL to put into QL.
 
Thank you mrawesome22, Youv'e talked me into getting this software for my computer,,,, yeah my wife says your REAL awesome,,,,,, !~@#$%^&*( :o

This load shoots wonderfully out of my Vanguard, I'm finished with that rifle for now, but next fall I'll get back behind that one, and see if it still likes that load or if it's just an aborition. I also found that the 140 grn Accubond with Imr 4831, shoots as well. It also likes 150 grn Partitions with IMR 4350,,,, so I think this rifle just loves to shoot about anything.:)
 
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I give her my sincere apologies lol.

A few years back loading for my buddies Ruger 7Mag, IMR7828 was far and away the best powder. It was slinging wild 4 inch groups but with the IMR7828, every combo I tried was under an inch.

We sure had fun exploding groundhogs with that thing:D
 
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