Hornady 88g eldm bullets and 223 Rem

L

lugerstew

New member
A friend gave me a box of 100 of these and I'm trying to develop a good load with them, just for accuracy.
I have already loaded and shot several 3 shot groups with varget and N140 but I'm not all that impressed with the results.
I'm shooting a bolt action savage with 26inch barrel and 1 in 7 twist, these are some long high bc bullets, hoping for a few same hole groups.
I am seating the bullets about .035 off my lands but have read in other forums that a few people have only had luck with these bullets when jamming them into the lands, my tests have all been 100 yards and one guy even said an experienced shooter told him that these bullets actually do better after 100 yards because of the high bc. So far, I have loaded and chronoed these between 2450 and 2600fps with 3/8-to-1-inch groups.
Looking for some suggestions for loading the last 70 bullets I have, I am leery of jamming bullets into the lands, i.e., touching or .005 into the lands, and have only tried this once before with no problems but didn't shoot great either with another bullet.
Any advice or experience with these?
Thanks
 
A couple targets with the 88g ELDM

Posting 2 targets I shot yesterday with Varget and N140.
 

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Didn't you have excellent group with 23.5gr? I would take that and shoot a 10-shot group to verify. If needed, I would tune the COAL with that powder charge.

-TL

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 
That was not the 88g load

tangolima, sorry, I didn't explain that one 3 shot group that was very tight, I switched to my known good reference load of Hornady 75g hpbt with Varget, just to see if the gun was still shooting well.
 
I see.

I would then take 20, 20.5, and 21 for COAL test. I would use small step of say 0.002".

-TL

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 
Interesting results.

Could be that your twist is a bit slower than 1:7 and won't stabilize 88 gr bullets.
I have two 1:9s that are faster than 1:9 and shoot 77 grain bullets better than any other weight, even though the 1:9 twist isn't supposed to stabilize 77 gr bullets.

Twist isn't the only thing that makes heavier bullets or any bullets shoot accurately.
Some barrels are very sensitive to the amount of bullet body touching the lands.

Case in point:
I have a 6.5mm CM that shoots most bullets accurately from 130 to 147 grains.
It shoots ELD-M, and Berger 140 grain bullets very accurately, but it shoots Sierra 140 gr SMKs poorly by comparison. Yet it shoots 142 gr SMKs great.
The older design 140 gr bullets have a different shape (more bullet body touching the rifling) from the newer 6.5mm CM bullets and that appears to make the difference.

You just may have found a bullet shape that your barrel doesn't shoot accurately.
 
You could be right Rimfire5, I just measured the twist on my barrel that says 1 in 7, but it actually is 1 in 7 1/4, maybe that is just enough to not stabilize these bullets that say they require a minimum of 1 in 7.
As suggested though, I think I will do a coal test with 21.5g from .035 off the lands down to about .005 off lands and see if I get any better results.
 
i tinker with seating depths. work up to a load with a good SD/ES, then move the bullet in 0.003 increments. usually 5 -7 groups and i will find a couple that are noticeably tighter than the rest. I gave up trying to measure off the lands a while back. I make sure I have 0.020 for safety and seat deeper each go around. the lands wear/erode over time, trying to reference a load off a moving point is folly IMHO.
 
Yes Shadow9mm, I'm starting to feel the same as you, yesterday I started preparing to do my coal test with these bullets and wanted to do another make sure measurement of where the bullet touches the lands.
I got totally confused that the measurement I got yesterday was .027 shorter than a week ago with about 100 rounds down the pipe with the exact same 88g match bullets.
I wasn't aware that could change that much in that short of a time, the only thing I can think of is the area I'm measuring too has a buildup off .027 of carbon after only 100 rounds.
I'm pretty sure that the throat didn't wear that much with 100 rounds, this at least makes me realize that if I want to know distance to lands, I better not use my recorded load data and measure every single time, or I need to clean the barrel well before each measurement.
Always learning something new in this hobby for sure.
 
I have cut group sizes in half tuning seating depth in 0.003 increments. Leaned the method from Erik Cortina. The idea of the bullet going the same speed, and you just adjusting the distance it travels in the barrel by tuning the seating depth to get it into a good spot with the barrel whip/harmonics just made way more sense to me.

heres 2 of his videos both on why you should stop chasing the lands. I cant say if his reasoning is right. But I was at the end of my rope trying to fight the accuracy gremlins with voodoo. This made sense to me, I tried it, and it has worked every time so far.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRXlCG9YZbQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FKq8Jj8YEI
 
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