Hornady Method

N

Nathan

New member
Anybody listen to the latest Hornady podcast?

They discuss a loading method like:
Pick a load design….bullet, powder, case, primer.
Set an oal to a reasonable value.
Set a charge weight that will get you the minimum velocity you need.
Set your accuracy threshold.
Load up 20.
Start shooting 20 round group. As long as you stay under target, keep shooting until you shoot 20 or exceed your accuracy threshold.

If you exceed your threshold, pull down remaining rounds, change something and build another 20.

Change something is powder, bullet or primer for bigger changes…..oal or charge weight for much smaller.
 
$$$$$$

For me would depend on the intent of the load. For a hunting load and the relatively short ranges of the whitetail hunting I do, I'd load 10, shoot 3, three shot groups and I'd let the rifle cool well down in between. I might shoot 2 , five shot groups. If accuracy and velocity were acceptable, I'd load however many I'd intended.

Components are so scarce and expensive these days, a 20 rd test group is a 1/5th of a box of primers and projectiles, if you had to change and "start over", one could be through a box of components pretty quickly, and that would get expensive in a hurry. Good for Hornady though;).

Something like a match load, for record or competition with a rifle, I'd shoot 5 rd groups, not worry about velocity.
 
I agree with bamaranger. I just came from the local gun shop and spent $99 for 1 lb each of H4831sc and Bulleye powders. It would have been $106 at Cabelas 8 miles away.
The cost today is keeping a lot of casual shooters at home; big drop in attendance at the local ranges, especially the clubs that provide facilities for trap shooting. It makes me wonder if there's really no better way to get gun control.
 
Because of my own cheapness and materials shortages, I have modified my load development method many times. Here is my current approach.

- Fix on the longest COAL that I can use for my purpose.

- Split min to max charge into 5 loads. Load 3 rounds each.

- Test fire and analyze vertical spread of each load's POI. Identify the load with smallest spread that coincides with peak POI.

- Keep the powder charge and load 5 loads with step of 0.025" in COAL. Repeat test and data analysis. Identify the optimal COAL.

- Load 10 rounds with the found powder charge and COAL. Test fire to determine group size.

I may not able to find the global optimum of charge / COAL combinations, but it is quite sufficient for what I need. 40 rounds I am done.

-TL



Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 
tangolima, I must admit, I am a bigger cheapskate.

I load 5 rounds each, seating at 0.015" and 0.02", so my start is 10 rounds and I start the powder charge 2-3 grains below max, depending on the book/manual pressures that I've seen over the years I've been reloading. Most often, one of these two is an acceptable group. Then it's 5 rounds with the next 2-3 powder increments to max. That's a total of 20-25 rounds.
 
cdoc42 said:
tangolima, I must admit, I am a bigger cheapskate.



I load 5 rounds each, seating at 0.015" and 0.02", so my start is 10 rounds and I start the powder charge 2-3 grains below max, depending on the book/manual pressures that I've seen over the years I've been reloading. Most often, one of these two is an acceptable group. Then it's 5 rounds with the next 2-3 powder increments to max. That's a total of 20-25 rounds.
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That works. I tend to have more data points to establish a trend on excel plots, and 10 shots for group sizing is minimum to live with. I can easily slash 10 rounds to get to your level. But it is hard to beat you [emoji12].

I shoot old guns with barrels close to be shot out. More often than not I have to have COAL too long to fit in the magazine. I just have single shot if I need the accuracy. Yes I do that for auto loaders if I have to. Craps are expensive, so I have to make each round count.

-TL

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 
Fabulous conversation! Something we should all send to our Washington representatives so they get a hint of what life is all about.
 
I generally load up ten loads of five each increment at .020 off the lands. Then if I find a nice forgiving node I’ll try five more each +/- .2gr to see if I can fine tune it. At this point if I’m consistently sub MOA I’m happy. Then I’ll load up twenty and verify. But, I have well over a hundred pounds of powder in stock and upwards of 50,000 primers and at least 10,000 projectiles on hand so I’m not concerned with using some up. Personally, I’d rather use up components developing loads that shoot consistently accurate than waste components shooting inaccurate ammo. All this isn’t even counting the thousands of already loaded rounds I have. I like to load when I’m bored and don’t shoot nearly as much as I used to.
 
I’ve done what you guys are talking about with the small groups and finding a node. I have even found some decent nodes that really reliably.

This year I spent more time confirming nodes I’d found related to seating depth and powder charge.

In essence, I think I was just making decisions on small samples. Then when they don’t pan out, it was a crap shoot.

That’s why I’m giving this method a bit more of a try. I’m also done shooting bullets that aren’t just naturally shooting well in my rifle. I shot a 10 shot ladder of LRX’s that the composite group of 10 charge weights was like 3”. Sure, in 200 rounds, I dialed it into an inch or so, but what a complete waste of money and components!

So, I’m going to give the Hornady method a shot.
 
If I go to the range I get charged every time. It's not practical to do what they say in the podcast. I use loads that are reported to be accurate and so far, have had good luck using those.
 
@RoyceP….sounds like you are doing what they said….find a load, shoot it, accept results or change something.
 
If you exceed your threshold, pull down remaining rounds, change something and build another 20.
Click to expand...

Or, as the BPCR writer said, shoot them, you probably need the practice in positions other than hunkered down on a bench.
 
I’m sure….well, maybe change that to, I hope…. there are guys out there like me who just have to find another bullet that will best the last one that impressed me. I have this nasty habit: when I find an acceptable group with a chosen bullet and I happen to be walking past the bullets in Cabela’s, I find myself stopping to pick another at a given caliber to see if it will be even better than the last.

I used to seat my bullets at 0.015 (I didn’t want to potentially jam at closer lengths) and move out in increments of 0.002 but when I got to 0.021 I found that most of my loads in the 12 calibers I was loading were giving me groups that were 0.9” or less at either 0.015 or 0.02.
So, today, after 46 years of this, that’s what I do. 3 rounds at each of those 2 seating depths and invariably one is better than the other. Then I shoot 5 rounds with the best load to confirm it.

When I got my Browning X-Bolt in 6.5mm Creedmoor, I trialed Hornady 140gr Spire, Sierra 140gr BTSP, Hornady 140 SST, and Berger 140. Here are the results with 3 shot groups with 40.0gr H-4350 (NOTE: This is a max load)
At 0.015” seat:
Hornady 140 SP 0.361”
Sierra 140 BTSP 0.861”
Hornady 140 SST 1.111”
Berger 140gr 0.736”
At 0.02”:
Hornady 140 SP 0.198”
Sierra 140 BTSP: 0.3298”
Hornady 140 SST: 1.111” (again)
Berger 140: 0.6735”

Today I redid the SST and included Hornady 140 ELD-M and 147 ELD-M.
Hornady 140 SST 0.02” 0.486”(40.0gr H-4350)
Hornady 140 ELD-M 0.02” 0.5485” (2 were in a bug-hole) (40.0gr)
Hornady 147 ELD-M 0.015” = 0.5485” (41.0gr)

My 6mm PPC is even more impressive: 65gr V-Max
0.015”: 100 yards 5- shots = 0.3508”
0015”: 100 yards 10 shots = 0.882”
With a Sierra 60gr HP and 5 shots with various powders, all at 0.015”:
IMR 4198: 0.5695”
H322: 0.882”
BL-C(2): 0.3795”
Varget 0882”

The quality of the rifle certainly has as much, if not more, to do with this as my ability. Choosing a powder load is another part of this, and I usually start 3.0 gr below manual max and move toward max but only seating at 0.015 and 0.02” case-base to bullet “ogive.”
 
Until I got Hornady OAL Guages, I loaded to book COAL. Now at .030. All of my loading is for hunting, so I do as BAMARANGER does with 3 shot groups from a 10 round loading.
 
:p@Nathan,

Are you talking about episode #50 or #52? I found episode #50 quite interesting, I haven't listened to episode #52 all the way through yet.

I agree episode 50 was an eye opener into long range load development, but it was about shooting groups of 30-50 for statistical information not 20 round groups. They started with 10 shots and added at least 20 more rounds if the load showed potential. The goal was ¾ MOA for 30 or more shots at 100 yards.

Another takeaway is how little some things mattered. Things like seating depth and small changes to powder charges to the statistical average of their group sizes. Also how quickly they would go to a different barrel. I also liked how they showed shooting a minimum group of 30 saved money vs. 5 and 10 shot groups during load development shooting out to 1000+ yards when you go to confirm at range.

I also decided, I might try this with one or two rifles. However, it isn't changing how I load for most of my hunting rifles. If my hunting rifle is still smaller than 2 MOA it's good for most NA big game animals inside of 500 yards.
 
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I am talking about the combined information of #50 and #52.

At about the 38 min mark of #50, they show the premise of the 20 shot group being a minimum size, but still shows a +/- 0.2” variation on a nominal of 0.9”…that said, when that group got to 50 shots, it was 1.06”….for me, 0.9” representing a 1.06” group is good enough, considering my chance of shooter error goes up after 20 shots, quite a bit. I thought 20 shots was quite predictive.

In both, they go into personal methods which is where I grabbed 20 shots from, but now I forget where.

It is not a requirement that anybody do this, including me. IMO, it is a good story….which makes me think I should do some testing.

I was told to anneal by many folks. I thought it folly. I looked at some brass failures I was having. They compelled me to test annealing. Now I get improve sizing results, better case fit and better targets. My improved targets were years ago and compared hardened brass to annealed, so I can see the bias know….but annealing is cheaper than new brass regularly!
 
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I only do 3 test shots for each load I want to try. May not be enough to most folks. But when rounds are $3/piece for magnums...it's enough testing for me. Ill disregard the 3 shot groups that are not sub moa. And shoot another 3 rounds to verify the ones that are. It's a method that has worked so far in my 20 years of reloading.
 
@Mr Goo. I fully understand. If you can shoot 3 rounds and get what you need, I’d actually just suggest you find a safe load and go hunt. 3 rounds are not telling you anything about the accuracy of your load.

That said, it is pretty hard to make ammo that shoots greater than 2 times the best accuracy of your firearm/shooter capability.

I’d save those 3 rounds, if I were you. A 50 yd deer may want them!;)
 
It's not the case that three shots don't tell you anything, but rather that it's less than many folks think it tells them. Here's a computer-generated random 9-shot group with the first three of those nine, the second three of the nine, and the third three of the nine separated out. Looking at any one of those three-shot groups, ask yourself what it tells you about the nine shots altogether, and realize that you don't know which group center or set of holes you will get in the field. That said, if you picked any one of them and multiplied its size by about 3, you would be within the nine and have a little wiggle room. And if you've fired three-shot groups with the same gun before and they've pretty much been within the same size range, you are less likely to have an unusually small group, like the second set of three in the diagram, nor an unusually large one, like the last one (I selected this sample to include extremes—it is not typical) so you might get away with multiplying the group diameter by 2 or so and figure you could count on that in the field.

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