Newburys OCW method

H

hounddawg

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Does anyone here use this on a regular basis ? I have always used just a straight ladder or on occasion a round robin ladder when refining seating depth. A half dozen times I have been tempted to give Newbury's method a shot ( no pun intended) but always fall back on what I am more familiar with. I have a box of the Hornady 178 ELD-X's I want to try in my .308 this week.

For those not familiar with OCW here is a link.

http://www.ocwreloading.com/

Just wondering if any here have tried it. I do know of one shooter who is competitive on a regional level and loves it and a couple of shooters who tried it and are not fans. Just trying to convince myself it is worth a range day and a box of bullets I suppose, but I am interested in any and all feedback from those who have used it
 
I usually test my accurate loads using the OCW formula and I sometimes use it to find different nodes with which to work at. I confess that it sometimes works and sometimes it doesn't. I find most of the "shortcut" methods are like that. Ultimately you have to find a combination that works for you and your rifle. If a shortcut gets you there faster then use it. If it leads you to a brick wall then do something else.
 
A box of bullets?? When I ran those tests on accurate rifles, I normally needed 10 rounds to find a sweet spot or two. 10 rounds on one target. That is the beauty of those ocw methods.
 
a box would be a exaggeration but according to Newberry's site it would take 3 bullets per target at 5 to seven targets plus sighters. Call it 25. For me it is more the time it takes me to get to the range, 45 min each way. Add in a couple of 40 minute hot range cold range cycles to hang and retrieve targets and it eats up a morning fast. Not that any range time is bad time. Only powder I have on hand that would work for the 178's at the moment is the Varget, I am going to look for some IMR 4895 locally since that seem to be the best accuracy for that weight bullet from everything I am reading.
 
When I do that I put up one silhouette cardboard target with a bunch of orange dot stickers on it. I write next to each sticker what charge weight it is and then take a picture with my phone so I don't forget. It saves a bunch of trips back and forth.

I usually also take a second rifle or my daughter with her rifle and put up another target so I have something to do while waiting for the barrel to cool.


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I recently tried the OCW according to the website directions. Round robin; 7 loads; 3-shot each; low to high in .3 increments. Load data from Nosler. All 7 targets were lined up left to right, centerline through the bullseye's. The first group (min load) was worst & off center slightly. All the rest were pretty much equal & equidistant from the center line. If there was a flat trend, it would be hard to detect.

I like the idea but for me at least I'll need to do some more experimenting.

FWIW...
 
I do something similar with a piece of dollar store foamboard and orange dots then do all my measurements etc at home. I also take my .204 and a cleaning cradle, cleaning rods, etc or a .22 pistol or rifle and spend 3 - 4 hours there to make the drive worthwhile.

Off topic a bit but those 178 ELD-X's are long, 1.410 to be exact. Varget loaded to 2 grains below. Hogdon gives a 41.0 starting up to to 45 gr max for a 180 grain bullet. Hornady is much more conservative in their 10th edition and has a max of 42.4 grains. I was thinking of doing a ladder from 41 to 43.5 of Varget so I loaded 1 round with 43.5 just to see how full the case would be. Using a 4 inch drop tube I was on the verge of a compressed load which I do not feel at all comfortable shooting. Something about stick powder making a crunching sound when I seat the bullet just makes me nervous so I pulled the bullet. I will be making my rounds of the local stores looking for some H 322 or H 4895 this afternoon both of which gave good groups in Ken Waters pet loads book with 180 SMK's.

Bottom line is I am going to stick with a simple ladder shot at 200 just like I have been doing, it is what I am comfortable with. I am sure the Newbury method has it's virtues and if I were loading hunting bullets it would probably be great. For me I think I will stick with finding a good mid to upper mid range node using a ladder then fine tuning with seating depth is the way to go. Thanks for the responses though
 
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My problem is that I have not been able to make a good determine as to why some are good and some are not in the examples. Some picked loads are not the best looking groups.

So while interesting, I am still just starting low, working on up through the whole powder range 3/10 or 5/10 at a time and see what shoots the best group.

I don't care if it hits a spot, I can bring it to a spot if I want. Its the best group of 5 (mostly, sometimes up to 10) that I go with.
 
The OCW method it used to find the range of loads that hit close to the same point of impact. If you have three loads that shoot to the same point of impact, say 47.3, 47.5 and 47.6, then you see if you can get the load in the middle (47.4 to 47.5) to shoot tiny groups. The reasoning behind it is that those loads are all impacting at the same place along the node. If there are slight variations in the load, temperature or even bullet weight the load still hits close to the same point of impact.
The problem is that you can't always make those loads shoot to a small group. and when you do find a load that shoots small groups and you try a .1 grain above and below the groups blossom into patterns.
Try the process by all means. It may work and it might not. You will never know until you try it. That process worked once for me with my 30-06 with a powder I would rather not use. It did not work for H414 which is the powder I prefer.
 
This method has been quite helpful for finding accurate pistol loads quick. Usually 1 round for auto's and 2 for revolvers.

I really think the shooting method is the key.

With rifle, I can get a load pretty good in 2-3 rounds. I would love to do like 5 rounds with an accurate rifle.

1) bullet @ -0.030" and 98% max charge(although best might be a round of 25 shots with each bullet varying charge weights.)
2) powder charge
3) oal
4) powder charge
5) powder charge 2nd round
 
Newbury's method/OCW is right up there with the so called Ladder Test for egotism. Some guy's, with no ballistics training or background, ideas.
Neither test tells you anything about how accurate a particular load is out of your rifle. Just tells you where the shots landed relative to other loads.
"...competitive on a regional level..." In what? The shooting games require different accuracy levels. IPSC/IDPA, for example, don't require Bullseye accuracy. An IPSC 'A' ring is 27.5cm(~ 11") wide. A Bullseye 10 ring is 50mm(~ 2"). Different accuracy required.
 
It's impossible to do the OCW method in ten rounds . If you found your load in ten rounds you did not do the Dan Newberry method .

I used the method and it has work great while other times not at all . How ever the direction clearly uses percentages of max powder charge .

Dan said:
Add another 2% or so to the charge level used in cartridge #3 of step 4, and load three rounds with this charge weight (you may want to load four rounds, in case you pull a flyer, and need an extra). Add .7% to 1% to this charge, and load three more. Add that same graduation again, and load three more. Continue adding the chosen graduation until you have moved ONE increment above your chosen maximum powder charge.  If I'm working with a .223 in the 20 grain powder charge area, I move in .2 grain increments.  With the .243 and .308, I like to move in .3 grain increments, and with the 270 and 30-06 I might use .4 grain increments.  The larger the cartridge, the larger the graduation.
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No way you can do that in ten rounds . It has taken me as many as 60 rounds to run a complete OCW test . It takes as another poster pointed out around 25 just to run the first part . You then need to test seating depth . Sure you may get lucky and have the right from the start and you can stop testing at 25 rounds . I've yet to be that lucky .

Now think of those who say you need at least 5 shots to test groups and really 10 is what you should use . I chose 5 shots per each seating depth increment . Once I find the best seating depth I shoot one last 10rd test/group at that seating depth . This method usually puts you at least into the 40+ round area . Dan claims you may find your load in as little as 20rds but never indicates "his" OCW method can be done with less shots then that .

What I seem to find is people say they are doing a OCW test but they're really just doing a basic ladder test .
 
Newbury's method/OCW is right up there with the so called Ladder Test for egotism. Some guy's, with no ballistics training or background, ideas.
Neither test tells you anything about how accurate a particular load is out of your rifle. Just tells you where the shots landed relative to other loads.
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Can you teach us how a "real" ballistics expert might find a load in a better way?
 
So while interesting, I am still just starting low, working on up through the whole powder range 3/10 or 5/10 at a time and see what shoots the best group.

I don't care if it hits a spot, I can bring it to a spot if I want. Its the best group of 5 (mostly, sometimes up to 10) that I go with.
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That's what I always do. Sometimes at the lower end of the scale I will jump .3 or even .5 but at the top go down to .1 increments checking for pressure signs. I prefer my loads to be in the to upper middle ranges so the bullet will stay supersonic out to 1000 if possible. So once I find a node which gets me that and with a decent sub MOA group at 200 I fine tune it with seating depth.

This is going to be a interesting work up for a couple of reasons. The Hornady 10th is extremely conservative for their 178 - 180 30 cal loads. I ended up doing some test throws for Varget and even at mid range loads dropped in with a drop funnel felt a bit nervous about the volume so I drove 15 miles to pick up some H4895. Load data is all over the scale if you compare the Hornady 10th data with the Hogdon site data also so I am starting below the Hornady max and and proceeding in .2 incs to a point above the Hornday max but still a grain and a half short of the Hogdon max


back to topic I think the OCW method would be excellent for finding a load for hunting where you don't have the desire to fine tune loads for temperature variations. Just my opinion of course.
 
The real issue is stochasticity. You can shoot for tight groups that are few in shot count and think one is worse than the other, but be wrong because both sizes fall within reasonable confidence limits for the small sample size. Using averages of 10 is about right for starting to get decent information. But there are some tricks you can pull to avoid running that many rounds per target.

First, though, I don't want a load that is touchy about powder charge. I want loads I can throw off by about a percent ether way and that still works. One that's sensitive to a tenth of a grain of charge error will go south as soon as the temperature of the barrel changes much. So, to both get around mountains of shooting and ignore hyper sensitive loads, what I do is fire 3-shot groups but look at the location of each load's group averaged with the ones immediately above and below it in the round robin. That way I am actually looking at 9-shots at a time (close enough to 10). When two are closer together than the others, they indicate a sweet spot range, and firing the load between these averages usually works very well.

Both the Audette Ladder and the OCW method look at shot point of impact. The former looks only at vertical dispersion, though, while the latter looks at horizontal and vertical combined. I have also looked at horizontal and vertical dispersion independently to see if both have an overlapping flat (little change) spots, and that may work out for you as well.

But stochasticity is always the wild card. What if you are right on the sweet spot, but that's when randomness decides to give you a one-in-a-thousand outlier out of the group? Will you be fooled by it? Or what if it gives you an exceptionally tight group ("inliers" closer to the same POI than usual). Both can happen. Well, fortunately for most shooters, in the first instance we tend to look at one of those outside outliers and say, "well, I must have pulled that one", so we ignore it and move on. Unfortunately, with the low probability shots toward the center of the group, we tend to uncork the champagne and declare that is what the gun and load can really do if we do our part. Neither is true, but it's how we think. For that reason, using one of the systematic development methods is generally best. It keeps us from talking ourselves into something that just isn't so—on average.
 
Unfortunately, with the low probability shots toward the center of the group, we tend to uncork the champagne and declare that is what the gun and load can really do if we do our part. Neither is true, but it's how we think. For that reason, using one of the systematic development methods is generally best. It keeps us from talking ourselves into something that just isn't so—on average
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One group does not a pet load make I say. It is all about repeatability. If it worked good with a 5 shot group how did it hold up for a 10 shot round at 200 or a 20 at 600? That is why I keep records and take pics. Sometimes you go back and find a sweet spot between 2 charges or reshoot a couple of groups with a load where you had 4 in a .2 bughole and 1 a inch out. That's why this will never get old with me
 
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