Brian in Montana
Well-known member
Well, the stupidest thing I ever did reloading happened a week ago. This past summer I built a sweet little lightweight 284 Win on a stainless Savage 110 ultralight receiver and a 23" carbon fiber wrapped barrel from X-Caliber Barrels. Needless to say, very enthusiastic to use it this fall.
First load combo was 140gn Sierra Gamekings and Varget. I must have lucked into the last box of SGK's on the planet, but I digress. Turned out the rifle really likes that combo and I spent several weeks testing different things, tweaking this and that, seating depth, etc, and after 70 of the 100 bullets were down range, I had a great little load zipping out there at 2910fps and consistently grouping about .6 MOA. So... Time to load some hunting ammo.
I meticulously prepped 30 casings, double checked every charge weight, and loaded my last 30 SGK's with 46.7gns of Varget. The problem is, when I was wrapping up the last of my notes on this load, I apparently had a dyslexic moment and transposed the 6 and the 7. The actual load I had been working on was almost a full grain higher - 47.6. I didn't realize what I had done until it was all finished. I cannot even begin to express how mad I was at myself. I stewed for hours, just avoided family for a while because I was afraid that if I opened my mouth nothing but obscenities would come out.
I was inclined to take out my frustrations with an impact bullet puller, but decided to sleep on it first. So the next morning Id calmed down a little and decided to just go to the range and see how they shoot, on the off chance they'd be OK. I guess the minimally silver lining is they did shoot OK. I shot several 3 shot groups letting the barrel cool in between. They all measured slightly less than an inch. I shot another group at 200yds and that one was about .7", so I'm going to go ahead and use them. I've certainly used factory ammo that was worse and had success, but man, still pretty upset at myself about it. Fortunately, as said, the gun really seems to like the bullet. They'll work, but that's so irritating.
First load combo was 140gn Sierra Gamekings and Varget. I must have lucked into the last box of SGK's on the planet, but I digress. Turned out the rifle really likes that combo and I spent several weeks testing different things, tweaking this and that, seating depth, etc, and after 70 of the 100 bullets were down range, I had a great little load zipping out there at 2910fps and consistently grouping about .6 MOA. So... Time to load some hunting ammo.
I meticulously prepped 30 casings, double checked every charge weight, and loaded my last 30 SGK's with 46.7gns of Varget. The problem is, when I was wrapping up the last of my notes on this load, I apparently had a dyslexic moment and transposed the 6 and the 7. The actual load I had been working on was almost a full grain higher - 47.6. I didn't realize what I had done until it was all finished. I cannot even begin to express how mad I was at myself. I stewed for hours, just avoided family for a while because I was afraid that if I opened my mouth nothing but obscenities would come out.
I was inclined to take out my frustrations with an impact bullet puller, but decided to sleep on it first. So the next morning Id calmed down a little and decided to just go to the range and see how they shoot, on the off chance they'd be OK. I guess the minimally silver lining is they did shoot OK. I shot several 3 shot groups letting the barrel cool in between. They all measured slightly less than an inch. I shot another group at 200yds and that one was about .7", so I'm going to go ahead and use them. I've certainly used factory ammo that was worse and had success, but man, still pretty upset at myself about it. Fortunately, as said, the gun really seems to like the bullet. They'll work, but that's so irritating.
