??? about long range 308 loads

[Mickey Christian]

Looking for suggestions for:
147 gr fmj with an eye towards
accuracy and velocity near the top end.
Thanks for any help offered.
Mickey

[m1ashooter]

I just load to the top of the specs and raise my rear sight.

[Litt'le Lee]

you need Sierra 155 Palma and a lot of Varget-heavy is better than lighter on long range

[shoot308]

No such thing as a 147 and top end accuracy. Get some 155s or 175s and save yourself the heartache.

[raymeketa]

500 - 600 is mid range. 700 - 1000 is long range. Are you expecting to shoot 700 - 1000 yards with the 147 gr FMJ bullet?

[Sunray]

Any 147 grain fmj is likely a pulled milsurp bullet. Not made for great accuracy at any distance. Mind you, what you consider to be long range may be different than what the NRA etc call it. Like ray says, 700 plus is long range, but the bull is 24" diameter too. The DCRA(Dominion of Canada Rifle Association. Same idea as the NRA) shot regular NATO ball from those distances. So it's not impossible.
However, you have to work up the load for your rifle. What work well out of my semi'd Winchester M-14(it likes 150s with IMR3031. Never bothered with a match bullet as the rifle isn't up to 'em.) will not necessarily shoot well out of whatever you have. Any of the standard .308/7.62 powders will do. IMR or H 4895, IMR4064, Varget, etc.

[Cosine26]

I must agree with those who indicate that the 147 gr M80 bullet is not noted for accuracy. it is a lot better than the M59 bullet (a real pig) that it superseded. When the 7.62mm M80 ball was introduced, I had access to several different lots of M80 ammo by several manufacturers, i.e. WRA, LC, And TW. I tested the M80 round in several M70 heavy barreled target rifles with both the 10 inch twist and the 12 inch twist and only found one lot TW 57 that was OK for 200 yard practice and marginal for 300 yard practice
I then broke down some of the ammo and sorted the bullets by weight and appearance. I loaded them to various velocities and fired them in both 7.62 chambered rifles and 30-06 chambered rifles with the two twists. My test considered 3- ten shot groups from the 300 yard bench rest with each rifle and each load. Accuracy was not significantly improved.
I believe that the bearing surface is inadequate for proper seating of the bullet during reloading and is not long enough for good barrel contact when fired. I have no definitive proof of this, just my supposition.
I do not know what you mean by long range. I do not feel that satisfactory results would be obtained at 500 or 600 yards. I did not test this bullet at ranges longer than 300 yards. I believe that the ballistic coefficient would be so low that at the fastest initial velocity you could load it, you would transit the barrier at the speed of sound and accuracy would suffer further. I believe that the M80 round was supposed to have an IV of ~2800 fps and that the bullet was designed for a 12 inch twist barrel (a la M14). If the velocity is increased beyond the design limits, the rotational velocity may cause the bullet to disintegrate in midair. I had this happen to me when trying to use some 180 grain 30 caliber Remington Palm bullets in a 300 H&H. I contacted Remington and they informed me that this particular bullet was not designed for magnum velocities.
FWIW

[raymeketa]

Trying not to hijack Mickey's thread -

Cosine, I think you mis-spoke regarding the M80 vs the M59. The M59 came first (1954) and was replaced by the M80 in 1959.

I have heard all the stories about the bearing surface of the M80 bullet so I did some tests on my own to see if it really was fact. It's hard to measure bearing surface without having access to the right tools, but I rigged up some of my own and measured several different bullets including a couple of highly accurate Match bullets. What I found was that there was not a lot of difference. In fact, the M80 had a longer bearing surface than one of the premier Match bullets that is often used as a standard.

What did it prove? Nothing, in my opinion, except to not accept anything without checking it for yourself.

But I will agree that the M80 bullets, and their clones, are not very good short range bullets, much less mid and long range.

Ray

[Cosine26]

Hi Ray,
According to my dictionary "supersede" means to replace. The M59 came first then was superseded by the M80.
FWIW

[raymeketa]

Cosine

Of course you are right. The word I was thinking of was precede. English was never one of my strong points.

Ray

[m1ashooter]

No such thing as a 147 and top end accuracy. Get some 155s or 175s and save yourself the heartache.

You are correct.

[Cosine26]

I flew for LeMay in B-47's.
Remember:
Our father who is in Omaha, Hallowed be thy name....

[Cosine26]

I flew for LeMay in B-47's. Gen LeMay was SAC commander when I was in the USAF.
Remember:
"Our father who is in Omaha, Curtis be thy name...."

[bruce]

Looking for suggestions for:
147 gr fmj with an eye towards
accuracy and velocity near the top end.
Thanks for any help offered.
Mickey
O.K. Here we go. By now you gather that the typical 147 gr. FMJ is not going to give you match grade results. Once upon a time when I first started loading for .30 cal. rifles, such bullets could be bought for at very reasonable prices, so I bought them. And, I learned that getting 10 shot strings under 2.5 inches was a challenge. Listening to some friends talk about reloading cast bullets, I got an idea or two from them that I applied with good results. First, I sorted the bullets in terms of base condition. Bullets with a good uniform base closure were set aside for further work. Bullets with base flaws were set aside for loads to be used to get on paper, etc. The good bullets were then segregated by weight depending of if they were heavier or lighter than 147 gr. These batches were then sorted a couple of more times. Out of a batch of 1,000 bullets I'd often end up with as many as 10 batches of bullets that had good bases and that were just about identical in weight. Using this method I was able to get 10 shot strings of about 1.5 - 1.7 inches, firing from a good solid sandbag rest. The majority of these bullets were fired in a iron sighted K-98 7.62mm Israeli Mauser. These groups with the 147 gr. FJM's were about as good as could be obtained with this rifle using domestic or imported commercial ammunition. These results were better than common were obtained using most of the common surplus ball that was at that time available. The powder used was Winchester 748. I do not remember the charge used. The cases were LC NM and the primers were Winchester LR.

If you already have some of the 147 gr. FMJ's on hand, try the above described procedure. If you want best accuracy with this bullet, look at the loads suggested in several reputable reloading manuals such as those produced by Speer, Hornady, Nosler, etc. Begin with a tested safe starting load. Almost certainly this will give you a safe workable load in your rifle. It may very well give you a very accurate load as the .308 as this is a easy cartridge to reload. If the velocity is not to your liking, you can increase the powder charge. Keep an eye on routine pressure indications especially as you get toward the high end of the recommended powder charges.

You need to have a idea of what you consider to be good accuracy. With this bullet using the above method, firing from a good rest with proper marksmanship technique, you may very well end up with the on target results you desire. At least this will give you an opportunity to develop good useful loads for your rifle as well as gain experience reloading for your rifle. Down the road you will want to do some research to find the bullets that you want to use for further load development. Of course there will be different powders you will want to use. And there are things you can do preparing the cases that will enhance the results you get with your reloaded ammunition. HTH. Sincerely. bruce.

[Mickey Christian]

Wow! A lot to take in....thanks for all the info. I will have to digest it all.
Thanks again,
Mickey

[jjrothWA]

Suggest you go with the Sierra MatchKing 168gr., have used dthose for over the course match shooting. As long as I do my part, ther will be "X"'s", not alot with my eye condition. Using a Douglas M1A barrel, BE consistent in sizing and trimming cases and charge loading.

ENjoy.

[lyman]

shoot me an email (in profile) and I'll email you a copy of Dunlap's Loading .30 Cal Match Ammunition
good info on .308 and 30.06 (as well as a couple others) from the 60's or so,

and like everyone else said, 147gr and long or med range accuracy are not to be used in the same sentence,

[Cosine26]

Let me say that Dunlap's book on reloading is a good one and I, as a high power shooter, used it as a guide for many years. However I must caution you that the powders that he specifies were from the era of the 50's and 60's and were manufactured by duPont and Hercules and the present day powders ,though they may have the same names , do not necessarily have the same characteristics.
I knew Roy personally and had his permission to reissue this booklet. A fellow shooter, whose ambition exceeded his ability, wanted to take this task on. I received Roy's permission and provided some data. The project died in the birthing. It was probably a larger task than the proposer had imagined.

[RED]

There is a very good article on 30-06 service rifle in the December 1994 American Rifleman, pages 65, 66, 67. It is not .308 but the principles are the same. I tried to post it but the site won't let me. Send me a PM if interested and I will snail mail a copy.

[BlitzKrieg]

Just an opinion but I am not going to waste time nor money on any bullet that is not over 150 grains in weight at 600 yd line and at 800, the 168 grn bullets are replaced by 175 gr SMK's and hold all the way to 1000yd line.

To make it simple, I now shoot 175 gr SMK's across the course. Heavy bullets and longer distances go together well for me.

[Jim in Salt Lake]

+1 on the bigger bullets. I've been shooting Palma for the past year and am having a blast with it. Palma limits you to either .223 or .308 and is shot at 800, 900, and 1000 yards. The challenge is to keep your bullet supersonic all the way to the target. Palma rules make that difficult as we're required to use 155gr bullets and it's hard to keep them supersonic at 1000 yards. If you drop to subsonic, the move through the transonic speed area usually introduces some yaw to your spinning bullet and they "keyhole" through the target. To keep this from happening, you need to start out with a high muzzle velocity, 3000fps seems to be the magic number. So you mostly use a max load and a 30" barrel to get that little bullet to stay supersonic at 1000 yards. We tested some electronic targets a couple months back that would display your bullet speed at the target, very handy and enlightening. My muzzle velocity that day averaged 3044fps (155gr Sierra behind 44.0gr AR-Comp). At 900 yards, velocity was 2210fps and at 1000, velocity had dropped to a little over 1700fps, quite a drop in velocity over 100 yards! I haven't shot at 1200 yards yet but will do so at Lodi, WI this summer. I can use a bigger bullet since it's not a Palma match and I probably will do so. At the F class long range championships last fall, Bryan Litz won the FT-R class shooting a .308 using Berger 210gr bullets. FT-R requires you use either .223 or .308 like Palma but you're not required to use a specific bullet. So you'll see those folks shooting big ones. It all comes down to mass X velocity.

[Mickey Christian]

Lyman....sent PM

[Mickey Christian]

Red,
PM sent.

[Clark Howard]

Long ago, in an Army that is only a memory, we shot 1000 yard targets at 1000 yards with LC cases, filled to the top with 4895 and stuffed with 168 grain bullets. At the time, it was the most accurate load in a NM M-14. Regards, Clark