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 Feeding a Springfield Armory Victor, notes and issues 
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Location: Arlington wa
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Time I stopped being lazy and make a thread detailing my adventure into hopefully making this Springfield armory saint victor shoot decent groups. The important aspect when comparing my victor to say your AR15 results is gonna be the barrel. The Barrel is a 16" CMV, Melonite 1:8 twist chambered in 5.56/.223. This rifle will be topped with a primary arms 1-6x24 ACSS scope held in place with a aero precision ultralight mount as my go to. I may change that to a viper 6-24x50 if I have a hard time seeing what I'm doing while testing. Also the trigger is currently stock and feels heavier than it should. This might get modded before the 1st round of ammo gets tested so look for that. With that out of the way lets get to the loads...

I stocked up Hornady 55gr FMJ-BT w/c back around December 2019 along with CFE223 powder. So that's what I'm gonna focus on here. I used the RCBS MatchMaster die set with a .245" bushing in the resizing die. Brass used was LC = LakeCity full length sized/trimmed to 1.75" and primed with Winchester small rifle primers. Now Hornady's 9th edition book lists CFE223 starting at 24.8gr and maxing out at 27.4gr's. To make my life simpler I chose to start at 25.0gr's and work up to 27.0gr's in .5gr increments. I made 10 rounds of each sample weight. The hornady 55gr projectiles were seated to a COAL of 2.200" and crimped with the lee factory crimp die. All work was done on the Lee classic cast breach lock press. Later if I find a load that seams promising I'll switch over my Dillon 550B progressive.

I think for the 1st test I will fire 5 of each sample at 50yrds using the 1x6 scope. If that seams promising I'll fire the second set of 5 at 100yrds. At least thats my current thinking...


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Wed Sep 30, 2020 5:36 pm
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Good thread!!

Have you fired groups with this rifle using other ammo? How did it do?

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Wed Sep 30, 2020 6:29 pm
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I've actually only shot this twice. First time was with iron sites indoors at 25yrds standing with ppu .223 55gr. Those groups were 6-8" ish. Then after I got the 1-6 scope on it I feed it some wolf wpa .223 62gr at 100yrds at Marysville rifle club off the bench with sand bags. Groups were in the 3" range if I remember right. I didn't take any pics of the groups because of the overlap with my .22lr groups.

I still have 5 boxs of the wolf 62gr ammo, along with a box of hornady frontier 5.56 55gr, a box of federal msr 5.56 55gr, and a box of ppu .223 55gr that I bought when I was trying to figure out why my resized cases were not chambering but the factory ammo was. I can't find the post now other wise I would link that in here. But any of those box's could be used as 1st rounds fired at the range as my control groups for data points.


Also for later I have a box of Sierra 69 matchkings, and 500 hornady 75gr projectiles to work with.

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Wed Sep 30, 2020 6:59 pm
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Nice. Yeah, it will be interesting to compare the different bullets. My bet is that the heavier bullets will shoot better, but the cheap 55-grain bullets will be “good enough” for general use.

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Wed Sep 30, 2020 7:20 pm
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MadPick wrote:
Nice. Yeah, it will be interesting to compare the different bullets. My bet is that the heavier bullets will shoot better, but the cheap 55-grain bullets will be “good enough” for general use.


Thats what I'm hoping for. As much as I'd love to see 1" groups with the 55's I think realisticly with me on the trigger its gonna be 2" groups. If I pull off 1.5" I'll be happy. I am sitting on 4k of the darn things as I ment for them to be my go to plinking round. Never thought I might have to be prepared to press them into service.

Actually now that I'm thinking about it, since I have enough of the 75gr HPBT's I should do some of those up as well to make the range trip worth it. I have lots of cfe223, and few pounds of H4895 so I could try those. I also think I can get pound of Varget off a guy at work to play with. Any other powders you guys would suggest from experience?


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Wed Sep 30, 2020 7:51 pm
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I've only loaded 75-grain bullets once, with H4895. I didn't make any notes about the accuracy, so I'm not sure what to make of that. :bigsmile:

I've had some nice groups with 77-grain bullets with Varget and CFE223. I'm sure that H4895 will work well too.

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Wed Sep 30, 2020 8:15 pm
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Well thanks to Col_Temp I got test both my 55gr and 75gr loads yesterday. I'll be covering just the 55's in this post. Also to be noted, I did pull the trigger out of the gun and stoned it with 1k grit. The trigger face actually had burs on it and had worn through the NB coating so I didn't feel bad about doing this. I also added the JP springs JPS3.5T kit. While this helped the trigger with being as gritty and is a little lighter its still not great. I might go back in and polish it up some more with 2k sand paper and rouge.

Anyways onto the actual shooting at 100yrds!
I started the day using Hornady frontier 5.56 55gr factory ammo in a 5 shot group. In retro spec I should have used 10 to make this a fair test but it still netted me a 2" group. From there I started with the 25gr hands loads and worked my way all the way up to 27gr of cfe223. You might need to zoom in since I wrote in pencil under each target....

Anyways Col_Temp and I both agreed that the 26gr group showed the most promise based on shape. It also came in at/just under 1.5". Also the last picture is of the 10 cases from that group, to me the primers look fine?


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Last edited by Schoolboy on Mon Oct 19, 2020 6:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.



Mon Oct 19, 2020 5:39 pm
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What range? 100 yards?

Yes, the 26-grain group looks the best to me.

Yes, the primers look fine to me. I'm thinking that you got a little aggressive with the countersinking tool on those primer pockets, though. :bigsmile:

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Mon Oct 19, 2020 6:15 pm
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MadPick wrote:
What range? 100 yards?

Yes, the 26-grain group looks the best to me.

Yes, the primers look fine to me. I'm thinking that you got a little aggressive with the countersinking tool on those primer pockets, though. :bigsmile:


Yep this was all done at 100yrds. That primer pocket on the top right I did get aggressive with. The rest are kinda deceptive as these cases had the circular type crimp on them. I got to the point with my lyman reamer that you can feel it just cut through the crimp and then I'd stop. Most still need a semi firm push to seat them with the lee bench prime.


Now the real question, what should be my next steps to improve/work around the 26gr groups?


Pic is for Nitro_Guns :popcorn:


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Mon Oct 19, 2020 6:21 pm
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Schoolboy wrote:
Pic is for Nitro_Guns :popcorn:


Which group did this belong to?

Image

:ROFLMAO:

Schoolboy wrote:
Now the real question, what should be my next steps to improve/work around the 26gr groups?


Well, if it were me I'd make some more test rounds above, below and around 26 grains. Like maybe 25.7, 25.9, 26.1 and 26.3 -- something like that.

Also, how good was your shooting? Good enough that you feel confident that what you saw is attributable to the different powder charges, and not just randomness from your shooting? (I'm not implying anything, just asking.)

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Mon Oct 19, 2020 6:36 pm
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I thought that was Nitro_Guns marking his territory :bigsmile:


Fair question, but as for the groups, I felt ok with the groups... My form was probably garbage. But I don't feel like I was getting sloppy till I got to the 75gr loads. I'll post those tomorrow.

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Mon Oct 19, 2020 7:05 pm
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Schoolboy wrote:
Fair question, but as for the groups, I felt ok with the groups...


That's good. One big problem that I had when I first started shooting proper groups was that I wasn't a good rifle shooter . . . so no matter what ammo I made or how scientific I got about the process, my results were meaningless.

I've gotten better since then . . . but I'm still not as good as I want to be, from a load development perspective.

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Mon Oct 19, 2020 7:27 pm
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MadPick wrote:
Schoolboy wrote:
Pic is for Nitro_Guns :popcorn:


Which group did this belong to?

Image

:ROFLMAO:

Schoolboy wrote:
Now the real question, what should be my next steps to improve/work around the 26gr groups?


Well, if it were me I'd make some more test rounds above, below and around 26 grains. Like maybe 25.7, 25.9, 26.1 and 26.3 -- something like that.

Also, how good was your shooting? Good enough that you feel confident that what you saw is attributable to the different powder charges, and not just randomness from your shooting? (I'm not implying anything, just asking.)


Knothole....You knuckle heads.
Since I was involved in building them, I know every inch of these things..... :bigsmile:

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Tue Oct 20, 2020 7:40 am
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I've been thinking about what to do next, and I've settled on doing 5 more 10 round groups of charge weights: 25.6, 25.8, 26, 26.2, 26.4. I'm also tempted to do a 6th 5-10 round test group that has 1 or 2 rounds for each powder charge. This would represent a worst case scenario for the variation I might get from the dillon powder drop vs my hand weighed charges?

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Thu Oct 29, 2020 8:07 am
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Schoolboy wrote:
I've been thinking about what to do next, and I've settled on doing 5 more 10 round groups of charge weights: 25.6, 25.8, 26, 26.2, 26.4. I'm also tempted to do a 6th 5-10 round test group that has 1 or 2 rounds for each powder charge. This would represent a worst case scenario for the variation I might get from the dillon powder drop vs my hand weighed charges?


I have found that small powder variations rarely have a huge effect on groups.
In my case anyway, brass prep, bullet seating depth and other factors not related directly to the exact powder charge have more to do with tight groups.

Now granted a large deviation in charge weights can definitely have an affect on groups.

Keep us updated.
I am always interested in what others discover.

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Thu Oct 29, 2020 6:27 pm
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