Primer seating

[Bullet Jockey]

I'm hoping Bullet Jockey will pop in and tell us a little more about his friend Keith's primer seater.

Keith and I aren't teammates anymore and has moved on from Fclass apparently (he's shooting PRS). He had some sort of agreement with 21st Century at one time to bring it to market, no idea where that's at now.

It's a fine tool that will seat primers to within .0005 consistently and take rim thickness out of the equation. I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

[DHuffman]

Keith and I aren't teammates anymore and has moved on from Fclass apparently (he's shooting PRS). He had some sort of agreement with 21st Century at one time to bring it to market, no idea where that's at now.

It's a fine tool that will seat primers to within .0005 consistently and take rim thickness out of the equation. I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

Me too if they ever become available let me know.

I shot the two primer preference ladders this morning @ 600 in the Bat & Panda.

Using the best load I've found to date for each.
Calm 50° # 7 am

I've been shooting 400s in both. Hard to ignore the lack of vertical in the BR4s on both guns. I'll probably run powder ladders with BR4s tomorrow morning.

[DHuffman]

Here's the other thing about sample size, I had 17 rounds a piece in these tests. So then I test powder, then seating then if I test crush preference that's another 60 rounds on each barrel, makes 80 rounds down the tube testing if I were shooting 5 shot samples that puts it over 100 testing.

Unless you're in the business of just wearing out barrels tests need to be done in a manner that limit rounds fired on conditions you can trust to keep your round counts as low as possible on the barrel.
After you become familiar with a platform you can get a feel for a small sample test in the right conditions.

These two tests for instance I'm 99.999% the vertical is what it is. The windage maybe more like 90%, off a rest & bag it's much it's much more likely to pull one left or right than up or down in my experience.

[jvw2008]

Agreed. I understand the statistical argument for larger and larger sample size but I'm totally opposed to it for a couple of reasons. One I'm never going to accept a small sample (3 rounds) without repeating it for confirmation. Two I can round three rounds in 5 seconds and "statistically" improve my chance to catch the same range condition for all three rounds.And three when I'm running a first ladder I'm looking simply for a suggestion of what internal ballistic condition looks promising. When I go to 5 and 10 rounds for record on target in a match, I either prove or disprove my ability to read three round groups. If I'm going to shoot out a barrel it's going to be in matches.

Couple things on your primer selection. Yes the BR4 horizontal is good. But so is the extreme spread. The Federals look in second place there. Also isn't it interesting the 450s did not produce an average higher velocity than the others. I've fallen into a pattern of using the 400s for my 6mm plinking on steel and saving the BR4s for comp. I've been working with a friend on tuning a 6x47 using a relatively slow burning powder to acquire a 90% + case fill. Even with that powder the BR4s produce as much velocity as the 450s igniting 42+ grains of powder.