Federal Trophy Bonded Tip Fouling?

Finally got out to the range today and shot my test batch. A couple of the loads shot ok. 40.5 grains of H4895 behind a 140grn TBT was interesting. My 5 shot group was about 1.5" and averaged 2824 fps with an extreme spread of 28 fps. I'm going play with that one a bit.

Brian in Montana said:

Finally got out to the range today and shot my test batch. A couple of the loads shot ok. 40.5 grains of H4895 behind a 140grn TBT was interesting. My 5 shot group was about 1.5" and averaged 2824 fps with an extreme spread of 28 fps. I'm going play with that one a bit.

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Hey, when you loaded these did you load them close to the lands? I was reading in this article that you are supposed to load them with more distance from the lands than many other bullets:

http://www.rifleshootermag.com/editorial/federals-trophy-bonded-tip-bullet/83628

It says at least .02 but preferably .05-.08.

As far as fouling i cant really compare to other bullets but i was able to get everything out last weekend with sweets 7.62. I actually way overcleaned thinking the blue coming off my brush was coming out the barrel. Hopefully didnt ruin my gun.

Since the factory load shoots so well in my gun I'm starting off with it reloading.

Appears the factory load is a full .14 off the lands using a hornady oal gauge and ogive and headspace bushings.

I was going to start the same as factory, but will instead start at .06 wanting to work my charges up at a reasonable oal.

Of course if that doesn't work I will need to start back over at .14 from the lands

It's been a while since I've been back to this thread. So anyway, I started out loading them all at a COL of 2.8" - SAAMI specs.

The loads that grouped well were 38.5grns (sort of), 39.5grns, and 40.5grn - the last 2 were about 1 MOA. I followed up a seating depth test batch using 40.5grns. I measured from the ogive, using a comparator attachment on my caliper and shot four 5-shot groups measuring as follows: 2.218"; 2.198"; 2.178"; 2.158". I couldn't say how far from the lands those loads are, sorry, just played with seating depth in increments of 2 hundredths of an inch at a time. The group measured at 2.198" was .8 MOA and zipping out there w/ an average fps of 2748 and an extreme spread of 34. Not bad in my less-than-expert opinion.

The rest were not that great. The interesting thing was that the deeper I went with seating depth the bigger the extreme spread became: 17, 34, 110, 152fps respectively.

I'll probably use the 40.5grn load, OAL 2.198", in the future for antelope/deer. It seems the Federal Premium TBT's are not always available though. Fortunately we have Accubonds and Interlock BTSP's.

Don't sound like it's worth the effort in your gun. At least with me I know a factory load that works fine so worse case I replicate the velocity and seating depth of that round.

Seems they went backorder everywhere recently. Don't know if it's due to all the tlr roll out or not. I have an email to ask them. If they aren't available I might try the swift offering.

I'll post.my results and federals answer if i get one.