Eric,
It's good to hear from you. Yea that looks very much like my bullet, it would be hard to tell them apart. I went with groove diameter because of the somewhat longish freebore in this rifle, .350". That and the desire to keep the bullet short, 1 1/16" and light, under 500 grains. I wanted something between 470 and 480 grains and ended up with 490 + 1 or 2 grains. I can live with that weight and I don't want to shorten the bullet so here I am, 490.
I spent the afternoon shooting this rifle and bullet. Working at first with 78.0 grain of 2F Goex at 100 yards I quickly move to 200M and tested a couple wads and primers and got a sight setting. I ended the day with 75.0 grains of 2F and Federal 215 primers and that worked pretty well.
The first 2 shots were less than an inch apart at 1 o'clock just outside the 3" circle, the 3rd I broke a touch high so of course the 4th one I broke a touch low. The 5th went just above the 1st one and I was pretty happy with the group. It's at least something I can work with. I was using my Buffalo Hunter Sporting tang sight and the MVA Beach combination front sight with the nickel silver blade up and aiming at the 8 1/2 x 11" white sheet of paper taped to a 18 x 24" white target. So all I was seeing was a big white target at 200M. There is some vertical room for error in that setup and it shows in the group. I used that as my target because it closely represents the white gongs used at Merrill, WI.
I wanted to chronograph this final load but I ran out of time and good light so that will have to wait.
I discovered that the blade is .060" taller than the pinhead on this front sight. They say that it allows you to file the blade to the desired height. I'll leave it as is for now, but I could lower it the .060" so they match.
I don't see as I'll have much more time to do any more work with is load before the 5th and the gong matcht a Merrill. I will likely just use this last load from today and leave it at that.
DT
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