C.O.L for 200 gr FTX

[Slugger]

Hey yall,
Great forum I've been lurking for a few weeks. I'm new to reloading as well as new to the BM. Exactly 35 rounds have been ran through my BM, 1 of which was my son shooting his buck this year. I've been a hunter for 22 years and always wanted to get into reloading. It just so happens that purchasing the BM coincides with
me finally(after over a year of gathering equipment) getting into reloading.
I have a very good guy to lean on for reloading info who has been reloading for 30+ years however he has no experience with the BM. I am really disappointed in the load data that ive been able to find. My gun is a factory complete upper assembly mated to an Anderson lower that I built myself. It has a carbine length tube with a PSA h2 4.4 oz buffer and GL Shock stock by fab defense. From what I've seen on here I am planning on starting at 38 grains of Lil Gun and working up from there. My real question is what C.O.L. are y'all getting the best results out of with that 200 grain ftx.
Thanks in advance

[Hoot]

What has worked well for me with the 200gr FTX and I might add that 38gr is already in the middle of the range of safe, as opposed to the old tenet of starting low (36gr) and working up, anyway I seat the bullet until I can still barely see the cannelure peeking above the mouth. That means that most of it is just below the mouth. IIRC, that's somewhere around 2.15 COL. I then taper crimp the mouth down into the cannelure. If you have a reliably accurate caliper or better yet a micrometer, shoot for adjusting the taper crimp die to yield a resulting diameter at the very edge of the mouth of .475 inch.

Hoot

[Slugger]

Thanks for the info Hoot.

[pitted bore]

EDIT - See my post below of Jan 17, 2015. This post did not address the bullet about which the OP inquired.
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slugger & anyone else interested-

The Lyman AR Reloading manual includes useful information for bullets other than Hornady.

The manual provides loads with five different powders for the Barnes .451 200-grain XPB pointy bullet #30554. (This is not the wide hollow point 200-grain #30556 .451 XPB intended for the 45 LC.)

The stated OAL in the manual is 2.183 inches.

With Lil'Gun, the starting load is 39.0 grains at 2328 fps. Their max load is 43.5 at 2429 fps. It would be best to check the book yourself, because my eyes may be crooked, my typing incorrect, and who knows how the electrons and wireless waves will mess things up by the time this appears on your reading device. (The Lyman book is available from numerous sources, including Midway and Amazon.)

In my bolt guns I've loaded this bullet to a COL of 2.175 inches, using an unmentionable amount of Lil'Gun with a side crimp into a cannelure to help ignition. The side crimp is not needed for the loads listed by Lyman.

Please post your results and problems on this forum. Good luck.
--Bob
(edited to insert reference to another post)

[Slugger]

Thanks for the additional info Bob. I sat down and played with things a bit this evening. No powder or primer. Just getting familiar with the seat and crimp. I ended up at 2.17 for the col and .475 on the crimp. I did use the expander die to open things up just a smidge. Is this step necessary?
Thanks.

[Slugger]

Is this too much exposed cannelure? [img]

image1.JPG

[/img]

[Hoot]

Thanks for the additional info Bob. I sat down and played with things a bit this evening. No powder or primer. Just getting familiar with the seat and crimp. I ended up at 2.17 for the col and .475 on the crimp. I did use the expander die to open things up just a smidge. Is this step necessary?
Thanks.

I'll let others wade in on the subject of the expander also, but this is a certainty. Once expanded, you can never regain the same tension you could achieve from the portion that was expanded, by crimping after the bullet is seated. The mouth is bst left alone after sizing, other than perhaps a soft chamfering. Even then that's something you really shouldn't need to do. The seating die does a really good job of aligning the bullet so that you can start it against what appears to be all odds. I used my expander for my first loading back in 2010 and never used it again. The one exception I have heard batted around is when seating cast boolits. Lead being a whole lot softer than copper, it may prefer to shave rather than squeeze down inside the mouth. "Too much mouth tension" is an oxymoron when considering this caliber, especially with the lighter bullets. If you feel more confident using the expander until you get your sea legs, then as you suggest, use it as sparingly as possible.

Hoot

EDIT: We doubled while I was typing. I'm a slow typer when composing on the fly. That's about perfect for the amount of buried cannelure.

[Slugger]

I think I will run the brass that I expanded {5} back through the sizing die even though I only opened them up to about .002-.003 I was really look forward to getting my first 5 rounds loaded and sending them down range today but with the gail force winds here looks like bench time will have to wait until another day.

[pitted bore]

RATS! I certainly messed up my post above. The OP asked about the Hornady 200-grain FTX and I wrote about the Barnes 200-grain XPB. Here's what I should have written:

Another source of reliable tested data for the 450 Bushmaster is the Western Powder Company's Reloading and Load Data Guide, Fifth edition. It is available online as a pdf document.

That manual lists 450B loading data with bullet weights from 200 to 325 grains. For the 200-grain Hornady FTX bullet, loads are shown with four powders: Accurate No.9, Ramshot Enforcer, Accurate 4100, and Accurate 5744.

The Western Powder lab tested the 200-grain FTX using a COL of 2.190 inches.

A couple of years ago I worked with the 200-gr FTX bullet in a bolt gun, trying for higher velocities at pressures that were undoubtedly above SAAMI max. I seated the bullets to a COL of 2.200 inches. (Link to that thread: Suicide Run: 200-grain FTXs at 3000 fps)

slugger-
I can see nothing obviously wrong with the bullet seating shown in your image. The length of cannelure exposed seems about right for a taper crimp to move some of the case mouth slightly into the cannelure for bullet retention. Perhaps Hoot has a different opinion. Let us know the results of your range session.

--Bob

[Jim in Houston]

I did use the expander die to open things up just a smidge. Is this step necessary?
Thanks.

The Hornady seating die "self-centers" the bullet in the case. I have never used the expander die to load .452 bullets, and most comments I have seen (wondering what the fourth die in the Hornady Die Set was for) also consider it unnecessary.