Reloading for the Ruger American Rifle (Bolt)

[oren87]

Well, unfortunately I bought the Hornaday XTP hollow point. Any loading Ideas for this bullet in 250gr?

[Hoot]

Parting words.

If like me, you disassemble your dies, clean and lube them as part of preventive maintenance or mistakenly dislodge the seating stem from turning the die upside down with the adjusting screw too far out, there's an easy way to get that seating stem back all the way down into the die body.

Take a Sharpie brand of magic marker with the end cap on and run it up into the die body from the cartridge end until the pocket clip on the cap stops it. Looking down from the top of the die, it'll be up almost all the way to the top of the die body. Sit the seating stem down onto the Sharpie. The radius of the end of the Sharpie will center the seating stem. Holding the die upright, slowly retract the Sharpie. The seating stem will follow it down, eventually coming to rest where it belongs. If the seating stem drags too much do what I did the first time I ran into this a while back. Polish the outside of the seating stem on a buffing wheel. Not comb you hair in the reflection polished. Just enough to make it slip down easier. Mine originally had a pretty coarse, flat finish. For those of you new to reloading: I wipe all my die components down after degreasing them, with a little Slip 2000 EWL. Gently wipe off the excess lube before reassembling so you can barely tell its there. Eezox works equally as well. Just about any oil will work. Not WD40 or 3-in-1 oil/.
My experience has been that most dies and presses have rather coarsely finished threads and a little MoS grease helps the dies adjust up and down like silk. Even after the MoS grease dries out, it still leaves the MoS dry lubricant behind. I finish off by brushing the main body threads with some MoS bearing grease like My Favorite Link, using a flux brush to get it down into the bottom of the threads. Everyone should have a tube of this around. A little goes a long way and it really helps smooth out just about any mating surface friction such as Sear engagements, sticky BCA's, even scratchy receiver extension springs and boy does it catch fish!. Sorry got off topic. One of those 2.8 oz linked tubes will last you long enough to eventually misplace it. Don't loan it out. You'll never get it back!

Hoot

EDIT: Oops, I doubled with oren87

[Hoot]

Well, unfortunately I bought the Hornaday XTP hollow point. Any loading Ideas for this bullet in 250gr?

Oren, there are two answers. The "Lawyer proof" answer is to sell them to someone who reloads for a 45 caliber handgun to cut your losses and get the 240gr XTP Mag bullets.

The "Do you feel lucky?" answer is load them over 38gr H110 or 37gr Lil Gun, to a COL that leaves a little cannelure peeking out over the edge of the mouth and use them for trigger time. Don't shoot them over a chronograph just to be safe.

There are members who will chime in that they've used them with no problem and those who will say "Why risk it"? That decision is up to you.

Hoot

[Texas Sheepdawg]

I wouldn’t push them through a Ruger 1:16 twist. Period. Sell them to a handgunner and go buy the XTP mags or something more suitable for the velocities and 1:16 twist RAR.

[oren87]

Sounds good, I can go unload the 20 factory rounds I bought this weekend and get back to it next week. I plan on using this load for whitetail; should I consider another bullet weight? I already have 2 lbs of Lil'gun I would prefer to use.

[Hoot]

Sounds good, I can go unload the 20 factory rounds I bought this weekend and get back to it next week. I plan on using this load for whitetail; should I consider another bullet weight? I already have 2 lbs of Lil'gun I would prefer to use.

Good choice with Lil Gun. It'll serve you well across a lot of bullet weights, any of which will reliably put venison in the freezer. If you'll be hunting shelter belts in cropland, with the possibility of shots in excess of the distance I see in the northern MN woods, consider the Hornady 200gr FTX. Faster, flatter shooting with the same frontal area as the heavier ones. This caliber bleeds off speed like a shuttle cock, compared to smaller bottleneck calibers once it gets out there. Check your PM's in a few minutes neighbor.

Hoot

[Firehunter]

I wouldn’t push them through a Ruger 1:16 twist. Period. Sell them to a handgunner and go buy the XTP mags or something more suitable for the velocities and 1:16 twist RAR.

Could you go into more detail as to why these wouldn't work? I have some that I use with sabots in my muzzleloader and thought about trying them in my RAR.

[Texas Sheepdawg]

I wouldn’t push them through a Ruger 1:16 twist. Period. Sell them to a handgunner and go buy the XTP mags or something more suitable for the velocities and 1:16 twist RAR.

Could you go into more detail as to why these wouldn't work? I have some that I use with sabots in my muzzleloader and thought about trying them in my RAR.

What’s the twist on your muzzle loader and what velocities are you obtaining?
There’s probably a huge difference.

[Hoot]

I wouldn’t push them through a Ruger 1:16 twist. Period. Sell them to a handgunner and go buy the XTP mags or something more suitable for the velocities and 1:16 twist RAR.

Could you go into more detail as to why these wouldn't work? I have some that I use with sabots in my muzzleloader and thought about trying them in my RAR.

I'll take a stab at explaining my understanding of this despite never experiencing either phenomena and I'm the guy who early into the 450b, actually tried shooting Berry TMJ bullets out of his 450b to see if he could save a buck! Luckily, I only wound up with a couple of tiny shards embedded in my chronometer. Even then, it wasn't from centrifugal force. The integrity of the copper foil jackets were compromised fron either seating them into unexpanded case mouths or as they left the muzzle. Most hit the 4ft by 4ft target board at 100 yards but left behind some bits of jacket on the way. When I say most hit, it was nothing resembling a group, not even a pattern. They didn't go puff however, but they were much like FMJ's not hollow points.

Different metals have different shear strengths. IE the point at which they can't hold together due to physical stress. Copper is stronger than lead as you know. 24ga sheet aluminum is stronger than aluminum foil. Another given. When a bullet is launched down a bore, it spins. Yet another given. A spinning object is subject to centrifugal forces trying to tear it apart.
A bullet traveling down a 1:16 (3/4 a revolution per foot) twist barrel at 2225 fps is spinning 3/4 X 2225 revs per sec X 60 sec per minute = 100,000 RPM. That's a lot of centrifugal force being exerted on it. If that bullet was soft, expandable lead, it would probably come apart. Wrapping the sides in a stronger metal (copper) increases its resistance to coming apart. The thicker the copper wrapper, the greater its strength. The regular XTP bullets are designed to expand at nominal handgun velocities. IE somewhere between 1/3 to 1/2 the velocity that the 450b develops. They have a thinner copper jacket than their XTP Mag cousins. Again, I have not had any bullets come apart on me nor seen in person, a hyper velocity rifle round turn into a puff of lead, but I've seen slow motion videos of that happening. Nobody wants their projectiles turning into flechette rounds or rat shot. So, I take it on faith that using the Mag version of the XTP bullet is a better choice.

The second phenomena I have only heard spoken of here, just in the past year, by someone repeating what they read in a credible explanation elsewhere. I think this is what they were alluding to: Upon ignition, at some very short point in time, the bullet leaves the case and runs into the bore which is slightly smaller in diameter. At that point, the bullets has to squeeze down in size to the dimension consistent with allowing it to seal the barrel (obturate) but not so much that it can't still slide down the bore. While it is squeezing down, its forward velocity momentarily slows a little. The pressure behind it is still going up at that point, real fast. Reference to the previous explanation regarding difference in strength. The part of the weaker bullet not already narrower but soon to become so, will squash down, making it fatter and less likely to squeeze through the entrance into the bore. Smokeless powder's energy is a function of pressure. More back pressure, more energy contributing to that pressure will be exerted, up to the limit of the charges total energy content. That's not how smokeless powder is designed to work in practice. Usually during that critical period in time when the pressure is increasing, the bullet is supposed to be moving away from the case, creating more room for the expanding gas, keeping the pressure from going critical mass. Kinda like the reverse of "Chinese Finger Traps", where the harder you pull the harder they hold on. In this case its pushing not pulling. Most of us have seen the images of damage to barrel, bolt or other parts of the receiver when the bullet stops traveling down bore. There, that's my understanding of the butt squash issue. Never seen it in person nor in a video, but it makes sense.

Forgive me if I synopsized these two issues wrong.

I'm a slow composer/typer/editor and hopefully someone else hasn't already "lapped" my reply. It happens more frequently than I care to admit.

Hoot

[Hoot]

Shoot! Got lapped again.