450Bushmaster.net

I was looking for a chronograph online today. I really like the Magneto-Speed V3. I went to YouTube to see if there were any videos on the V3. There were a couple videos on useing the Satterlee Load Development method. Has any one here heard of it? If so, do you think it would work with the 450 BM? I'll try to explain it as best I can but would be better to watch videos for yourselves.
You choose the components that you want to test for the caliber of your rifle. With your cases prepped, primed and ready to be loaded. You go to your starting load and load one round. Then you increase powder charge by .2 of a grain. The guys in the video recommended loading ten rounds with the .2 gr. increments. Then shoot them over chrono to find velocities of each round. Wherever you have a plateau in velocity, there is a node or sweet spot. They said there could be more than one node.
I'm thinking of trying it to work up some loads. I thought doing .5 gr. increments. What do you guys think? It sure would save on components and time at the reloading bench.

My thoughts, I would go another route with the 450B. Reason I say that is because I have seen members shooting 3 rounds per charge, get horrible SD's, yet they'll be MOA or better for accuracy. I've also seen members do the same work up, get very small SD's, and shotgun like patterns. So just going off velocity alone in the 450B wouldn't be a great idea, in my opinion.

I usually load 3rds, per charge (.5 to 1.0gr, depending), until I hit what I deem is MAX. While doing that, I'm looking for acceptable accuracy. At the moment, I personally don't need to shoot past 50yds, so if I can find a load near the top end that is shooting cloverleafs or better, I retest it. With that, I'll have just about max velocity, and it will shoot tight enough that if I end up having to shoot at 100yds or more, it'll be accurate enough. That's what works for me, anyway.

If you don't want to do that much work, or go through that many compnents, you could try shooting a ladder. Find something that looks like a node and test from there. Don't know how well it will work for the 450B, because I haven't tried it.

To sum it up in an advertising jingle, the 450b is "not your father's Oldsmobile".

I also reload for the 222, 223, 22-250, 6.5 Grendel, 260 Rem, 270 Win, 7.62x40WT, 7.62x39, 30 Rem AR, 308, 30-06 and 300 WM rifle calibers. All bottleneck calibers. The 450b doesn't behave like any of them. As Bmt85 said, I have seen countless 100yd 5-shot targets where they group to 1 inch C-T-C and the velocity variation captured by the chronograph would have resulted in any of those bottleneck calibers being all over the paper. It is a contradiction to ballistic theory. I refer to it as "The Mortar Effect." Just yesterday evening, I had a 5-shot group with .25 inch C-T-C vertical dispersion, that varied by 181fps. Par for the course. That velocity change in theory (see sig) would have been the result of changing the charge +/- 1 whole grain of powder or more. Welcome to the fun world of the 450b.

The most forgiving caliber I've ever shot.

As for chronographs, I have an affordable Chrony F1 Master and more recently, a LabRadar. The Chrony is more reliable in terms of not needing to be coddled to make it work. Unless the range where you shoot has restrictions on what can be placed downrange, I'd recommend the Chrony or any other equivalent chronograph out there. K.I.S.S.

Hoot

Thanks for the replies. Now that I had my memory jogged by Hoot, I do recall reading about big variences in velocity and small groups. I might try that method of testing on some of my bottle neck cartridges.