by Hoot » Thu Dec 06, 2018 10:05 pm
Don't let our attention to detail overwhelm you. This is a different class of rifle caliber than the bottlenecks. Sure, it has some needs that you have to satisfy but it is a devastating caliber. Any bullet will ooze terminal performance at 2200fps and beyond. No harm in wanting the best components for getting it there. It really likes hot primers. I've used (in order of preference) Remington 7 1/2, Winchester WSR and Federal 205M, all with hardly a hair in performance difference. I have not tried CCI 450 because in my area, Rem 7 1/2 are not hard to come by, especially the further away from Sandy Hook we get. Everything was hard to find back then. Don't read that remark as me implying that Sandy Hook was merely an imposition. It was and will forever be a tragedy of epic proportions. All primers will go bang. All bullets will race away from your muzzle. All powders will burn. Finding the optimum combinations is what I consider, time well spent. There are obviously better choices of all components. As Bmt85 said, find which brand of brass (Hornady or Starline) that comes out of your rifle looking as close to how it went in, dimension wise. That's your case of choice. Manufacturing variances will sometimes place brass in your possession who's behavior can be misleading. Learn to read their language as a whole. Shooting those 225's will do several things for your understanding of how this works. Try not to change more than one variable per range visit or you risk loosing clarity. The 225's, with the right recipe will spoil you and that's ok. You need to shore up your early experiences with success before you torment yourself with experimentation. The trigger time will also allow you to recognize a good day to go shooting versus a bad one. The 450b was my first serious foray into shooting an AR based weapon. I had a 223 rig with a 24" varmint barrel and as soon as I learned that it worked, it went back in the safe until the 450b came along. Before that, I was into bolt action, precision bottle neck caliber shooting but I have a pair of Browning BAR's (30-06 & 300 WM) that demonstrated early on how a semi-auto deer rifle should perform, so getting comfortable with an AR based rifle that seriously rocks & rolls was a new experience that needed growing into. For me, shooting a heavy caliber AR is not like riding a bicycle and never will be, More like riding a unicycle. I can put a bolt action bottle neck rifle away for a couple of years and it still makes me look like a pro when I take it to the range. Not so with an AR. If I don't shoot it regularly, I seem to lose everything I learned from the previous outing. Depending upon how close you live to a shooting facility and the ease of access, through practice with your 450b, you will quickly learn how to feed it and get the most out of it. Don't ruin the process by trying to make it hold its own with more precise, long range designed bottleneck calibers. They all have their place in the spectrum of shooting. I got a 450b because I wanted a heavy woods thumper and it excels in that mission.
Hoot
In Theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In Practice, there is.