OK, I managed to sneak out to the range this morning to chrono my berrys loads and check for accuracy. when the range is a sheet of frozen snow, getting your brass back is super easy. It sort of melts the snow a little and sinks about 1/4 the way in and doesn't even roll.
I'm using 180gr round nose flat point double struck. Loaded in mixed brass. All use winchester small pistol primers. Crimp is basically just taking hte belling out at .422 Shooting for a nominal OAL of 1.30, which means about 1.28 - 1.31 smapling various headstamps. Winchester these days seems to have two distinct flavors of brass that both started life as WWB. One middle of the road length wise and with a shallowish, but snug primer pocket. The other runs longish and has
[email protected]#$1^% tight primer pockets. Not quite as bad as S&B, but close.
My minor load is 3.7gr of titegroup, running to about 1.122 nominal. (normally would hav been 1.125, but I misadjusted my seating die for this lot
).
High was 809.3fps, low was 743.5 fps. AVG was 771.587 with a SD of 18.6. roughly a 138.8 pf
Thow out the 2 fliers, and avg was 772.2 witha SD of 9. Throw out only the high, whihc is probably more honest, the SD goes to 12 and avg goes back to 771 and change.
For mixed brass, not too bad/
Accuracy is good, but not anything amazing. ~7" groups at 25 yards offhand. Primers show no real pressure signs. striker marks are round or slightly teardrop in shape.
For reference, my 180gr RNFP precision delta rounds came in aorund the 750 mark with a SD in the neighborhood of 17. (can't find my log book right now... grr). pf was 136. Groups of about 6" offhand at 25 yards.
Next up was 4.5gr of titegroup. at 1.130" nominal OAL.
High was 946.2, low was 835.9. AVG was 891.67 SD was 27.08. pf of 160. throw out the high and low, and that goes to and AVG of 891.8 with an SD of 12. That 160pf is a crying shame because this load was wickedly accurate. Basically from 10 yards out to 20 yards I kept them all ina 4" group. Add in 25 and 30 yards, and I vertically strung them a bit, but got a roughly 5 inch wide, 8 inch high group by the end. It also doesn't feel bad at all for recoil.
Looking at the brass, the teardrop striker marks are in full effect and look a bit more aggressive. Kind of like glock striker marks, but not square. Primers definitely looked different. I'd use the word flattening to describe it, but only in comparison to my minor loads. Still not as flat as factory ammo after firing.
Then 4.7gr of titegroup at 1.130" nominal.
AVG = 940.8 pf= 169 and SD = 13. High was 967.2, low was 919.4. The velocity between the extreme spread was fairly well covered. I wouldn't call any of them flyers.
Accuracy was a letdown compared to the 4.5gr load. It was actually worse than the 3.7gr load bya noticable ammount. I was shooting at an 8" target, at 25 yards it started getting sketchy. Lots of edge hits. At 30 yards, lots of missing. If I had to guess, about a 10" group. Recoil was more pronounced than the 4.5gr, but still less than factory 180gr ammo.
As for pressure signs, it was basically identical to the 4.5gr ammo
The 4.5 gr ammo basically makes me REALLY want a 5" M&P. Heck, I may load it for production anyway.