Winchester Staball Match

[Zeneffect]

Bottom row up - 26.9 to 27.8



Nothing to note on the brass, gun cycles fine even at lowest charge.

[Zeneffect]

Chrono data

[Zeneffect]

27.2gr


27.5gr


27.8gr


All shot prone, in the cold frigging wind, no rear bag. I don't mind sharing crappy groups with you guys as this powder has some potential if we can get the speed up. I realize 150 is an odd number, but I didn't want to be on the public range today. It's cold and windy so on the 150 to 300 range I can control line clear/hot and not wait a rso to speed things along and gtfo before getting too miserable.

Next round, I'm testing up to 30gr and I'll run a rear bag to shrink the groups up. Initial testing in the complete unknown is just trying to survive the day without a catastrophic event and gather some data

[Zeneffect]

29.7-30.9 loaded. same everything, will have results either this afternoon hopefully. if this wind doesnt die down, i may go to a 50 yard indoor range to conduct testing.

[Zeneffect]

looks like 30.9 was the magic number. 2500fps achieved SD is really damn good. Pulling from magnetospeed now, looks like i still have some headroom as brass showed nothing at all.

[Zeneffect]

29.7


30.0


30.3


30.6 (forgot to hit button to start new series and lost 1st shot)

[Zeneffect]

30.9


Groups



Burris xtr rings suuuuuuuck

Had to dial full right, then hold off target. Swapping these pieces of hot trash off immediately.



Ran lapua brass today. Nothing to report here.

[LRRPF52]

Sorry if I asked before but is your receiver face trued/square?

I’ve had uppers that weren’t square that had noticeable windage offset. After squaring them, they were basically mechanically-true.

When I mount scopes, I might see 3 clicks of windage from optical true on square receiver faces.

What barrel length are these strings from?

[Zeneffect]

Sorry if I asked before but is your receiver face trued/square?

I’ve had uppers that weren’t square that had noticeable windage offset. After squaring them, they were basically mechanically-true.

When I mount scopes, I might see 3 clicks of windage from optical true on square receiver faces.

What barrel length are these strings from?

Yes. When I assemble my uppers I dont even bother to check, I square them all up and loctite them in. 100% piece of crap rings (almost certainly those dumb plastic inserts) as i went back to the rings they replaced and im back to point of impact being mechanical zero. its a pain just to level the scope with the burris rings because of those dumb inserts. learned my lesson and am utilizing the return policy.

22" criterion barrel, jp bolt, all the gas (no adjustable gas nothing)

[ab initio]

Really cool data, Zen. Thanks for sharing your results.
Earlier you were proposing other bullets to try this with. Have you given any more thoughts to trying the 130 berger ar hybrid? or a 108?

What are your thoughts on how this compares with cfe223? They are both ball powders and seem like they can get a denser fill than Varget. I'm trying to load 123s and the 129ablr. The 129 gets a little crunchy with cfe223 and i'm not yet convinced on consistency. I'd be curious to see what kind of loads you find for the 130 class bullets in terms of average velocity and SD with this new staball.

Cheers

[Zeneffect]

I need to buy more as i ran out playing with the 105gr blitzkings, then shooting a match with 100 of the 123s.
I'll revisit once I have some more in hand.

You can shove more cfe223 in a case then staball match. UR recently did a video and he shows comparisons against varget and cfe223. I have a couple pounds of cfe, but since using leverevolution I don't even consider it. Lever gave me better everything comparatively.

[Zeneffect]

Powdervalley just did free shipping so I picked up 8# to continue this endeavor. 130gr otm up next. Pretty sure I want to start at 29.5 and maybe end at 30.5 or 30.7

I tried the 123s out of the 28" and only picked up 120fps. Accuracy wasn't there at all... made me sad.

[tdbru]

thank you Zen for the data so far.

some open conjecture here, so take with a grain of salt: I think, based upon my experiences in reloading for the last 50 years, that ball powders need to be near the upper pressures for low SD of MV. Stick powders are a bit more tolerant. Flake powders the most tolerant. So far, in pursuit of low SD in MV, it is my experience to date in quite a few cartridges that go up to ~60K psi or so that the MV SD reduces as I have crept up on max loads. Typically, though not always due to other effects, low SD also gives better groups as well. and for the long range F-class shooters, low SDs correlate to less vertical stringing and more X's

Since the max pressure spec of the 6.5 Grendel is down from the more mainstream cartridges, my hypothesis is that the ball powders are not getting enough pressure for consistent burn rates, though your SD numbers with the 123s look great. But notice that as the powder charge is increasing, the SDs are decreasing.

if I recall, the Hodgdon burn rate manual shows staBALL match at a faster burn rate than CFE223. So, like you, I'd expect better performance in the Grendel with staBALL match than CFE223.

I've had really good performance, to my mind, with H4895, and that may be due to it is a bit easier to ignite, based upon what I've read, than ball powders are. My assumption is that it burns more consistently due to easier ignition at lower pressures than ball powders would at the same pressure due to the tougher to ignite characteristics of ball powders, in general.

as an aside, I think for awhile, we're at the mercy of the powder manufacturers and will just have to utilize what we can get rather than what we really want. And for now, it appears that Winchester is able to supply ball powders where as IMR and ADI (Hodgdon's extreme series) are not, or don't seem to be, interested in meeting the increased demand. In fact it seems that IMR quit making the Enduron series of powders altogether. No one in my part of the country has seen Retumbo,Varget,H4895 for about 2 years now. So you are wise to experiment with staBALL match since it is available and is somewhat close to a useful burn rate for the Grendel.

thank you.
-tdbru

[Zeneffect]

Staball match isn't much faster than cfe223 on the 2023 burn rate chart. Cfe lands at 115 and staball match at 112. Only blc2 and n540 are listed between them. I figure this will be optimal with the 120gr SMK based on testing with the 123s and 105s. Really though, I want to try it with some 77s and 80s in .223 to replace the norma 202 I'm running out of.

[Zeneffect]

Revisiting the 105gr blitzking and 32.5gr today. If they repeat same performance as last time, will be running them for a match tomorrow. Im willing to give up some speed for higher accuracy as the energy on target is more than sufficient.

Btw 25gr in .223 with 80gr eldm was pretty damn good. Just way past mag length so single feed only. 2900fps out of a 24" barrel. I know not grendel but we all pretty much own a .223 wylde so I thought I'd share what I got out of it.

[B 13]

Posting here instead of Ramslamer's "Staball Match" thread to keep the data together, and to not open another thread.

My results with Winchester Staball Match, new Starline 6.5G brass, CCI 450 primer, Hornady 123gr SST loaded to 2.255. 3 round averages. This is informational only and not recommended load data. And no cool pics like Zeneffect...

Charge------------Howa Mini 20" vel-------Faxon barreled AR 20" vel

28.0 gr-----------------2237---------------------------2247
28.5 gr-----------------2284---------------------------2295
29.0 gr-----------------2311---------------------------2323
29.5 gr-----------------2350---------------------------2380
30.0 gr-----------------2379---------------------------2387
30.5 gr 2.263OAL-----2425---------------------------2428

Brass and primers look very good to this point. It appears my velocities are in line with what Zeneffect saw from his 22" tube. I would agree with Zeneffect that there is room for more pressure, but I am pretty much out of room for powder at this point. As noted in the 30.5gr column I bumped my coal a bit as powder level was very near the bottom of the neck and I am sure there is some powder compression happening. I could go a fair bit longer on OAL as throats on both guns will allow but not sure it will get me a whole lot more. Zeneffect, were your 30.6 and 30.9 loads compressed? Accuracy was decent and the 30.5 load turned in a 1 moa group for the mini and 3/4 moa for the AR in a decent cross breeze. Also, every round in the AR gave full lock of the bolt and 4-5 o'clock ejection with the Superlative Arms agb at full open no bleed off, carbine buffer and Geissle 42 spring. I was not always getting that with CFE223, even up into the 31.0-31.6 grain range.

[Zeneffect]

Not compressed that I can tell, but also no additional room either.

I did not revisit 32.5gr with the 105s for 1 reason.

Was prepping for a match, and tried to load just 32gr into new lapua brass. Didn't look right at all so I dumped it. To run this much, absolutely needs to be fired case or maybe I got a small sized batch. About .012 shoulder difference between new and fired on the last box I opened up.

[FirefighterMedic03]

I have worked up a load for my 24” X-Caliber barrel using Hornady 120 gn ELD M. It wasn’t about velocimetry with a max load of 29.4 velocity was about 2480. I was working from 28.0 going up .2 grains for each string. Max S.D was 5.1, max extreme spread was 6. Max group was .75. Best group was .23 velocity 2465.

[FirefighterMedic03]

I did a work up with my 24” X-Caliber barrel. SD was great. Accuracy was good at 27.4(.350 in) and at 28.6(.550 in). Though my velocity was at best 2430. I was using 120 ELD-M CCI BR primers. Max load I tested was 29.4 and SD of 5 with a .750” group and 2460. I will be adjusting seating length to increase accuracy.

[Okie_Poke]

Good info here. Thank you. Chiming in to find and reference this later.