07-04-2017, 05:58 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-04-2017, 10:36 PM by NugginFutz.)
bj139,
Nice looking pair of boom sticks, and thanks for posting up your progress with that BCA tube.
Re: the 85 grain Sierra HP Varmint's. I've found that H322 worked wonderfully, with superb accuracy in a gun that has proven quite finicky about most other loads. My best accuracy node was at 28.4 grains. I'm fairly sure that IMR8208XBR would work pretty well, also, but H322 was one of my magic .243 powders in that bullet weight range.
The spent brass from that BCA is troubling, though. Those rings are clearly abnormal, and can't be doing anything good for your brass life. Further, while working with an adjustable gas block on one of mine, I started with the gas completely shut off. At no point did I ever have difficulty extracting spent cases. This makes me think that the rings you have may be having the effect of "locking" the brass in place.
I remember reading one or two other reports about rough chambers from BCA. IIRC, one owner was in contact with BCA, and had reported that they recommended having the chamber refinished. Whether or not you send it back to BCA, I would definitely have that chamber touched up with a finish reamer before sending too many more rounds through it for imprinting.
ETA: Rather than shooting without a gas block, I suggest blocking the gas port by either using a tubeless GB rotated so as to block the port, or getting an adjustable and shutting off the gas. It just feels bad to imagine hot gasses exiting so small a hole under such great pressure.
Nice looking pair of boom sticks, and thanks for posting up your progress with that BCA tube.
Re: the 85 grain Sierra HP Varmint's. I've found that H322 worked wonderfully, with superb accuracy in a gun that has proven quite finicky about most other loads. My best accuracy node was at 28.4 grains. I'm fairly sure that IMR8208XBR would work pretty well, also, but H322 was one of my magic .243 powders in that bullet weight range.
The spent brass from that BCA is troubling, though. Those rings are clearly abnormal, and can't be doing anything good for your brass life. Further, while working with an adjustable gas block on one of mine, I started with the gas completely shut off. At no point did I ever have difficulty extracting spent cases. This makes me think that the rings you have may be having the effect of "locking" the brass in place.
I remember reading one or two other reports about rough chambers from BCA. IIRC, one owner was in contact with BCA, and had reported that they recommended having the chamber refinished. Whether or not you send it back to BCA, I would definitely have that chamber touched up with a finish reamer before sending too many more rounds through it for imprinting.
ETA: Rather than shooting without a gas block, I suggest blocking the gas port by either using a tubeless GB rotated so as to block the port, or getting an adjustable and shutting off the gas. It just feels bad to imagine hot gasses exiting so small a hole under such great pressure.
If it's true that we are here to help others, then what exactly are the others here for?