Grendel Bolt Action loads

[adamjp]

Well, since you are in Australia, you might as well use Australian powder, my rifle likes 28.5 grains of IMR8208XBR behind the 130 grain Berger Hunting VLD bullet. It also does very well with the 129 grain A-Max and 125 Nosler Partition all with the same powder charge.
Bob

Grrrrrr....

Bob, if only it was that easy. Whilst much of the Hodgdon product line is made in Australia, including IMR 8208, IMR 8208 is NOT available for us here in Australia. I am presented with the ridiculous situation of having to import 8208 through Winchester Australia (distributor of Hodgdon/IMR/Winchester) from the USA. It will end up costing nearly $80 per pound. What really gets us going is that Americans can buy 4895 (AR2206H), Varget (AR2208), Benchmark (BM2), 4350 (AR2209) and 4831SC (AR2213SC) or any other ADI powder for less then we can. I live less than 250 miles for the damn factory and a pound bottle costs me $40AUD (~$42USD).

I've been working with AR2206H (or 4895) but it isn't fast enough (~ 2850fps) as the case is FULL and there is pressure to spare yet. I worked on some loads with BM2 and BM1 (not available in the USA) last night and they look promising, with the BM1 under a 100gn NBT topping out at 2970fps from a 21in barrel. Going by the primer condition, there is still room to grow there.

Any exact data would be welcome. PM or email probably best as using boltgun loads in an AR will be a short and painful shooting session. I wouldn't want someone to grab the data without reading the context of the data.

Cheers,

Adam.