I ordered Winchester unprimed brass for my 308 and got primed brass, so I just inspected closely for everything and loaded as is and worked up for 5 different loads of 5 ea. No glitzes whatsoever. Was this the right method?

This is in a BLR, and some 30 year old Speer 180 gr. bullets that have been moved at least 10 times, with pitted and dinged up tips, H4895. I got groups just under 2", which I haven' been able to do with factory loads.

I will now work up some Sierra GK, BT 150 gr, with Varget, I don't need the 180 for Whitetail. I would really like to get that Browning to shoot under 1.5"

bentrod

Boy some guns just are finicky about bullet/powder/load combinations. Your just going to have to keep working at it to see if you can bring those groups down. Keep in mind that 2 inches is minute of deer out to a long ways.

A few stray thoughts: If you are trying to get an accuracy load together, try using some match reloading techniques with different match bullet weights to get some idea what the gun's potential is with the different common bullet weights? I've shot a lot of Winchester brass, factory primed included, in matches. For prone slow fire, where ammo precision demand is greatest. I always sort Winchester cases by weight and case wall runout, particularly at the neck. Winchester brass has the greatest case capacity in the .308 of anything on the market, which is why it is preferred fo rifles that have to get out to serious distances in that chambering, be they Palma rifles or tac rifles. However, Winchester brasst also has the most variability. I find only about 20%-30% of a Winchester bulk brass purchase passes for match loads.

Use Varget or other stick powders with factory primed brass, but avoid ball powders. I did a lot of shooting with 2520 one year and found that it was enough harder to light than stick powders, that I had to deburr the flashholes to get consistent ignition. Doing that cut my M1A group sizes from about 1.25 m.o.a. at 100 yards, to about .75 m.o.a. A big difference. Taking this step made no difference with stick powders, however, because they are so easy to ignite, having a less resistant flame front path open between the bigger grains. Keep in mind that when you reload these cases, unless you use the same Winchester primer, you will need to work loads up over again with a different primer.

Use a runout gauge to check concentricity of your loaded rounds. In my experience, only the competition seating dies get bullets in straight consistently. I have always used the Redding Competition Bullet Seater Die, but a number of people swear by the less expensive Forsters. If all you have is a standard seating die, stop seating just after the bullet start ins, rotate the case 180 degrees, seat a little further; repeat a couple times as the bullet makes its way into the case mouth. That can help, though not nearly as much as the competition dies. Bear in mind that just 0.004" of bullet runout can throw your groups open as much as an inch at 100 yards all by itself. For that reason, keeping the bullets straight in their cases helps a lot, so load them singly when you are accuracy testing, and do not bump them up a feed ramp.

Take the decapping pin out of your sizing die, and at least neck size the cases and let them draw back over the expander before loading them. This will ensure a better match of bullet tension in the case, which has quite an effect on accuracy.

All this may seem like a lot of extra bother, but until you take some of these precautions, you don't have an objective way to tell if your reload or your rifle are responsible for the holes in your groups that you find unacceptable.

Thanks,

I will use Varget and stay with Winchester primers in the procedure, I just bought 2,000 of them. Good info on the seating. I may have to use a better seating die, I am using RCBS now.