Changing bullets when not cleaning rifle barrel
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I am currently not cleaning my rifle barrel past break in rounds. This has shown to provide better consistency and stability in performance past the 250 round ish mark, right in line with Orkans dirty barrel experiments thread. How many of you are not cleaning your barrels and have changed bullets along the way? Are you able to do a quick load work up with the new bulllets and continue on, or are you cleaning the barrel before doing a load workup and once again at that 250 round phase?
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@donnie On my 6BR I've changed bullets 3 times and haven't cleaned.
I started it out on 95gr VLD's, then switched to 105 hybrids, then 107SMK's, then 55gr noslers. No ill effects noticed.
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@orkan good to know. I couldn't think of anything that would create issues, except maybe using a bullet with softer copper jacket. Maybe copper could build up a little more on top of the fouling and might see another spike or something. I'll continue on without worrying about it.
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I gave the 210gr nosler accubond LR's another try last weekend in my 300 wsm. It looks like these bullets like a lot of jump and I was previously only seating them .020" from the lands. I have about 500 of them and couldn't sell them, so I figured why not. Also I'm using H1000 instead of IMR 7828 this time.
I started out shooting my precision loads 208gr ELD-M's, Winchester brass, 65.3gr H1000, .020" dist to lands. My first 2 shots took out the center of target slightly left and grouped .200". I figured my zero was good at 100yds and continued on with the 210gr ablr's. I seated them .120" from lands this time, and worked up 63-65.5gr H1000 in .5gr increments. I got the same results as before which were around 1.5" groups but found what looks like a node around 64-64.5 gr, and groups shrunk to .9". I'm kicking myself in the ass for not shooting a 5 shot group with my precision load to begin with. After I was done with the ablr's, and I went back to the 208 EDL-M's, I couldn't get them to group. I fired a 5 shot group, then completed the first 2 shot group with 3 more. The one 5 shot group came in at .550" which looks worse than it is, but 3 shots clustered high and left. Also the last 3 shots strayed out upwards of 1 1/4" from the first .200" group.
Its got me thinking I should go back to firing the 208 EDL-m's and see if the rifle calms down over 10-20 shots. Alternately, I believe I am just over 800 total rounds fired in this barrel, and around 380 rounds since last cleaned. Maybe I should be doing a load workup again with the 208 EDL-M's? What say you?
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Once I decide on the kind of bullet performance I'm after, and find success with my choice... I don't hop around at all. Unless I don't really care about that rifle's role and its for the sake of science. Additional variables breeds instability, no matter the variable.
