70gr Barnes tsx

[bacardisteve]

Who here has played with them in 223? Plan to use lc brass reloader 15 and a cci small rifle primer. The rifle is an ar15 with a Wylde chamber so I'm going to start at 25grains and work up to Barnes 5.56 max load. Any tips on getting these things to shoot well?

 

[Marco Califo]

Do the Twist

You need a fast twist. No slower than 1:9 to stabilize that long copper bullet. You can load them a little longer than published. Limiting factors will be either throat and length your magazine will feed. They shoot just fine, out to 300 yards. Haven't tried those any longer.

 

[bacardisteve]

Thanks all of my rifles are 7 twist with the exception of the Kreiger Barrell on my spr build that is a 7.7 twist.

 

[Marco Califo]

Use CCI #41 or SR Mag primers

Use CCI #41 or SR Mag primers for hotter loads. Not so much as to light the powder, but the cups are thicker and stronger. I found CCI 400's to pierce in a bolt gun with hotter loads. #41 also resist slam-fires in autoloaders with floating firing pins.
You are probably looking at Barnes data.
RL15 should do very well. However, you may see accuracy and velocity differ between powders.
Accurate Powders includes a good number of Barnes copper bullet load data including for the 70 gr. upto 3100-ish fps.
http://www.accuratepowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/WesternLoadGuide1-2016_Web.pdf

 

[bacardisteve]

Finally got around to testing these things. Loaded them all to 2.250 lc brass cci400 primer. 5 shot groups except for the starting load of 24grs Rl15. 24.6gr gave the best group by far followed by the 24.9gr load which flattened the primer and gave a slight ejector swipe. These were all fired in my 18" spr . The 24.6 gr load shows some real promise I may tweak the oal some or I may just call it good enough and leave it be.