7mm STW with RL 33

[stagpanther]

After shooting some 22lr this morning a front went through and the sun came out so I decided to go out again but this time try out some new powder (RL 33) on my 7mm STW--some of the best big magnum powders like H1000 have been inducted into the halls of unobtainium. I made a fairly stupid mistake and failed to notice in the middle of shooting that the winds had swung from SW to NW. Why only 4 shots? Because my supply of large rifle magnum primers is reaching the end--only a few hundred left. I don't know what I'll do after that, I do shoot a lot of fairly large magnum cartridges. The powder seems to work pretty well though I noticed it fouls the bore pretty dirty.

 

[ligonierbill]

I've been trying to find some. Another candidate for 338 RUM. Thought the great shortage was easing, but powder and primers are still spotty. Good luck.

 

[stagpanther]

I've been trying to find some. Another candidate for 338 RUM. Thought the great shortage was easing, but powder and primers are still spotty. Good luck.

There is a possible saving grace for the powders if you go to Vihtavouri's website and use their reloading tool to find powders that fall within the ballpark of your cartridge. I have a couple of them and the last time I checked powder valley had a few of them available in both 1 and 8 pounders. Then cross-check in QL and as always start low--but not too low, I find funky things can happen with voluminous cases if they are not fairly close to full capacity--like hangfires.

 

[stagpanther]

I finally got the chance to get the labradar set up and gather some data--pretty impressive, when I plot the basics in a ballistics calculator the MPBR appears to go out to 300 yds [edited, I was looking at MOA column at first]. I set this project aside for quite a while--given its reputation as a barrel roaster I only shoot around 10 cartridges at a time with around 3 minutes between shots. I'm guessing I presently have somewhere around 200 to 250 shots through the shilen SS barrel and while there are some signs of incipient light throat erosion--which I get generally on all big magnum barrels fairly soon, the rest of the bore is in excellent condition. I have about 80 cases that have been used repeatedly, most of them I made from PPU 375 H&H cases but also have some made-to-order Quality cartridge 7mm STW cases. All of them had to be fire-formed to the specific match chamber on the barrel. The recent shooting was done with a vortex diamondback scope which I think is simply not up to the task of good magnified resolution out to longer distances, so I just pulled my recently reconditioned burris XTR 2 off the 338 LM and put it on the 7mm STW and hope that helps. While the 183 gr works, it's probably a bit on the big side for really long range stuff so I'll drop back in size some in the next bullet choice.

 

[stagpanther]

I've been trying to find some. Another candidate for 338 RUM. Thought the great shortage was easing, but powder and primers are still spotty. Good luck.

BTW--I scored a couple of pounds of VV N560 to try out as an alternative, started out with a smaller cartridge 270 WSM and shot two test groups at 170 yds both printed just under MOA, will try it on the the larger 7mm STW soon.

 

[ligonierbill]

N560 does well in my 7mm Rem Mag and under heavy bullets in 338 Win Mag and 300 H&H.