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Satterly testing
- Thread starter hooligan1
- Start date
scatterbrain
New member
I've tried it. My SD's aren't consistantly low enough to give me good results. I did select a couple of areas to work with, not really sure if they are the magic place.
Scott Saterlee's 10 shot load development method is well beyond theory. It is all I have used for the past few years and it saves me a lot of time, money and barrel wear. Totally legit. There are a few caveats.
1. Don't try it on a barrel that has not settled. Most barrels will speed up in the first 100 to 200 rounds and stay there for about 90% of their life. So you want to have gotten to that point.
2. You have to have great loading practices. If you don't have charge weights, neck tension, COAL, primer seating all nailed, it will be hard to find the nodes.
3. Your style of shooting and temperatures have a slight affect and may push you to slant to the high or low side of your node to maintain the best accuracy for your environment of intended use. In my guns, I load 20 and shoot 10 over an hour with cooling, then I shoot a few rounds to get some heat in the barrel and shoot 10 in a few minutes.
It used to take me from 100 to 300 rounds to work up the best load. Now I get there in 30 or less and the results are excellent. I have a friend who is trying it, but he is finding that there are inconsistencies in his reloading, so that has been the task for him, to get consistent there. As his consistency came up, so did his results and now he is beating match grade factory ammo by 50%.
While I use it on all of my precision guns, I have not gotten around to employing it for most of my hunting guns. I certainly don't use it for 55g .223 ammo that I only shoot out to 300 yards as that is a load tuned for speed and recoil, not the best accuracy.
1. Don't try it on a barrel that has not settled. Most barrels will speed up in the first 100 to 200 rounds and stay there for about 90% of their life. So you want to have gotten to that point.
2. You have to have great loading practices. If you don't have charge weights, neck tension, COAL, primer seating all nailed, it will be hard to find the nodes.
3. Your style of shooting and temperatures have a slight affect and may push you to slant to the high or low side of your node to maintain the best accuracy for your environment of intended use. In my guns, I load 20 and shoot 10 over an hour with cooling, then I shoot a few rounds to get some heat in the barrel and shoot 10 in a few minutes.
It used to take me from 100 to 300 rounds to work up the best load. Now I get there in 30 or less and the results are excellent. I have a friend who is trying it, but he is finding that there are inconsistencies in his reloading, so that has been the task for him, to get consistent there. As his consistency came up, so did his results and now he is beating match grade factory ammo by 50%.
While I use it on all of my precision guns, I have not gotten around to employing it for most of my hunting guns. I certainly don't use it for 55g .223 ammo that I only shoot out to 300 yards as that is a load tuned for speed and recoil, not the best accuracy.
Ive used it for a recently purchased tikka tac a1 in 260. I found 2 nodes:
1 at 42.6gr of h4350 and 1 at 43.1. I then loaded 5 rds of each and shot for accuracy. The 42.6 was the most promising so i then loaded 5rds each at 3 different coal. Total 35 rds so far. Then loaded 10rds of the best coal and shot 2 5 shot groups each measuring .390”. I honestly think it would have shot better if I was up to it. I had a lot of horizontal instability in my set up. I think this is a .3 or less load. So 10 shots is probably a stretch. For me it was 45. I see Markco was at 30. Still probably less than the old way i used to do it. Will it identify the most accurate? Dont know. Would have use the old method and compare. However for the one time i tried it, it certainly identified a very good load and likely a very low sd. I need to get out and chronograph the final results.
Markco i didnt realize load development needed to occur after barrel break in. Ill have to watch for that.
1 at 42.6gr of h4350 and 1 at 43.1. I then loaded 5 rds of each and shot for accuracy. The 42.6 was the most promising so i then loaded 5rds each at 3 different coal. Total 35 rds so far. Then loaded 10rds of the best coal and shot 2 5 shot groups each measuring .390”. I honestly think it would have shot better if I was up to it. I had a lot of horizontal instability in my set up. I think this is a .3 or less load. So 10 shots is probably a stretch. For me it was 45. I see Markco was at 30. Still probably less than the old way i used to do it. Will it identify the most accurate? Dont know. Would have use the old method and compare. However for the one time i tried it, it certainly identified a very good load and likely a very low sd. I need to get out and chronograph the final results.
Markco i didnt realize load development needed to occur after barrel break in. Ill have to watch for that.
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Hardest part for me so far is making a damn graph...
Excel is your friend. If you don't have it, find one of the free software suites that has a spreadsheet. Enter the data, highlight the data and insert a graph.
I'm not sure how Satterly, who started competing in PR in 2010, got his name credited with the method. Dave Milosovich described it in detail in the 1995 Precision Shooting Reloading Guide and mentioned others long having known about it before him. His opinion was that it gave you a good starting point, but further refining steps were needed to settle on a true best load.