TAC in .308 Win ?

hounddawg

New member
thinking about building a new F/TR rifle. I want to use what I have onhand. Bullets choices are a lot of 168 Noslers and 175 SMK's, also about 100 or so 155.5 Bergers. For powder Varget, 8208 and TAC. The Varget I want to save for 6BR, plenty of TAC and 8208 however. Various LRP's both normal and magnum. With the current situation I don't want to have to scrounge around looking for unobtainable powders like 4064 or looking for 155.5 Bergers

Anyone ever use TAC with 168/175 gn bullets?. I have used a lot of TAC in .204 Ruger and .223 loads, never tried in in .308
 

hounddawg

New member
What is maximum range, barrel length and twist?

It's for FT/R competition Bart, maximum of 1000 yards, 29 or 30 inch bull barrel, 10 twist. Just curious as to how well 155 - 175's shoot with TAC powder in a .308. Intuition tells me it is a little fast

did some digging an found this

https://www.snipershide.com/shooting/threads/ramshot-tac-for-308-win.71744/

Thanks for the input guy's, heres what I got from Keith at TAC Powder;

Thank you for your interest in Western Powders, Inc., "Ramshot" line of smokeless powders.

Ramshot TAC will be a good choice for the load you desire. We have the following loads for the 308 Win. using LC brass, TAC powder and Sierra 175 grain Matchking bullet.

Start Load: 38.0 grains Ramshot "TAC"

Max. Load: 42.3 grains Ramshot "TAC"

C.O.A.L. 2.800"

A load of 40.3 grains should give you about 2,600 fps.

As always......Start with the "start" load and work up.

I hope this answers your questions.



Best regards,
Keith Anderson
Western Powders Ballistic Lab

figure worst case is it won't shoot worth a damn and I will have to get off my Varget stash
 
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hounddawg

New member
well That is really good to hear Mark. :D Do you mind if I ask what bullet weight(s) and barrel length are you using it in? Also if chonoed what FPS you got?
 

hounddawg

New member
I like the option to go heavier if I decide to. Can't get too fast a twist in my opinion. My last .308 was a 1 -10 and I used it with 155.5 Bergers almost exclusively, but it would handle 175's and 200's with no problems

In both my 6br's I have a 8 twist, I normally use 105 or 107's with Varget or 8208 but I have a lot of 68 and 80 gn flat base bullets shoot sub .5 MOA out to 500 on calmer days. Most BR shooters would be using a 1-14 or slower for those little pills but they seem to shoot just fine for me in the faster twist
 

Bart B.

New member
If the twist is too fast, two things reduce accuracy.

Rifle twists more during barrel time. Some bullets will jump more off the bore axis as they leave the barrel.

Long 30"+ barrels shooting 7.62 M80 ammo with 147 grain bullets leaving over 3000 fps often got best accuracy at long range with a 1:14 inch twist.
 
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hounddawg

New member
well if I ever need to use 7.62 M80 ammo with 147 grain bullets I will keep that in mind, thanks for the input. However for this rifle I plan loading my ammo and tuning it to the barrel. Last evening I remembered I have a stock Savage .308 barrel that came off the FT/R that only has a little 1700 rounds through it. It was still well under 1 MOA when I pulled it and went to .260 Rem so I'll try it on this new build and see how it shoots before I buy another. Might save me $500
 
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MarkCO

New member
I have .308s in 16, and 24". 1:10 is what you want for the heavier bullets, NOT 1:12. Fast twist does not reduce accuracy, it improves it. If accuracy is falling off, something else is wrong.

I shoot 3 bullets mainly, the Nosler 140 Custom Competition (about 2800 in the 16", 3000 in the 24") 155 AMax (I don't think these are made anymore, about 2600 in 16" and 2800 in the 24") and 168 AMax (about 2550 in the 16" and 2700 in the 24").

I have a bunch of other weights and types, but have not loaded them with TAC yet.
 

Bart B.

New member
Mark,

Is a 24" 308 1:12" twist barrel shooting 190 HPMK's inside 3 inches at 600 yards not good enough?

Are all your barrels twisted 1 turn in 6 inches?
 
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hounddawg

New member
Mark , pretty much narrowed it down to 175 or 155 SMK's based on availability and suitability for 800 and 1000 yard shooting. The 155's need to be pushed pretty fast, so I am leaning toward the 175's. The 200's are popular with the LR folks but hard to find and costly. Again thanks for the info.

Now I just have to convince myself to get off my wallet and order the parts
 

MarkCO

New member
I have in the past, shot the SMKs. They should be fine for you. Best of luck, and show us a photo or two when you are done.
 
There is actually an optimal range of twist rates each bullet and set of atmospheric conditions. Spinning slower will cause them to be inadequately stabilized. Spinning them faster increases the lateral drift off the POA that results either from bullet mass symmetry imperfections or from bullet tilt in the bore. A Sierra ballistician told me long ago that you want the gyroscopic stability factor at the muzzle velocity to between about 1.4 and 1.7 for best match performance, while what they considered "hunting accuracy" was about 1.3 at the low end and 3.0 at the high end. Don Miller and several others put the optimal number at 1.5. Miller's gyroscopic stability estimator at the JBM site is here. His two Precision Shooting articles about it are available here and here.

A Sierra 190 at 2500 fps requires about a 11.5" twist to be optimal in an ICAO standard atmosphere (59°F). In 75°F, in which air is less dense, the 12" twist does it neatly. The 10" twist commonly found in a lot of 30 cal rifles was originally used in the 30-40 Krag and was carried over to the '03 Springfield. I suspect it was retained until the M14 because the military requires ammunition to fire in -65°F, and the 10" twist is necessary for the 173-grain M1 Ball bullet when it gets that cold. For the shorter 175-grain Sierra, the 11.25" twist in the M24 sniper system was good to -40°F. They may have decided that was a better compromise for accuracy.

That said, a lot of match bullets are made so well now that if you load them with good concentricity, you can get good performance spinning faster than optimal. I've seen good groups with stability factors like 2.5 or so.

One other outlier has to do with the Sierra 168-grain bullets and their dynamic instability in the transonic range. I've seen them consistently start to tumble at about 700 yards coming out of both 10" and 12" twist barrels in the same conditions. But, IIRC, Hummer70 was able to get them to fly to 1000 yards out of a cut-down Palma barrel with either a 13" or 13.5" twist. I would be pretty hesitant to go for that, as the atmospheric density probably has to be right to allow that to happen, too.
 

Bart B.

New member
It's interesting to note Frankfort arsenal ballistic engineers twisted the new 7.62 NATO barrels 1:12 and the same bullets used in the 1:10 twist 30-06 leaving about 100 fps slower because they were more accurate.

In this same timeframe, 30 caliber magnums shooting heavier bullets a few hundred fps faster got better accuracy from 1:12 twist barrels than the traditional 1:10 twist.
 
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hounddawg

New member
These were shot from a magazine fed repeater so COL and jump is non negotiable. Shot from a bipod with a sand filled sock for a rear bag. VV133 and 68 gn Bergers, 26 inch 8 twist barrel. At around 3100 FPS I was getting a little less than .5 MOA with a 5 mph switching wind, no wind flags were up. Flags could have cut that down a bit

using the twist rate calculator and 3100 fps Berger calculates the SG at 3.98, over double what optimal supposedly is.

https://bergerbullets.com/product/6-mm-68-grain-fb-target/

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Before I ordered that barrel I shot the same bullet from a 30 inch 1- 8 twist to see how they would shoot in a fast twist. With it I spun them up to 3300 FPS. Just three shot groups in the second photo but then that was just a quick experiment. Using the logic I may want to shoot 105's and 107's from the repeater some day I ordered the 8 twist instead of a slower barrel. I don't regret it.
 

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hounddawg

New member
Ok Nick and Bart here is another real life test that flies in the face of the "you can spin them too fast barrel twist theory"

This is where I tested the 80 gn flat base Bergers, 6BR 30 inch 8-1 twist barrel off a rest and bunny ear bags

First pic 100 yard powder test with IMR 8208, 5 shot groups, largest group was .673 MOA @ 3104 FPS and the smallest was .368 MOA @ 3139 FPS

in the second pic I moved it out to 300 and did 5 round seating depth tests using 30.2 gns of IMR 8208

largest group was .643 MOA smallest group was 1.010 inches or .322 MOA. Best group I have ever shot at 300 yards, of course it was almost perfect shooting conditions windless and overcast

Once again the Berger twist rate calculator put my SG at 2.94 or almost double what the experts decided was optimal. You can quote all the studies you want but at least using light flat base bullets, a fast spin is a good thing. Boat tails may be a horse of a different color
 

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Too fast, in my book, is where a bullet flies apart on the way to the target. Up to that velocity, with a perfectly uniform bullet (the Berger's are among the best in this regard) that is going straight through the barrel, there should not be a problem. But if you tilt even a perfectly symmetrical bullet in the bore, then the lateral drift shows up, and the faster it is spinning, the greater that drift will be.

The late Harold Vaughn demonstrated this with some high-quality bullets using a special gun built into a machine rest. With straight ammunition, it shot one-holers in the 1s or below. So he intentionally tilted the bullet tips on 8 rounds by 0.004", marked the high side on his cases, then proceeded to fire them starting with the tilt at 12:00, then 3:00, then 6:00, then 9:00 in the chamber, and then went around the clock again with the remaining four rounds. His group is idealized in the image on the left, below. The actual group tore the middle of the paper out, so it is a little harder to see, but a scanner image of it is on page 134 in this reproduction of the first edition of the book (I highly recommend reading the whole book when you have time). You can see from the slightly out-of-round shapes, that each hole is a double. This is because the orientation and degree of tilt matched.

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The second group on the right is what would have resulted from firing 30-06 with the much longer M1 Type bullet tilted the same amount and in a 10" twist barrel. The data to support that comes from A. A. Abbatiello's article in the 1981 NRA book, HANDLOADING.

In both instances, the faster the twist, the further from the center of each group the bullets would be. For any given velocity, it is directly proportional and, as Abbatiello demonstrated, you can calculate exactly how much drift away from the group center a tilted perfect bullet will produce if you know the bullet muzzle velocity, the barrel twist rate, the time of flight, how far from the middle of the bearing surface (center of the tilt) the tip of the bullet is, how far the center of gravity of the bullet is from the center of the bearing surface. You can download my Excel file for making this calculation.

A couple of other things happen as spin increases. One is that the bullet's yaw of repose, which is the combination of pitch and sideslip yaw it settles in on the way to the target increases. This causes a decrease in ballistic coefficient and an increase in the aerodynamic jump when you have to make a windage adjustment. But neither effect is large.

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