Morning fella's

Daryl S thanks again for your input - gives me plenty of information and food for thought.

I am absolutely confident my Gunsmith has set the Rifle up with the correct headspace and cut my chamber to close tolerences. I am paying attention to what you are saying Daryl but at this stage everything appears to be fine. I will be keeping a close eye on things and reviewing this advice regularly.

I have been cleaning the beejeebers out of the barrel which is what is costing me so much time. It's been giving me the irrits actually as all I want to do is shoot the bloody thing, but gotta do things right and a little patience now will pay off in the end.

I loaded 5 cartridges for the lower sheet because it took me most of my available time to shoot [ and clean the bloody barrel ] the previous where 9 shot groups. As I loaded the 45 and 45.5 gr loads at the range I was short on time and decided 5 rounds would tell me all I needed to know. They where loaded in once fired cases that I had neck sized and checked the length.

Next lot of loads will be in once fired , neck sized cases. I will follow your advice and look for a sticky point or until I'm frightened [ big smile ] I have been amazed that the cases are showing no signs of increasing pressure as the recoil has certainly been letting me know things are hotting up. Bystanders have commnented frequently about how hard the 225's are hitting the dirt bank and the volumes of debri thrown up and the audible thump

I have load data supplied to me from another fellow who has a 35.303 and the 225 grain projectile indicates a max load with AR2208 of 47.9 gr for 2320fps [ 24" barrel ]. His rifle is a No1 Mk4, mine a SMLE so I am keeping this in mind and being overly cautious. Again I'm not interested in max loads or squeezing every last bit of velocity from the cartridge.

The Data I was supplied had AR2206, AR2209 AND Win 748 powders. AR2208 is a bulky powder which is one of the reasons I choose it to try out first.Other reasons are it seemed to achieve the best velocities with minimum pressures according to the data I was supplied.

The AR2208 is filling near to the top of the shoulder of the cartridge at 44.5 grains, 45.5 grains and it would be extremely close to the base of the projectile. I can't see how much above 46.5 grains would not be a lightly compressed load

I will check the stock set for tightness before I shoot the Rifle again.

I can't get to the range for 2 weeks now. I will have a Chronygraph as the purpose of the previous 2 trips has been to give me a starting point to fine tune from and expose any issue's with the Rifle. I will report back with the numbers and results

Thanks again for your advice

regards Jacko