Anyone ever load below minimum?

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I hear ya, Flash,... I was only interested in going under minimum to see if I could get any decrease in recoil. Minimum load resulted in around 3,000 FPS. My "below minimum experiment" was only a couple hundred FPS slower,... and had no noticeable decrease in recoil, so,...all for naught!

Any less of a charge and I would be getting into the case, less than half full, mark,.... nothing I am interested in doing. I always choose my powder, by caliber, to fill a case 75%, or more,... just a crazy quirk of mine. :geek:
 
Ok so you want to go below minimum on a powder load. It's not safe, but if you have the money to replace barrels have at it. Put some paper up so you know it left the barrel so you dont start stacking bullets up in the barrel. Good luck
 
It's perfectly safe if you know what you're doing.

You obviously don't, so don't do it.
 
Elk34 said:
Ok so you want to go below minimum on a powder load. It's not safe, but if you have the money to replace barrels have at it. Put some paper up so you know it left the barrel so you dont start stacking bullets up in the barrel. Good luck

Hi Elk34,... fyi,... it is impossible to get a chrony reading, unless the bullet leaves the barrel,... which makes it a great safety tool for developing subs.

But, in this case,... projectiles leaving a barrel, at thousands of feet per second, don't have much of a chance of not exiting,... imo.

When loading for the slowest / subsonic results,... which is what I believe you are talking about,... I have loaded 223rem subs for my pump action rifle that were so slow they wouldn't cycle a semi-auto,... and, I had a half dozen squibs before finding that perfect sub load, that would not squib.

In other words,... been there,... done it!

But, thanks for your cautionary concerns, anyway.
 
Pro tip with reduced loads:

If the empty casing is ejected from your semiauto, the bullet definitely left the barrel.

What could be easier?
 
shooter444 said:
Elk34 said:
Ok so you want to go below minimum on a powder load. It's not safe, but if you have the money to replace barrels have at it. Put some paper up so you know it left the barrel so you dont start stacking bullets up in the barrel. Good luck

Hi Elk34,... fyi,... it is impossible to get a chrony reading, unless the bullet leaves the barrel,... which makes it a great safety tool for developing subs. Projectiles leaving a barrel, at thousands of feet per second, don't have much of a chance of not exiting,... imo.

When loading for the slowest / subsonic results,... which is what I believe you are talking about,... I have loaded 223rem subs for my pump action rifle that were so slow they wouldn't cycle a semi-auto,... and, I had a half dozen squibs before finding that perfect sub load, that would not squib.

In other words,... been there,... done it!

But, thanks for your cautionary concerns, anyway.
Thanks for taking what I said with a grain of salt. I've been there and done that too. Working on a sub round for 300 bulk out I stacked 3 up before I figured out what was going on. After that when I put up my crono I put a target right behind it. Like 3 inches behind it.
 
Elk34 said:
shooter444 said:
Elk34 said:
Ok so you want to go below minimum on a powder load. It's not safe, but if you have the money to replace barrels have at it. Put some paper up so you know it left the barrel so you dont start stacking bullets up in the barrel. Good luck

Hi Elk34,... fyi,... it is impossible to get a chrony reading, unless the bullet leaves the barrel,... which makes it a great safety tool for developing subs. Projectiles leaving a barrel, at thousands of feet per second, don't have much of a chance of not exiting,... imo.

When loading for the slowest / subsonic results,... which is what I believe you are talking about,... I have loaded 223rem subs for my pump action rifle that were so slow they wouldn't cycle a semi-auto,... and, I had a half dozen squibs before finding that perfect sub load, that would not squib.

In other words,... been there,... done it!

But, thanks for your cautionary concerns, anyway.
Thanks for taking what I said with a grain of salt. I've been there and done that too. Working on a sub round for 300 bulk out I stacked 3 up before I figured out what was going on. After that when I put up my crono I put a target right behind it. Like 3 inches behind it.

So what did you do with that barrel that you stacked 3 into????
 
probably still shooting it. argh and making it a triple decker stacker barrel, rumor is they are gonna be in demand during this so called crisis.
 
was21 said:
Elk34 said:
shooter444 said:
Hi Elk34,... fyi,... it is impossible to get a chrony reading, unless the bullet leaves the barrel,... which makes it a great safety tool for developing subs. Projectiles leaving a barrel, at thousands of feet per second, don't have much of a chance of not exiting,... imo.

When loading for the slowest / subsonic results,... which is what I believe you are talking about,... I have loaded 223rem subs for my pump action rifle that were so slow they wouldn't cycle a semi-auto,... and, I had a half dozen squibs before finding that perfect sub load, that would not squib.

In other words,... been there,... done it!

But, thanks for your cautionary concerns, anyway.
Thanks for taking what I said with a grain of salt. I've been there and done that too. Working on a sub round for 300 bulk out I stacked 3 up before I figured out what was going on. After that when I put up my crono I put a target right behind it. Like 3 inches behind it.

So what did you do with that barrel that you stacked 3 into????

Pull the barrel and pressed out the 200 grain bullets. Seeing that it was a heavy bull barrel, no real damage done. I rebarreled with same barrel and started shooting again.
 
Elk34 said:
shooter444 said:
Elk34 said:
Ok so you want to go below minimum on a powder load. It's not safe, but if you have the money to replace barrels have at it. Put some paper up so you know it left the barrel so you dont start stacking bullets up in the barrel. Good luck

Hi Elk34,... fyi,... it is impossible to get a chrony reading, unless the bullet leaves the barrel,... which makes it a great safety tool for developing subs. Projectiles leaving a barrel, at thousands of feet per second, don't have much of a chance of not exiting,... imo.

When loading for the slowest / subsonic results,... which is what I believe you are talking about,... I have loaded 223rem subs for my pump action rifle that were so slow they wouldn't cycle a semi-auto,... and, I had a half dozen squibs before finding that perfect sub load, that would not squib.

In other words,... been there,... done it!

But, thanks for your cautionary concerns, anyway.
Thanks for taking what I said with a grain of salt. I've been there and done that too. Working on a sub round for 300 bulk out I stacked 3 up before I figured out what was going on. After that when I put up my crono I put a target right behind it. Like 3 inches behind it.
I at the time didn't put the cronograph up. I thought I had worked out my load data. First 2 went down range. Next 3 didnt. So I went back to using Acc 1680 instead of trying to find other powders to work.
 
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