120gr Hornady Amax rounds w/ Ramshot TAC - range data

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  • 120gr Hornady Amax rounds w/ Ramshot TAC - range data

    Wanted to post this so people who are thinking of using this round can make an informed decision =).

    My rifle: Sabre Defense 20" bbl w/ a 1 in 9 twist, DD upper, Adams Arms piston system, Bushnell elite 4200 6-26x50 w/ illum. Mil-Dot reticle.

    All rounds shot for this data were done in the prone position with the Caldwell Lead Sled shooting rest.

    I wanted to generate some data and work up a load for the 120 gr amax round from Hornady to see if my barrel would like it. I know that my barrel likes the 123gr scenar and was horrible with the 130 gr bergers, so I was curious as to how the 120 gr's would work and how accurate they would be.

    I first used Hornady's OAL guage and measured my chamber's COAL for this round. I found that the point at which the ogive touches the lands and grooves is 1.666" (measured with a comparator).

    I made sure all my brass was clean and sized correctly. I was using Lapua brass that had already been fired one time. I also used CCI primers (no. 400).

    Then, I build a powder ladder with 5 four round groups loaded at around 1.636" COAL. When I shot them at 100 yards, I found my most accurate powder load was 26.5 grains at around 2360 fps (around an inch group at 100 yards).

    After I had my powder basically figured out, I then went to dialing in my COAL for this round. I started low and worked up by 0.005 incriments. I loaded 5 four round groups. I started at 1.636" (2343 FPS), then went to 1.641"(2355 FPS)-1.646" (2354 FPS)-1.651" (2353 FPS)-1.656" (2365 FPS). I chrono'd the shots and what is listed is the average for each string. With the TAC I had a total of about 20FPS variation between some of the shots.

    Summary: My best group out of this was 0.41" (minus the flyer) at 1.651 COAL with 26.5 gr's of Ramshot TAC.

    I have attached the pic of the groups, I know it is kind of messy but hopefully you can read everything. I seemed to have thrown about 1 flyer in each group, oh well . Hope this helps! My 1 in 9 twist barrel seems to love this grain bullet. Gonna play around with it and try to get it dialed in more if I can. Also going to try doing this same thing with the Varget powder to see if there's any accuracy difference maybe... my 123 scenars shot a lot worse with the TAC (going from a .55" group with the varget to a 1.5" group with the TAC). We'll see =).

  • RangerRick

    #2
    Hi ID,

    Thanks for the load data. I'm surprised you were able to seat a Hornady 120 to 2.26 without it jamming into the lands. I can't even close the bolt on my Satern barrel unless I have it seated so deep it forces me to reduce the powder load.

    You might want to try the 123 AMax. It was designed specifically for the Grendel and has a BC of .510. A lot of us have hadvery good luck with it.

    RR

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    • #3
      Yeah, but it wasn't a problem! I knew exactly what the COAL was for my barrel to get the ogive to touch the lands and grooves... 1.666", so i knew if i backed it off from there i would be fine. I actually have tried the 123 amax, but only tried the factory loaded stuff... that would be interesting to compare the 120 amax to the 123 amax... hmmm. I forgot to add in the OP that, before I loaded anything to obtain this data, I actually weighed each bullet and did not use any bullets that had more than a tenth of a grain variance from 120 grains. That's one thing I don't like about hornady, they are not super consistent like I have found Lapua to be. I had about 20-30 rounds that were more than a tenth of a grain off from 120 grains. Lapua was maybe 5 out of a hundred.

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