A couple days ago I mentioned that I was very excited that I may have solved the muzzle velocity reproducibility problem by changing powders and doing another test with carefully weighed powder charges. SO I headed out to the range this morning all excited about the prospects. When I started shooting over the chronometer I was stunned. It seemed that no matter which batch of ammo I tested, they all had a bimodal muzzle velocity distribution centered around 1775 and 2025. That is crazy. I had the presence of mind to separate out the spent shells by muzzle velocity in the last series so I ended up with two sets that returned different velocities. I started measuring and weighing and found no correlations. Mostly I was just frustrated. So I am going to reload these and see if they give high and low results as before.

Solving the muzzle velocity problem is real important because it has a big effect on the point of impact. It needs to be consistent. This experiment should answer the question of whether the condition of the brass is important. I am also starting to wonder if the degree of filling the cartridge has an effect. Oh boy! Another experiment.