Apex
10-03-2009, 05:29 PM
#17
Nontypical Buck
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Saxonburg Pa
Posts: 3,925
Underclocked,
I give you an A-plus on the entire right up. Very detailed and done very professionally. The Apex in my opinion is better looking then the Encore. To early to tell now, but you really only seem to be getting good accuracy with that one 300grn bullet. I was really surprised it was spraying those 200grn XTP'S????
I notice you are keeping the loads down around 95grns. Is that because of recommended loads or by choice? The 200grn Lehighs dont have a chance at low velocity. They are a border line bullet and need speed. That's why he designed the 185grn bullet. The 250grn Lehighs shoot really well in the Endeavor with short black harvester sabots.
When you are trying the XTP'S are you trying different sabots as well? (MMP and Harvesters) I think you could equal the speer bullets with some tweaking.
One more thing, have you tried any 250grn SST'S? If so how was the accuracy?
I give you an A-plus on the entire right up. Very detailed and done very professionally. The Apex in my opinion is better looking then the Encore. To early to tell now, but you really only seem to be getting good accuracy with that one 300grn bullet. I was really surprised it was spraying those 200grn XTP'S????
I notice you are keeping the loads down around 95grns. Is that because of recommended loads or by choice? The 200grn Lehighs dont have a chance at low velocity. They are a border line bullet and need speed. That's why he designed the 185grn bullet. The 250grn Lehighs shoot really well in the Endeavor with short black harvester sabots.
When you are trying the XTP'S are you trying different sabots as well? (MMP and Harvesters) I think you could equal the speer bullets with some tweaking.
One more thing, have you tried any 250grn SST'S? If so how was the accuracy?
10-03-2009, 06:48 PM
#18
Nontypical Buck
Thread Starter
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 3,092
No SSTs, don't have any right now. Keeping the load at 95 grains just for comparison's sake - will probably bump it up some later. CVA says a limit of 110 loose and that's plenty for me (though I'm sure the rifle could actually handle much more).
Those 200 grain XTPs were REALLY hard to load, almost as difficult as were the Lehighs. Both those bullet types were shot using sabots that I'm sure caused me to botch seating pressure. (I think they were all standard MMP sabots.) I'm going to give the 200 grain XTPs another whirl later on, this time in Harvester sabots and using a bit more powder. They shoot lights out in both my Accura rifles so I'm confident the Apex will do just as well with those.
The rifle had been left sighted in with 300 grain Speer Uni-Cors. I pieced the last three shots (whitish colored holes) with that bullet into the composite pic shown before and got this
Not a perfect job of patching them together but you can see the Speers and the Hornady's were very close to the same POI. Same powder charge and same sabot for those two bullets.
Those 200 grain XTPs were REALLY hard to load, almost as difficult as were the Lehighs. Both those bullet types were shot using sabots that I'm sure caused me to botch seating pressure. (I think they were all standard MMP sabots.) I'm going to give the 200 grain XTPs another whirl later on, this time in Harvester sabots and using a bit more powder. They shoot lights out in both my Accura rifles so I'm confident the Apex will do just as well with those.
The rifle had been left sighted in with 300 grain Speer Uni-Cors. I pieced the last three shots (whitish colored holes) with that bullet into the composite pic shown before and got this
Not a perfect job of patching them together but you can see the Speers and the Hornady's were very close to the same POI. Same powder charge and same sabot for those two bullets.
