Fed 215-W209-140g Powder
 

Part of the last 4 days was spent looking for an accurate Blackhorn 140g load load from the Omega Dream Season using Federal 215 primers. It never was found. It seemed like the scope was broke or some such.

Note: Western Powders recommends 120g of Blackhorn be the maximum load.

This morning i decided to try the W209 primer instead. The Dream Season has a 4X scope mounted. The temperature whilst shooting was 2. It was lightly snowing during the shoot. The rifle was kept in house through the night. The load was 140g Blackhorn, 300g PT Bullet, short black sabot, W209 primer. Range was 200 yard. Three shots were taken; the first from a totally clean barrel. The breech plug was a brand new, never used, standard Omega plug. Snow flakes can be seen falling past the target.









Then the breech plug was removed, and the rifle thoroughly cleaned. The PR breech plug was installed, and the target replaced. The rifle, scope, bullet, powder, sabot was the same as before. The primer was switched from W209 to Federal 215. The temperature was 5 this go around, and the sun kinda shining. Three shots were taken from 200 yard. The second shot couldn't be seen on the target, using the spotting scope. It couldn't be seen from 3 feet away either. It may have missed the backer at the low right, if i understood the marks in the snow behind the target. Here is 2/3 of a three shot group.









Then i went back out to 200 yard, and fired a fourth shot at the target. Now the target looks like three shots were taken. What an awful 4 shot group 'eh? Not even a good 3 shot group.


















The Federal 215 primer never produced an accurate 140g load. It seems i tried about 25 shots using several different 300g bullet, and none were accurate. One try using the W209 primer, resulted in a reasonable 200 yard three shot grouping. How about that? The photos of the primers, and breech plugs show the W209 primers allowed considerable 'through by' right through the primer, and the breech plug is lightly covered with soot. The PR breech plug is quite clean, and so are the Federal 215 primers. The PR adapters allowed zero 'through by'. One adapter showed a tiny bit of blow by. That one is the one used to make the second shot, that ended up out by Eenarr.

I don't know if I am breaking a rule of the forum but with all respect this is definitely not the first gizmo made by PR that is not working and that is not delivering advertised results.

Sorry for your money.

I have never shot that far nor tried that much powder. BUT I would be happy just hitting the target to be honest with you. Do you think that with that much powder it might be effecting accuracy?

What you did not report on was the condition of your Sabots.

I think I would have checked that right of the bat to see the condition of them.

140 Grains is a lot of BlackHorn. Ive heard of very few guys getting any good accuracy with that sort of load. 130 grains YES. But 140 not so much.

Keep plugging away with that PR kit. I would not throw the baby out with the bath water over one range session.

Yes, yes i do.

Checking sabot is a good suggestion; i didn't. It was snowing early, and had been snowing through the night. Fluffy snow, that didn't support sabot.

If/when i try these adapters again, the powder load will be substantially less................substantially.

Today was the fourth day trying the Federal 215 primer and 140g Blackhorn. Probably 25 times with different 300g Bullets. The results were consistently poor.................i began to think the scope was broke. The W209 primer revealed the scope is OK.

Roughly 130gr (91gr by weight) and a 325gr FTX is a thumper load. Ive only tried it in a 52cal though. The sabots hold up very well.

Ive only used 140gr in the Pacnor 45cal and the Harvester smooth blue also held up fine.

Interesting. Just glad I don't have worry about going out that far to take game with a ML! If I need to go out that far I can use my three banded Enfield.



My biggest problem is I don't have an long distance range to try it!

Today we made time to try standard large rifle primers. The first time the trigger was pulled, was a fail to fire. The next three trigger pulls were successful instantaneous ignitions. The next trigger pull was a fail to fire. The last shot attempt went bang right now. 200 yard groups weren't good. The load was 140g Blackhorn, 300g PT Gold, short black Harvester sabot, CCI 200 primer. Following is a photo of the 4 shot 200 yard grouping of 4 successful fires, and 2 fail to fire.

Geez..140 gr of BH209! That load has to smack your shoulder pretty good with that 300 gr bullet. I'm not recoil shy by any means but IMO using that much powder is a waste. I know you're trying to squeeze as much accuracy out of your rifle's as possible. But why punish yourself for only a minor accuracy increase? And in this case there was no increase in accuracy at all and probably a loss of it. How much energy are you gaining by using that much powder over, let's say, a 110 gr or 120 gr charge with much better accuracy?

Yes, i agree, 140g Blackhorn was not at all accurate. Yes, i agree, recoil is noticeable. What i really wanted to learn was whether the adapter, and large rifle magnum primer, would, or would not leak through. There is zero soot leaking between the primer and the adapter. This is a good result, but the resulting accuracy was awful.

Too bad the adapter, and the large rifle magnum primer, isn't as accurate as a plain old W209 primer, that leaks like a sieve. Seems strange does it not? These results make me inclined to believe the poor accuracy using the Federal 215 primer is due to inconsistent ignition.

Seems strange the leaking W209 primer provides a more consistent ignition than the tightly sealed Federal 215 primer. These results, lead me to conclude the large rifle magnum primer doesn't provide as much heat as the W209 primer.

Today, whilst fishing, during the slow times, i was pondering bullets, and powder. It seemed the next time out shooting, i will try 105g of Blackhorn powder, the Federal 215 primer, and the 300g Deep Curl. It will be instructional for me to learn whether the load will be somewhat accurate. As it stands, i believe the Federal 215 primer is not hot enough to reliably/consistently ignite 140g of Blackhorn.

The W209 primer doesn't seem to be 'strong' enough to allow the use of 140g Blackhorn, without leaking blow back. It seems one should use less powder, no matter what primer one is using.