Sisco

Check the alignment of your gas tube. When you replaced the forend make sure it was properly aligned again.

Ed glad you apologized. Reading the thread it was pretty clear it was BS. Your mistake was letting it go on too long. Forums are not like sitting in a room of friends who know you well and BSing, which we all do. If you don't know the people personally, best to play it straight up. Glad you got your problems worked out on your build.

Loaded up 89 308 175 SMK and sized a hundred more 308 brass.

Not necessairily. If it straightens out in the sizing die and has no cracks in the brass it should be okay. Stay away from brass that has dented or deformed shoulders. That is where a lot of the stress is.

Try googling the markings on the case. That worked for me with some really old rare stuff I found.

Just bit on this: http://www.midwayusa.com/product/913466/burris-ballistic-laser-rangefinding-rifle-scope-4-12x-42mm-eliminator-illuminated-reticle-matte?cm_vc=ProductFinding Have no idea if it will work or be a white elephant. At this price I will take a chance.

A little bit of trial and error. If I hear a highly recommendd combination of bullet and powder from someone I respect, I will start to work with it. That is how I got Reloader15 and the 168 gr SMK combo. A former Army sniper recommended that combo to me. And for my Standard AR10 rifle it has worked out really well. For that 42 grains seems to be the sweet spot. Then it is going up and down by tenths of a grain until your groups are as small as you can get them consistently. That takes a while, but once you lock in on your rifles preference, you have the winning recipe for that rifle. Now I am working on my carbine with 175 SMK's and RE15, which is similar to Varget.

About right. But if you do it right and tailor the load to your rifle, they are also more accurate. FGMM cant hold a candle to my tailored reloads for my 308's because I refined the load to the individual weapons.

Thanks guys. Get out to 500 yards though, and that one inch gap becomes 5-7 inches. Got to get that down a bit.

At the end of the day today at the range, I had five rounds left. Three were in Lake City M118 brass, and two were in Winchester M80 brass. All were loaded with Winchester primers, RE15 41 gr., and 175 Sierra Match Kings. The three upper left are the Lake City, the two lower right are the Winchester M80. Mix and matching brass manufacturers can affect your groups. 100 yards off a bipod. AR10T carbine, 16 in barrel.

I just saw the rifle that won last years Palma. A long sucker! It all boils down to when the bullet goes under the speed of sound. Then key holing starts. As long as the short barreled weapon bullets stay supersonic they can compete. But above 500 yards, it is going to take a lot more to do that. And eventually the longer barrel will always win out. With a 308 a carbine goes transonic around 500 yards. The study above looked only out to 500 yards, probably for that reason. The carbine and the rifle have a chance to be equal, but only at limited distances. After 8-900 yards, the 308 rifle loses out to the 300 Winchester Magnum for the same reason. And the 300 WM eventually loses out to the .338 Lapua.

After I got my first AR10 I punched in "308 AR" into Google, and Voila! There it was.

It will be interesting to see what you find. My last effort got knocked awry by a wind that made accurate shooting difficult and that kept blowing my chronograph over. I have settled on my rifle load of 42 gr RE15 behind 168 SMK BTHP. My next visit to the range I am going to compare that load to 41 gr RE15 behind a 175 gr SMK BTHP in the carbine. Might have to go to a faster burning powder in the carbine to make sure all the propellant burns up before it leaves the barrel. Hope not.

I am planning to do my own workups on my rifle and carbine out to about 500 yards. Guess we will see who is right. Read the comments, by the way, was not impressed by them. More along the lines of a fan in the bleachers critiqing a professional ball player. Some people always have to contradict.

This is a great article that stands conventional wisdom on its head regarding barrel length, velocity, and accuracy. A good read. http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2013/10/daniel-zimmerman/the-truth-about-barrel-length-muzzle-velocity-and-accuracy/

Nice boat and all this talk about crawdads makes me want to visit our relatives in Biloxi. Shepp, we have the Rusty Red Crawdads up here now in the Eau Claire lakes. Lots of em and they taste great. Stay away from that Chinese crap the water they raise them in is your basic septic tank quality. No wonder they taste like s__t.

The great outdoors video. Didnt you say that was supposed to be in Wisconsin? I didnt see the movie originally. As far as bears, the average size is increasing up here. A fellow I know ran a radio tagging study of black bears for twenty years, and he was telling me that one reason they are getting bigger is deer baiting. And because of deer baiting, they are staying awake longer into the fall to take advantage of the free food. I can vouch for this. A couple of years ago I had a ground blind destroyed by a bear during rifle season. And on Thanksgiving Day I was in a tree stand during a snow storm when I look behind me and there is a bear 100 feet away looking at me. About 250 pounds. He watched me for five minutes, than up and wandered away.

Selway Armory has some good deals right now on .308, and a nice selection. I have dealt with them before and been very satisfied. http://www.selwayarmory.com/308winchester.aspx

Oh that is a good one. A grizzly in Northern Wisconsin! Saw a black bear two weeks ago on the Bad River Reservation right outside Ashland was huge! Guessing close to 400 pounds if not a little more.

168 gr BTHP $28.82/100 5 boxes of 100 are $25 cheaper than 1 box of 500. http://www.midwayusa.com/product/1482125877/sierra-matchking-bullets-30-caliber-308-diameter-168-grain-hollow-point-boat-tail

Midway has clearance pricing on the SMK 168 gr BTHP 5 boxes of 100 are cheaper than 1 box of 500 by$25. http://www.midwayusa.com/product/1482125877/sierra-matchking-bullets-30-caliber-308-diameter-168-grain-hollow-point-boat-tail

Had a frind run some reload data on Quick Load. For military brass Hornady data is spot on . 42 gr RE15 behind a 175 grain SMK puts you in the "caution " zone. And Hornady was recommending 41.5 grains max. When I used 42 grains I got immediate flattening of the primers for first two shots. Went back and went down to 41 gr. And will be starting from there. 168 grains SMK with 42 gr RE15 showed a good pressure curve with peak right at max, and indeed turned out to be an excellent accurate combination.

Take a close look at the Detonics, and look back over their history. No matter how you dress it up, and add window dressing, a 1911 is still a 1911. Thank you John Browning.

Very cool! When my Dad worked at McDonnell in St. Louis from 1946 to 1953 he was on the design team for the F101 and was involved in preparatory work on the F4 phantom prototypes. Kinda neat that your Dad flew what my Dad helped design.

Excellent advice. Inventory the environment that you currently know, and choose your allies well. It is almost impossible to carry enough to live on, and if you depend on your weapons to take what you need, statistics are against you. Eventually you will come up against an adversary at least as capable as you. Maybe only 10% of the time, but the accumulative odds are against you over time.