reloaded today for the 220 and 260, and loaded for the grandson's 308 earlier in the week. All three shot extremely well, and I was looking in my new Nosler manual and every load I use in those rifles and in the 223's old barrel were the suggested load for maximum accuracy with those powders (within .1 or .2 grains). With the wide variations in barrel lengths, contours, and such as that, how can they have the suggested best loads with each powder and be correct? I found the favorite loads through testing. Maybe from now on I'll just use their suggested loads.

If Nosler can predict best loads, why am I (and maybe you) working so hard to find the magic loads?

Its called barrel harmonics.

Chad and I had a 100% agreement in a discussion today on a .308 load. He said "if the rifle doesn't shoot a 175 SMK between 44.0 and 45.0 of Varget, something is wrong with the rifle".

Ask a hundred shooters that run a 140 gr bullet atop H-4350 in 6.5 Creedmoor. A huge majority will tell you 41.8 to 42.8 gr of powder.

7 Rem Mag 180 Berger VLD, H-Retumbo. Two rifles have shot THE best at 71.2 gr.

Barrel harmonics I say.

Some powder/bullet/cartridge combinations just yield wide accuracy nodes that work among lots of guns. Somewhere in a wide accuracy node will usually work in other rifles of the same caliber.

Well...yes. Harmonics are most certainly the answer. But, are you saying (and I guess you are) that barrel harmonics are basically the same with skinny barrels, heavy barrels, short and long ones, straight fluted and spiral fluted ones.

Still, the favorite load in my 220 with barrel one (short varmint barrel) is exactly the same favorite load in barrel two (short skinny barrel). And the same for my first 260 (16.5 inch barrel) and my second 260 (20 inch #4 contour). So your harmonics explanation must have some truth to it. Still, it's hard for me to fully accept that essentially all barrels In a caliber have similar harmonics.

So, to look at the bright side, load work ups should be a bit easier.

But that's just IT. Barrel harmonics are NOT the same regardless of length and contour---they will be different. I say that all this supports the idea that it's more about ignition and propagation.

Harmonics are the only answer I can accept, even though it seems a stretch. Ignition and propagation just don't seem to me to be the answer. I guess I could call Nosler and ask them.

What about barrel length?
It would be fun if you could take a gun and slowly the chop the barrel down and find the node.

You're going to talk to one single person who has his own opinion. Everything you read will be one person's opinion.

I'm not one to reinvent the wheel at every opportunity, but I know there are plenty of "facts" out there floating around that are repeated as "facts" yet they are completely freekin wrong and based on error.

There are problems with what we "know," also. Most of us "know" stuff, or at least think we do. It would be far more honest and accurate to say we BELIEVE stuff, and those same many of us have damned good reasons to believe what we do. But actually knowing? That's another ballgame.

Do we KNOW that barrel harmonics change when length is changed? And just HOW do we know?

I am pretty sure that a lot of what is said about harmonics is true, but I don't believe it's some stand-alone panacea or holy grail of reloading.

Take barrel harmonics. We're probably all familiar with wind chimes. The short tubes produce higher pitched sounds when struck. It follows that a shorter barrel resonates at a higher frequency. It again follows that the harmonics will be different.

I just think it's all a lot more complicated than we want to accept.

That was one of the things I saw some years ago that made me question everything.

There is validity in harmonics. With regards to the OP's original statement I think KMON's response is more applicable as to the "why" similar loads work well across different rifles (think Fed GMM - as discussed in the OCW method) over just saying it's harmonics.

Now, I think the harmonics comes into effect when we talk about fine "tuning". Once you find that accurate node, more often than not by adjusting the seating depth you can cause those groups to shrink-or grow.

Even though I can't explain why a particular load seems to work well in most rifles, the facts indicate that they do. That means that I 'know' what I really need to know. The rest is speculation. I'd like to know the reason, but that knowledge isn't critical to me.

LOL. I can see that.

Sometimes wondering "why" will just make your head hurt.

Maybe someday someone will come up with a way of observing everything that goes on when a cartridge fires. Until then, I think we're basically blind men trying to explain what an elephant is based on touch and we don't even know which part of the elephant we're touching. I'm sure everyone's heard that one.