N165 in .260

farmer7 · August 9, 2015

I know N165 is far from being seen as an ideal powder in the .260 but my two nearest gunshops have a pathetic range of powders, especially for the. 260. I've had H4350 on order now for months and still no sign. Neither have N150, N160,H4831 and others either.....

Anyway I decided to give N165 a try after running it through Quickload. It predicted 2776 fps with the 140gr AMAX and 47.5 grains N165 with my Lapua cases H2o capacity at 55gr with a 23.6" barrel and loaded to 2.830" to fit my magazine, which if I'd achieved I'd be happy with if it was accurate.

After working up its only achieving 2660 fps at 47.5, after adjusting the burn rate a little its showing pressure at 51k and powder burnt at 95.2%. This is also shown at 110% case fill but loading using a long drop tube the powder is around half way up the shoulder and on seating you can feel it compress a little.

Anyway after shooting the cases are pretty manky, especially the neck and shoulder :

Accuracy is very good at around 1/4" for all groups shot around the 47.3-47.8 mark at 100 yards but haven't tried it at distance yet.

Is there any reason to not persevere with it, regarding the blowback round the cases and the poor powder burnt figures and the high compression percentage??? Would any of that make them unlikely to shoot well at distance? Would it be likely I'd get carbon fouling in the throat with it not burning as cleanly?

Even at 2660fps they still beat my 123gr AMAX H4350 2900fps load for wind using the Litz profiles in shooter.

jcampbellsmith · August 9, 2015

I'm not using it at the minute, but N165 and 140 gr A-Max are one of my staple loads. I went to one of Bradley's training sessions and shot these groups a couple of years ago with the 260 Rem. Keep in mind that I didn't make any of the wind calls for these groups.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/099mck0qmrlvoxh/AAB5vnfFcZ1340q_oJ13Xnb-a?dl=0

I've looked in my notes and see I used 45.5 gr N165 and got 2683 fps as an average of 13 shots last Spring using Lapua brass. I also see I've first chrono'd this load in May 2010.

I'll load more of this load soon, note that my 260 Rems are throated long and the COL of these rounds was approximately 2.9 inches.

Regards

JCS

farmer7 · August 9, 2015

Thats interesting that you were getting good accuracy at distance with it too John. Did your cases look anything like mine after firing or did you find it quite clean?

banus02 · August 12, 2015

good evening farmer7 I use 48gr with 129gr in my 6.5 no problems but I do use a magnum primer which was suggested by laurie on this site my max load was 49grs but opened up too much had sooty cases with fed 210 primers changed to fed215 and dropped one grain of powder and all good.