I recently had my primary shooting rifle No4mk2 stop shooting well. It was setup by AJP and always shot great but now the bore is pretty worn, and it will pass a .303 gauge, and I thought I'd retire it. So I started using a new No4mk2, that didn't shoot well with the old load. I spoke to a guy at my club who put me onto these hornady.312dia. 174gn HPBT Matchkings that I thought might be just the ticket for my worn rifle, so I decided to do some load development on the new and the worn rifle.
I did this yesterday. and I used the" ladder method",components were Remington brass, CCI 250 magnum primers, AR2208, and Hornady .3105 174gn FMJ's for the new rifle and Hornady .312 174gn HPBT MK's for the worn one.OAL was 3.05" for both as this is my determined safe all round length to fit in any No4or SMLE mag.
I tend to err to lighter loads, but this test showed me 3 distinct clusters in both rifles, with the smallest cluster of both being the hottest end of the scale.
The smallest clusters of 7 odd consecutive rounds from each rifle was about 1" at 100m, which is just fine.
So I've now got good new loads for these rifles, and next week I'll repeat the test with AR2209 to see how that goes, as it fills the case a bit better, and I'm told it's more ideal.
Anyway if you havn't used the ladder method of load development I'd suggest looking it up and trying it as it works great and saves alot of time and rounds.
BTW both rifles had no problem approaching and at maximum loads.