MMA10mm wrote:Wow, Lehigh! THANKS for that informative post. Even more so: thanks for the tease about what is yet to come!
If we can intrude, what was the reason for discontinuing the 186gr CF?
We were a little short-sighted in our test protocol for the original 200gr ME and 186gr CF. We had not tested them in fully loaded 30 round pmags. Frankly, the thought of dumping $70 of ammo at once really never occurred to our Pennsylvania Dutch sensibilities! Well, we found out that both rounds could bind when fully loaded so we slimmed them down to stack and feed reliably. There is a video on the website showing a 30 round full auto run (you can just barely see me crying at the dollars bouncing off the wall).
As far as the teaser goes, we are stoked about the new bullet and think it is pretty exceptional. Still have some testing left.
MMA10mm wrote:Wow, Lehigh! THANKS for that informative post. Even more so: thanks for the tease about what is yet to come!
If we can intrude, what was the reason for discontinuing the 186gr CF?
We were a little short-sighted in our test protocol for the original 200gr ME and 186gr CF. We had not tested them in fully loaded 30 round pmags. Frankly, the thought of dumping $70 of ammo at once really never occurred to our Pennsylvania Dutch sensibilities! Well, we found out that both rounds could bind when fully loaded so we slimmed them down to stack and feed reliably. There is a video on the website showing a 30 round full auto run (you can just barely see me crying at the dollars bouncing off the wall).
As far as the teaser goes, we are stoked about the new bullet and think it is pretty exceptional. Still have some testing left.
Thanks!
You're killing me!!
Thanks for the background on the discontinued (sounds like a better description is that they evolved...) bullets.
tallburnedmidget wrote:
A little tip to save you some money while working up your load. I used these much cheaper Grafs 175gr bullets to get in the ball park with a load http://www.grafs.com/retail/catalog/pro ... ctId/26343
I made sure that approximately the same amount of bullet was in the case for both the Grafs load and the Lehigh load.I wouldn't try to load the Grafs bullet any shorter as you will run out of bullet for the case neck to grab.
I recorded this load fired from my 16" AAC Carbine gas upper:
175gr Grafs Bullet
COAL: 1.889"
Powder 10.3gr A1680
Avg FPS: 1094fps
Crimp: Light with Lee FCD
My 174gr Lehigh CF load was the following, remember same amount of bullet in case:
174gr Lehigh Defense Controlled Fracture
COAL: 2.180"
Powder 10.3gr A1680
Avg FPS: 1021fps
Crimp: Light with Lee FCD
Notice the 73fps difference with the Lehigh being slower. I stuck with that load to this point as it did well at 50yds but I need to do 100yd shooting to really put it through it's paces. Also all strings were 5 shot and chronied with a Magnetospeed V1.
THIS LOAD INFO IS MAY NOT BE SAFE FOR YOU SO WORK YOUR LOADS FOLLOWING WELL KNOWN RELOADING SAFETY GUIDELINES!!!
Ok now that the disclaimer is out of the way, feel free to learn from what I did and try to save yourself a little money while getting the load you need. Also, please report back with your findings
They say a picture is worth a thousand words:
I'm loading a Sierra 180gr BTSP to simulate the Lehigh bullet, and after doing some measuring, I decided on an COAL of 1.977". You can see how close that ended up to the seating depth of the Lehigh bullet.
I've loaded 10.7grs and 10.3grs (thanks TBM), and I hope to chrono them tomorrow, depending on the rain.
After looking over the cartridges as they're loaded, I got to thinking the distance from the leade/lands to the ogive would give the simulating bullet (in my case the Sierra) a lower velocity, because it has such a long jump to the rifling. Yet, you found the opposite. Also interesting is that the Lehigh, being a solid, hard bullet (vs. the soft lead core in the simulating bullets) should also create more resistance to deforming and thus higher pressure, also resulting in higher velocity for the Lehigh. Yet, again, you found the opposite. Very curious.
I didn't want to keep pulling this thread off-topic, so I've started a new thread in the Handloading section about doing some substitute loading for these Lehigh Defense bullets. I pulled together TBM's and my comments above, and added my results from a range session today. I invite all to talk about handloading their Lehigh Subsonic bullets on the thread here: viewtopic.php?f=141&t=92566
