Dillon XL650 and Varget

S

soup

Active member
Folks ,

I've been thinking about buying an XL to load 223 .
My rifle likes Varget with Sierra 69 grain BTHP heads . My question is weather anyone is using a 650 with a long extruded powder like Varget ? Are you having any issues ?
I have seen articles on the internet where reloaders had to polish this and that and really don't know if I want to spend around a grand to buy something I need to modify off the shelf .
Thank you all in advance for your time and consideration .

Soup
 
Have two 550's and have used H4895 to load thousands of rounds of 30-06 match ammo capable of cleaning the various NRA approved rifle targets used for NM competition. 4895 granules are a tad longer than varget granules. I assume powder measure is same on the 550 & 650 but cannot tell from picture in catalog?? Only thing I did was graphite the powder bars occasionally and am very careful that my technique is pretty much same from round to round. Occasionally the powder bar will hang up on a grain of powder and when it does, I dump that charge and the next to keep charges uniform.

I do develop my loads using ladder method and pick center of a fairly wide node for my load which normally shoot same POI even with .2 gr. or so variation.

I do use H335 in my 223's (also loaded on Dillons) as .2 gr might be a bit much in the smaller cases and the Dillon measures love ball powder.

Regards,
hm
 
I have a 550, same powder measure. While they do best with ball powders, I us ball, stick & flake powders with no real problems.

Specifically for varget, this is very limited:

At one time I was doing load dev for my 22-250 & I picked up a can of varget. When I looked at it I saw a coarse stick powder & expected metering problems in the dillon. I was pleasantly surprised in that it seems to work pretty consistently, better than I had predicted.

I ended up with a very accurate load using a different powder & never did much else with it, but you may just want to try a pound of it & see how you like it.
 
I have used only pistol powders in my 650 but have helped a friend who also has a 650 load .308 ammo with Varget and he was never satisfied with how much variation he got with the Dillon so he converted both a 650 and a 550 over to use Hornady powder throwers.
Personally I would just give AR comp/XBR8208/or the new IMR4166 a try as they all are similar burn rates to Varget and meter better. Just a thought.
 
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Originally Posted By: venaticI have used only pistol powders in my 650 but have helped a friend who also has a 650 load .308 ammo with Varget and he was never satisfied with how much variation he got with the Dillon so he converted both a 650 and a 550 over to use Hornady powder throwers.
Personally I would just give AR comp/XBR8208/or the new IMR4166 a try as they all are similar burn rates to Varget and meter better. Just a thought.

I load Varget with a progressive, using a Hornady Powder Measure, but I bought the whole progressive press from Hornady.
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I get about +/- .08 grains variance on the loads. Since I am loading "bulk" ammo I am not concerned. It shoots 55 gr. Hornady SPs into 1 MOA groups, and that is good enough for this ammo. I agree, spherical powders like Tac, Win 748, and the Hodgdon sperical offerings meter more consistently, so you may want to try that. If I want more consistent powder charges, I throw, and trickle, to +/- .02 grains(accuracy of my scale), and either complete on my single stage press, or if crimping, run them on two stations of the progressive.

Squeeze
 
so ya'll are seeing nice consistent drops with stick powders in the hornady thrower? what makes them more accurate than the other systems?


i have a LNL-AP but havent tried to drop any stick stuff from it based on past experience with dealing with trying to get consistency with other measures. i had always figured i just had to meter it through the chargemaster. which is fine by me - i just use the rifle charging die and stuff my funnel in it, leaving the ram on the upstroke while the charge finishes throwing.

i guess i need to get it out and play around and see how consistent it'll drop varget and 4895.
 
I have a 550 and had problems with varget bridging in the powder funnel while loading. Granted this was also a compressed load also. I'm in the process of switching to a ball powder.
 
H335 works great w/55 gr. NBT's & 62 gr. partitions and Ball C does well w/55's also, both in the rifles and the measure.

Regards,
hm
 
I load .223 on a 550 with IMR 4064. All I had been able to get so I stocked up. It meters decently but you do get a little inconsistency sometimes.
 
Try CF&E 223 for 223, 22-250 and 308. It is like coal dust and should meter and throw nicely in the reloader. It shoot cleanly and I use only this in my 223. I get nice tight groups and it is available. Rudy
 
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