LOAD DEVELOPMENT

PVA SENECA SOLID BULLETS

Posted by Mr.Wild on
Patriot Valley Arms Seneca solid bullets have been absolutely breaking all the rules with performance. The Wilde Side of Precision has shot a bit of these over the past two years. The first batch of these were off a prize table from Sniper’s Hide Cup 2019 in .264, 124 grain.
For this write up we were using the 6mm 95 grain bullets. In the event the baseline platform could not perform, we started with a 6BRX with a Krieger 4-groove 1-7 twist, mitigating the performance results. As seen in the picture above, These things shoot really unbelievable groups at 100 yards. patriotvalleyarms.com

Patriot Valley Arms Seneca Solids

These projectiles are really pricey for 50 rounds. In short, the application could be worth the money. We ran into a bit of a reloading debate over these. For this reason, multiple people involved being very experienced reloaders. We decided to jump these bullets, whereas starting at the lands and working your way back. We used the “pet load” for the BRX. Under these circumstances, pushes Berger 109 hybrids at 2880 FPS.



With the 95 solids, we found that they were shooting 2880 FPS. The solids we have found yield higher velocities with a much faster powder than the H4350 such as N150. Therefore we started off with jumping .120 and worked in .020 increments closer to the lands. Consequently the first group is the first picture on this page which was incredible. Because of the jump, we were able to keep the pressure down.

Incredibly small shot groups

We found that the solid bullets have to be hammered. These solids tend to bleed pressure off faster than standard lead core match bullets. For this reason, we needed to run a faster burning powder and run it on the bleeding edge. Every solid projectile we have tested shoots the best with a hot cartridge load, thus yielding incredible performance.

Solids have a pressure ring on the bearing surface. Because of this, it is where we always start a load development for seat depth. We seat the projectile down to the opening of the case mouth with the pressure ring. After testing we found a massive node from jump .140-.080, resulting in one hole groups.
Another example of the performance of these Seneca bullets.

Repeatability at its best

Match solids are lathe turned projectiles so generally have a high level of consistency. With certain places requiring lead free bullets for hunting, Patriot Valley offers solids for hunting bullets.
This is a screen grab from PVA’s website boasting a .291 G7 BC. stay tuned for some more testing on these projectiles. Were looking for a recipe to shoot the 95 grain 6mm at roughly 3000FPS, together with the BRX or the 6 Dasher. The goal is to shoot these out to over 1000 yards to true BC and validate the published BC from PVA.

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