Staball HD for 6.5 PRC

Reloading
1

So, I’m relatively new to reloading. I have plenty of Staball HD powder so I was going to load some 143 grain ELDX’s for my 6.5 PRC. I was looking at the reloading data and Hodgdon has the max load at 60.1 grains and Hornady has the max load at 64.1 grains. Again, I’m pretty new to reloading but that seems like a significant difference. Does anyone have experience with that bullet and powder? What has worked well for you?

2

I haven’t tried staball hd yet. Hear lots of people liking it.

3

I use the Staball HD a lot for both 6.5 PRC and 7 PRC and have had great luck with it. For the 6.5 PRC I use the 140 gr. Berger Elite Hunter (with 58.8 grains of Staball HD) and it is incredibly accurate and deadly. Just killed a deer this morning with that load.

For the 7 PRC I use the 169 gr. Berger Classic Hunter (69 grains of Staball HD). Both work very well!

I was honestly a bit surprised by it, but yeah, it works great.

1 Like
4

So you’re under 60 grains with the 6.5. I went off the Hornady loading data and already loaded some rounds with 63 grains. I’m wondering if I should even try to shoot those.

5

Haven’t looked at the Hornady guidelines for it. I general go with the guidelines on the Hodgdon website. https://hodgdonreloading.com/

I suspect plenty of people have tried loading it over the manual, your could dig around to see what others are saying.

1 Like
6

In my 2020 waypoint 6.5 prc 24” barrel / Hornady brass /federal no.210 large rifle primer/143 eld-x bullet/59.8 grns. staball HD/avg. MV 2960 fps sd 7 es 28/ coal same as Hornady precision Hunter factory loads.always sub moa in my rifle. 3/10 of a grain below Max and same velocity as the factory eldx precision Hunter load.

1 Like
7

That sounds pretty good to me. It seems there’s no real reason to push past the Hodgdon max even if it’s more or less safely possible. Although it does make me somewhat curious what velocities you could get if you pushed to the Hornady max. I’ve always had the “better safe than sorry” attitude when it comes to to reloading though.

8

You can definitely shoot hotter loads. The problem with that is your brass takes a beating. The primer pockets won’t last very long. I’m speaking from experience plus I think 2960 FPS works pretty good for that load. Hope that information helped you

1 Like
9

Thanks for the info everyone. I’ll let you know how it goes and what load I come up with