1. Several primers are fine, may depend on what you can find. Cci#41 are pretty available, as are cci450. I would choose one of these no problem. The fed 205’s, haven’t seen them much. Try to pick a primer and stick with it. Get a 1k brick. Don’t mess with 1 or 200. I do not recommend “Winchester” 41/military, I had several fail to fire. But cci’s are gtg.
2. On finding your load, there are 1000 ways. My method is first, to do a single shot ladder, at 0.3 like I said earlier, to establish the powder/MV curve for your rifle and combo. That’s to “calibrate” your setup. From the graph of those shots you will get a curve fit/linear graph of charges/MV. I probably would start somewhere about 29.0 hrs, up to max which iirc is 31.6. (Don’t have all my data right now…). Look around the 2950 ish mv, then start your charges 0.5-0.6 below that, go 0.5-0.6 over, in 0.3 jumps. I use 4 at each charge, it will tell you sd, es, and possibly grouping, use the chrono. Then you can re-verify that charge with some of what’s left. That will give you a fairly accurate hunting load. Est less than 1 moa should not be hard to see. All together you should have a load worked out in less than your stash of 50.
3. As to variables, keep the brass you load/shoot at each stage, at the same nbr fo firings. I call them new, 1x, 2x etc. also keep primers the same. On powder, keep it at same lot number. Now when I buy a powder, I get at least 2 lb at a time. Online doing it that way will get you lbs of same lot nbr which is what you want. If you have to switch to a new lot#, you can sometimes shoot your load in the new lot and re-calibrate your mv for that new lot, the load grains may be slightly different.
Unless you are ocd or a precision shooter, once you have your load worked out for that setup you can make them up in a batch. Usually getting more of same bullets doesn’t impact your load, nor more primers (although this is a maybe, at least I have not run into it). The big thing than can vary is powder lot to lot. Your brass is all one mfr and kept at same firing nbr, so those won’t vary much.
Now as you shoot 100-200 loads, the actual OAL might begin to lengthen because the throat starts to erode a bit deeper, wear and tear. But that’s a bridge you can deal with whenever it starts to show up in your a curacies.
I know there are lots of other opinions on all of this, main thing is to pick a decent method that works for you. I base mine less on “POA/POI” because for me as a shooter, physics and mechanical engineering are more constant than my skill of aim. So I let physics and mechanics govern my approach.
2. On finding your load, there are 1000 ways. My method is first, to do a single shot ladder, at 0.3 like I said earlier, to establish the powder/MV curve for your rifle and combo. That’s to “calibrate” your setup. From the graph of those shots you will get a curve fit/linear graph of charges/MV. I probably would start somewhere about 29.0 hrs, up to max which iirc is 31.6. (Don’t have all my data right now…). Look around the 2950 ish mv, then start your charges 0.5-0.6 below that, go 0.5-0.6 over, in 0.3 jumps. I use 4 at each charge, it will tell you sd, es, and possibly grouping, use the chrono. Then you can re-verify that charge with some of what’s left. That will give you a fairly accurate hunting load. Est less than 1 moa should not be hard to see. All together you should have a load worked out in less than your stash of 50.
3. As to variables, keep the brass you load/shoot at each stage, at the same nbr fo firings. I call them new, 1x, 2x etc. also keep primers the same. On powder, keep it at same lot number. Now when I buy a powder, I get at least 2 lb at a time. Online doing it that way will get you lbs of same lot nbr which is what you want. If you have to switch to a new lot#, you can sometimes shoot your load in the new lot and re-calibrate your mv for that new lot, the load grains may be slightly different.
Unless you are ocd or a precision shooter, once you have your load worked out for that setup you can make them up in a batch. Usually getting more of same bullets doesn’t impact your load, nor more primers (although this is a maybe, at least I have not run into it). The big thing than can vary is powder lot to lot. Your brass is all one mfr and kept at same firing nbr, so those won’t vary much.
Now as you shoot 100-200 loads, the actual OAL might begin to lengthen because the throat starts to erode a bit deeper, wear and tear. But that’s a bridge you can deal with whenever it starts to show up in your a curacies.
I know there are lots of other opinions on all of this, main thing is to pick a decent method that works for you. I base mine less on “POA/POI” because for me as a shooter, physics and mechanical engineering are more constant than my skill of aim. So I let physics and mechanics govern my approach.