Lee 205gr. .329

[JRR]

Hello everyone,
I have the Lee 175 gr. 8mm and the Lee Karabiner. The Karabiner must be sized to .325 for my rifle and is very deep seated to function. The c329-205 8X56 mold seems like it would give the added weight I want and can also be sized to .325. Has anyone used this in the 8mm M. ? The pointier nose would seem to feed better plus allow seating out to a longer OAL.

Thanks in advance,
Jeff

[Kraschenbirn]

I've had pretty fair results with the 329-204 - cast from three parts Lyman #2/1 part lino, water-quenched, and sized to .325 - in a sporterized VZ24. Best performing load, to date, has been over 17-18 gr. IMR4227: 2"-3" iron-sight groups @ 100M.

Bill

[Buckshot]

.................I used that slug in a nice VZ 24/47 that would 'just' swallow a .327" cast boolit! Naturally when I got around to shooting the rifle originally I failed the number one rule of Cast Boolitology 101. It's "Slug that barrel, Bonehead" :-). I had some slugs all lubesized @ .325" so loaded some up and was rewarded with largish groups and a bit of leading. So that was a waste of lead, GC's, powder, primer and time.

Not having a mould that would drop larger then .326" I bought that Lee mould. I lube-sized it to .330" then ran it up through a (opened up) Lee push through die to .327. I'd previously upset a slug in the throat and chamberneck. That .327" slug is what the throat is, but the caseneck area had enough extra to release. It performed very creditably over the 5 loads I tried. They were:

10.0 Unique
16.0 2400
20.0 SR4759
23.0 H4198
32.0 Surp IMR4475 (like 3031)

..................Buckshot

[JRR]

Thanks guys for the info. I'm thinking that sizing to .325 will give a full caliper size approx. 1/3rd up the nose to fill in the very long throat of my 1941 Ankara Turk.

I will order this mold and hopefully it will work as planned.

Jeff

[Black Wolf]

I've just starting using that Lee mold for my 8mm K98. I sized the bullet down from it's cast WW size of .329 to .325 (I had Lee make me a custom sizing die for like $25). Tumble lubed it, with gas checks, determined best seating depth for my K98 for this bullet, and shot about 3 inch groups at 80 yards. I used 25 grains of Reloder 7. Bullet OAL for my K98 seemed deep, but it was 2.869 - Only problem I had was that I had to set my leaf sight to the 400 meter setting to hit paper. I'd like to use the 100m setting but will have to experiment to do that I guess. My bore on my K98 slugged at .324.

Now, my VZ24 is another story. This thing slugged at .327 ironically. So, I'm gonna' use the "as cast" size bullet of .329 in that rifle. I may have to get a .329 sizing die though to get the cast check to slip on. My VZ24 OAL will be a lot longer, apparently it has a deeper throat than my K98 as my best OAL for that bullet is 3.02.

[GrizzLeeBear]

... Only problem I had was that I had to set my leaf sight to the 400 meter setting to hit paper. I'd like to use the 100m setting but will have to experiment to do that I guess...

The only way you will be able to do that is shoot a load that duplicated the ball ammo the sight was regulated for. IMHO, ignore the numbers on the sight except to use them to record where YOUR load is zero'd for.
I shoot a 1912-61 Chilean mauser for vintage rifle matches. This was rebarreled to 7.62 Nato when the Chileans re-arsenaled them from the original 7mm. The sight even has "7mm" stamped on it.
With my cast loads I set it to 7 (700m) for the 200 yard targets we shoot. At last sundays match, even with having to hold on the left edge of the black (need to move my front sight) they all stayed in the 9 ring or better in prone slow fire. [smilie=w: Again, my point is it doesn't matter what notch the sight is at, as long as it hits where your aiming.