help with reduced 8x57 load

[redneckdan]

I tried loading some reduced loads today for my 8x57 VZ-24. The load is 10 grains of Reddot under a Lee 175 bullet. The bullets are unsized and tumble lubed. This load is from the lyman cast boolit handbook, chronod at 1350. I did not use any type of filler. I couldn't hit a 8.5x11 piece of paper at 25 yds with this load. But when I sighted in my shot gun, I shot a clover leaf. Is definitely something to do with the loads. What should I try tweaking? Thanks.

[Maineboy]

Dan, lots of things could be happening. As a start, you mentioned using unsized boolits, if they are unchecked as well, that may be part of the problem. I've never had any luck shooting gas check designed boolits without the gas checks in place. Have you shot cast in the rifle before? If so what boolit and powder and how did it do? Is this a new to you rifle that you're just shooting for the first time or do you have some experience with it?

[bruce drake]

I use the same Lee bullet tumble lubed, sized and gas-checked under 12 gr of Red Dot with excellent accuracy.

Some other questions for you regarding the rifle
Do you know the size of your bore? Some rifles need a .324 diameter bullet depending on the condition of the rifle's barrel.

Have you recovered any of the bullets that you fired? The base of the bullets will tell you if you are getting gas cutting.

Put a target right behind your Chrono screens. See if the bullet is tumbling as it's coming out of the barrel. This could either be a bad crown on the barrel or a bullet that is seated badly. Did you expand the case neck before you seated the lead bullet? A tipped bullet that gets shaved as its seated will send your groups to the zipcode range!

Just a few words for thought.

Bruce

[redneckdan]

no tumbling was evident on the bullets that hit the target. these bullets are un gas checked, but are designed to use checks. I currently don't have the funds for a midway order fer checks and a lee sizer. I did slug my bore and the lee bullet is just big enough to fill the grooves at "as cast" diameter. I've shot jacketed out of it and can hit a 12" gong at 200yds. I did not expand the case neck beyond what is done by the expander ball on the decaping rod but I didn't notice shaving of the boolits while seating. I did notice variations in the way the rounds fired, ie loudness and recoil. I weighed each charge, so it wasn't a mischarge, I think its the powder not staying against the primer. I loaded up 5 rounds wih 10gr of powder, using a small tuft of dry lint as a filler, just enough material to hold the powder against the primer.

[bruce drake]

How much have you cleaned that barrel since you shot the jacketed rounds. Copper fouling will definitely affect the accuracy of your rifle. Nothing harder to scrape out than lead that has been sandwiched between layers of copper jacketing. Don't get me wrong, it can be done. A barrel needs to be seasoned to shoot either jacketed or cast. You just have probably 60 years of jacketed seasoning to overcome.

The changes in perceived recoil and the report do make me think that you have issues with either your seating of the bullet (variable crimping produces variable pressures) or the placement of the powder. Red Dot is fast enough that powder position shouldn't be a factor especially since you are placing filler material on top of the powder. I've never used dryer lint before. That's definitely one for the Frugal File.

Bruce

[redneckdan]

I got the idea while doing laundry last night. I have neither kapok or dacron pillow filling; I went to clean the dryer screen out, looked at the wad in my hand and thought, "bingo, filler material!". I have not yet cleaned this barrel. My dad said he cleaned it when he got it. What solvent should I use? thanks.

edit: I have not yet tried the dryer lint filler, the loads I tried last night are fillerless. I'm going to try the filler tonight.

[Maineboy]

I think you'd find that Lee boolit would do much better with gas checks attached. I lieu of that, some type of filler might work on protecting the boolit bases from that hot Red Dot powder. If you find fouling in the bore, work at cleaning the copper out of it before trying anything else. Most of the commercial copper removing products work well. If your barrel's fouled badly, it may take along time to get clean. I've used a bit fine steel wool on a bronze brush to help things along in my really bad milsurp barrels. As for Red Dot, I've used 3 pounds of it for cast boolit loads but I often got alot of vertical stringing and now use 2400 with better results. There may be lots of things you'll need to try before you finally get it right.

[Larry Gibson]

I tried loading some reduced loads today for my 8x57 VZ-24. The load is 10 grains of Reddot under a Lee 175 bullet. The bullets are unsized and tumble lubed. This load is from the lyman cast boolit handbook, chronod at 1350. I did not use any type of filler. I couldn't hit a 8.5x11 piece of paper at 25 yds with this load. But when I sighted in my shot gun, I shot a clover leaf. Is definitely something to do with the loads. What should I try tweaking? Thanks.

Some good suggestions so far from others. Let me add a couple things to try. I've not got great accuracy with GC bullets without the GCs but have got acceptable accuracy out to 50 yards. I found two things that kill accuracy with unGC'd GC bullets. First is you can't drive them much over 1150 fps. Breaking the speed of sound seems to be a barrier here. Second you can't seat any part of the bullet's bottem driving band below the bottom of the case neck into the powder space.

In 8x57 using a M48 with Lyman's 323470 cast of reclaimed range lead, tumbled lubed and without GCs I worked on developing some "Cat's sneeze" loads. I used some dedicated (and well marked) fully fire formed cases that had their flash holes reamed with #28 drill. This prevents the shoulder from being set back with these light loads and creating case headspace problems. I used Bullseye powder with no wads or fillers because it gives really consistant ignition with these light loads. I worked up loads with charges from 3 gr to 8 gr. 7 gr went 1194 fps and accuracy went south with it. Most of my testing was done on an indoor 50' range. At 50' 6.5 gr Bullseye pushes them at 1134 fps and you can cover a 5 shot group with a dime. I'm looking at a target with 4 consecutive 5 shot groups all that small. With the rear sight set at 600 meters the groups are 1" high at 50'. I got similar success with .30 cal unGCd GC bullets in other cartridges. However, Every time I exceeded 1150 fps or seated the bullets to deep accuracy went south.

Conversely, Liberty (now out of business) sold a nice plain base 160 gr FP 8mm bullet. I used to get them unsized and unlubed. I simply tumbled them and shot as they came (.325) with either Red dot or Unique I could push them to 1400 fps with 1 to 1 1/2" groups at 50 yards. They made a nice plinkin/small game load.

Larry Gibson

[redneckdan]

okay, I'll try some lighter charges too.

[redneckdan]

i'm cleaning it right now, I got a whole shiz load of lead out of it. I think the gas cutting/ veloicty to high theory is right. I'm gonna try loading some reduced charges. 5gr, 7gr, 9gr sound about right?

[j4570]

I think you really nead to gas check these.

I'm no cast bullet expert, but Mausers have long leades, which I suspect only can make the flame cutting worse.

The LEE sizer is pretty cheap. Try and pick one up, mainly to seat the gas check.

I've seen a Mauser with a sewerpipe bore shoot 2-3" at 100 yards, with jacketed that is.

Since 8mm is only about $59 per case for the Yugo stuff from Century, I haven't seen the need to load yet. Sure, it's corrosive, but bolt guns aren't that hard to clean compared to gas guns (ie, Garand).

[redneckdan]

my need for reloading is that the indoor range where i work is limited to 2200ft-lbs and 2000fps. thus if i want to shoot, i need to reload.

[redneckdan]

I got the lead out of the barrel, still working on the carbon fouling, I'm on 61 patches and counting...could be a long night.

[redneckdan]

I loaded up 5rds with 5 grs of reddot, with filler. The bullets are seated so the base is inside the neck. Once I get the barrel clean, I will try them out.

[Buckshot]

.............redneckdan, one of the Tuesday Burrito Bandisto's has a nice M48 and is haveing good results shoosting commercial cast 170gr 32-40 boolits (.323") from it. He's using I think 8.0grs of Unique. Difference here is that his slug is designed as a plain base. We chrono'd his load and IIRC it was like 1150 fps or so.

Unique is a tad slower then Red Dot, and 8.0grs is pretty obviously a lighter charge then 10.0grs. I don't know how much the slower speed of the Unique vs Red Dot is playing over the simple fact that the Unique load is lighter/slower.

".................I got the lead out of the barrel, still working on the carbon fouling, I'm on 61 patches and counting...could be a long night."

I think you're wasting your time trying for a pure white patch. Not necessary at all. I have a 1903A1 Springfield that had umpity bazillion cast lead rounds through it WITHOUT CLEANING, and it shot better then me (which is typical) 8). One day it began to spot rounds where they shouldn't be. I'd fire one that I KNEW had to be a high 9 or 10 but it'd be at 4 in the 8 ring or some such. I said to myself, "Uh-oh, it's time to clean".

When I got it in the cleaning cradle and pushed the brush in something went 'clunk'. When I pulled it back through there was another 'clunk'. Turns out the action screws were loose and you could move the barreled action around! Not dirty, just a lack of the very basics of making sure you don't have a screw loose (in the rifle, that is 8)

If your accuracy is fine, there is no real reason to clean unless you're putting the rifle up for some unknown length of time.

I have a M1912 Chilean contract Steyr short rifle in 7x57.

http://www.fototime.com/31EC9D2509BF41E/standard.jpg

It has very strong pronounced rifling but the entire interior of the barrel is dark. At the muzzle in bright light looking closely you can see miniscule pitting. This must be the condition from muzzle to chamber. While it is not a tack driver it's useably accurate, but it does NOT lead. When cleaned after sitting a bit after brushing, the first patch will push out a black gooey blob of gunk. This can only be powder fouling and lube that has filled those thousands of tiny little pits. Didn't effect it's shooting one bit.

Possibly in some situations powder/lube fouling may present an issue, but I've not encountered this before. If for some reason you want to get a bore surgicly clean, your best bet is using stuff like JB or Iosso bore paste and alternate every so often with a bronze brush and solvent.

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

[Four Fingers of Death]

On the 8th day he made 2400!

[redneckdan]

I slugged the barrel last night. the lee .323 bullet is not bottoming out in the grooves. I can see day light around the boolit when its in the barrel. The boolit drops at .3251 and the groove dia is .3274 Will gas checks cure this? does anyone have a .329 mold and would consider sending me a few to try out? thanks.

[redneckdan]

I got some gas checked boolits from maineboy. I loaded some lee gas checked boolits over 13grs of reddot with a dryer lint filler. these were printin clover leafs at 25yds. I also loaded up some plain bases with filler, gr reddot filler, seated to crimp in the groove, the boolit base was in the case about a qaurter inch; these loads at least hit the paper. I loaded some more lees with out gaschecks and 5grs of reddot and a tuft of filler, these boolits were seated so the base was ever so slightly above where the sholder meets the case neck. These loads grouped the size of a qaurter. i got some aluminum tape from the maintenece guys today and I got the lee mold beagled, I gotta cast them yet. I think the filler made a big difference, stinks like hell but its cheap.

[KCSO]

Dan

I have been using the Lee bullet made for the M95 straight pulls. This bullet drops at 331 from my mold and sizes to 325 perfect. I made an 8 mm mold with a flat base from one of the GC molds and it has worked ok to about 1400 fps. I have never had rel good luck with the gc bullets sans check. My hunting load for the Lee bullet runs a full 21oo fps and good acuracy, and my target load is 13 of Red Dot and will go under 2 1/2" at 100 yards.

[Scotty]

I've just started loading with the Lee 175gr in my german K98 with SR-4759 and it shows some promise...



Scott,:coffee:

[Buck]

I have a M1912 Chilean contract Steyr short rifle in 7x57.

http://www.fototime.com/31EC9D2509BF41E/standard.jpg




................Buckshot[/QUOTE]
Buckshot - Been trying to find one of those for sometime ( the M1912 in 7 X 57)! Any ideas for a source? I sold a perfect one long ago to pay for part of my college, fund, along with lots of other rifles (mostly BP). TIA.

[StarMetal]

I don't know about the short rifles, but at one time Allan's Armory has the Steyr long rifles.

I'll check his website if I can find it and if he has the long ones I'll report back.

Joe

[Buck]

Star Metal - Thanks.

[StarMetal]

I checked he's out. I checked some other places that had them too and they are gone also. Even a search on google only turned out high dollar ones on auctions. They've seemed to dried up for the moment.

Joe

[JeffinNZ]

For what it's worth I used to load a WW 323470 over either 12gr 800X or 20gr H4227 for 1600fps and 1 inch at 50m out of a mid life barrel.

cheers

J

[ambergrifleman]

For most of my cast bullet shooting, In about any military rifle I use 21 grains of2400 powder with very good results! :castmine: