Trail Boss and the 7.62X54R out of an MN 91/30

I've been playing with IMR Trail Boss powder lately, mostly in light loads, both CB and Jacketed bullets for the 8 X 57 Mauser, but I'd been using someone else's CB's for the 7.62X54R as well. I ran out of the ones I'd bought from other people, so started casting my own.

30-06guns asked me to provide my data on the 7.62X54R with Trail Boss as he's presently waiting on a couple of Mosins to arrive.

Monday, my Lee C185-312-1R mold arrived and after cleaning the oil off it, I fired up the relatively new casting pot. Made up 100 of them and since my scoped 91/30 Mosin has a real tight bore (slugs .3107), I used the lee .311 sizer and put gas checks on all 100. I loaded up fifty of them using IMR Trail Boss in varying loads. The boolits averaged 185-187 grains, so I made up some with 11.5, 12.0, 12.5, 13.0 and 14.0 grains of TB. Took 'em to the range this morning with the following results - 11.5 gr of TB gave me a 5 shot group of .855 inches at 50 yards, 12.0 gave me one a bit tighter at .502", 12.5 spread to .913" 13.0 stayed around .91 and 14.0 jumped to just over 1" at 50 yards. Looks like the 12.0 grain load for that bullet in my rifle is going to be the best one. Not wanting to take up too much bandwidth, I'm only posting the best target here. As usual, there's always one flyer that spreads the group a bit. No matter, I'm happy with it - Especially getting these results from the first boolits of my own casting that I've actually put downrange from one of my rifles.

Yup, I'm hooked!

:bigsmyl2:

Great target and results, Jim!

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Originally Posted by Maven

Great target and results, Jim!

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Thanks - not to mention it's fun doing the research. I've got some .323 GC's made up for the Mauser and it's up for the next range session with MY boolits, not some I bought from another person. I know that with Roy's 205 grain .323's and 11.5 grains of TB, the 98K Mauser produces groups just like the 91/30 Mosin did this morning. Hopefully it'll do the same with the ones I made myself. Another range session is in order for tomorrow.

:cbpour:

5 rounds in a .5" group with a 91/30? excellent! That's good with any rifle. Casting your own is rewarding isn't it?

Trailboss is surprisingly good with cast bullets. I just started using it for 30-30 using the same bullet as you (Lee 312) sized to 309, with and without GCs, and it works great.

See my post in "Need a 91/30 jacketed or cast load" I also settled on 12.0g of Trailboss.I fired a target a week ago at 100 that had a 5 shot group into1.4" and 10 shot group into 2" @100 (attached). I shot an LBT 200g Loverin looking thing for these groups with the issue sights.

George

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Originally Posted by damron g

See my post in "Need a 91/30 jacketed or cast load" I also settled on 12.0g of Trailboss.I fired a target a week ago at 100 that had a 5 shot group into1.4" and 10 shot group into 2" @100 (attached). I shot an LBT 200g Loverin looking thing for these groups with the issue sights.

George

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Nice shootin' George!

At 68 and with poor eyesight, I had to put a scope on my 91/30 and the 98K Mauser to even see 50 yards, let alone past that, but the rifles both shoot well with both cast and jacketed bullets.

For match shooting though, my bullet of choice in the 91/30 is the Sierra 174 grain .311 Match King BTHP with 42.0 grains of Hodgdon Varget, though that bullet shoots well with 13.5 grains of Trail Boss. I've gotten a 5 shot group at 100 yards with this particular 91/30 using the SMK/Varget load that you could cover with a dime - measured .393". Still too much slop in the trigger though. Might have to invest another 90 bucks in a Timney trigger for the 91/30 now that they've finally gotten one on the market. I did put a Timney "Sportsman" trigger on the 98K and it made a big difference over the slightly sloppy military one.

Jim

Jim, thank you for the wonderful and precise information. Although more and more people are beginning to use TB for cast rifle loads, tests like yours are only just now beginning to surface with regularity.

I started with the 9 grain load as listed in the original milsurp article and found it to be so accurate I stopped at that point. This was in an 8mm Yugo that I was forced to shorten about 3" due to a counterbore. I think moving the front sight back that distance caused the gun to shoot to point of aim at 100 yds without having to set the sights at 600 yds....dumb luck! At any rate it's time to start playing with heavier loads. Edit: My birthday is coming up and I'm dropping hints for my wife at every chance...."chronograph, chronograph............"

Can't wait for those 91/30's to get here..................

anyone see a problem with me trying to work up a load with trailboss in my 8x56R ? this sounds interesting... sorry if it's been done before and i didn't see it... been mostly hanging out on ammosmith.com lately, but I'm easing into the boolit world more and more... come to think of it, I'm going to work up a load with my mosin too, I have a lee311-155gr for x39 I could try in the mosin
Thanks :)

Absolutely no problem at all....Trail Boss is designed for lead and really "fluffs up" in the case, making overcharging pretty hard to do. The 9 grn. load I started with doesn't even require gas checks, so a plain base mold would work very well. As you can tell from the above posts bigger charges are getting similar results. Trail Boss will not replace the current powders we all use, but it's one more tool at our disposal.

You should visit the Trail Boss website.....there's new info on how to calculate the amount of powder for bottle neck cases. Pretty easy!

jim,what system did you use to scope your Mosin,the ATI?

George

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Originally Posted by 3006guns

Absolutely no problem at all....Trail Boss is designed for lead and really "fluffs up" in the case, making overcharging pretty hard to do. The 9 grn. load I started with doesn't even require gas checks, so a plain base mold would work very well. As you can tell from the above posts bigger charges are getting similar results. Trail Boss will not replace the current powders we all use, but it's one more tool at our disposal.

You should visit the Trail Boss website.....there's new info on how to calculate the amount of powder for bottle neck cases. Pretty easy!

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Thanks for the heads up! man, looking at the info and articles I'm pulling up for trailboss is getting me exited, cant wait to hit the range and try these babies out!:bigsmyl2:

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Originally Posted by damron g

jim,what system did you use to scope your Mosin,the ATI?

George

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George,
Sorry, I missed this post yesterday as I got pretty busy getting a bunch of honey-do's done.

The mount is a somewhat obscure, "no gunsmithing" mount by a little company called Advanced Rifle Parts that seems to be a 1 or 2 person CNC machine shop. They do have a website - www.advancedrifleparts.com and he has pix of my 91/30 on the page. It ain't cheap at a hundred bux for the mount, I paid more for the mount than I did for the 91/30, but in this case it's been well worth it. I went a lilttle cheaper on the scope itself which is a BSA "Contender" 3.5-14 X 42 that cost me, I think, $127.95 from Midway. I do need to get me a good cheekpiece and a Timney trigger to round out the "Pseudo Sniper" I created out of the old Russki smokepole since it turned out to be such a good shooter.

The Advanced RP mount is nice in that it positively wont move once you get it on there. You DO need to get yourself a bent bolt body for sure as the straight handle won't clear the scope. Nice thing about Mosins though, they headspace on the bolt locking lugs and those are on the bolt head. You can change the body and all other bolt parts and not have to worry about re-headspacing the beasties. I've even swapped whole bolts, heads and all, between several of them and they still passed the SAAMI gauges. The rifles WERE all arsenal rebuilt though. I kept the best shooter of the bunch for the scoping project and passed the rest down the line.

I did the same when I saw the Russian capture 98K listed on another forum and nobody jumped on it right away. The guy selling it lived about a hundred miles from me and I went and got it. Advanced Rifle Parts only makes mounts for Mosins so I wound up having to put an ATI mount on the Mauser. It's a bit clunky, and you gotta inlet the stock for the front piece, but it turned out good and works well. Tried to talk the guy from ARP into making one for the Mauser and letting me field test it for free, but, of course, that fell on deaf ears :smile:

Jim

I use 13 grs. of Trail Boss with the Lee boolit in my 91/30. My rifle slugs out close to .312 and my mould pours about .313 so I lube and shoot without a gascheck.

Dave

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Originally Posted by beemer

I use 13 grs. of Trail Boss with the Lee boolit in my 91/30. My rifle slugs out close to .312 and my mould pours about .313 so I lube and shoot without a gascheck.

Dave

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My mold pours right at .312 and the rifle did really well with .311 sized GC's so next am going to try the .312's as cast without GC and see how they do. As I said in the previous post, haven't had time to take some to the range yet. Next week for sure and I'll post the results here when I get 'em.

All this research gives me a good excuse to shoot more (at least I've got the wife convinced anyway).

:redneck:

Jim

The latest issue of Handloader Mag has a artical on low recoil loads with Trail Boss and gives the info on how to develope loads.

[The mount is a somewhat obscure, "no gunsmithing" mount by a little company called Advanced Rifle Parts that seems to be a 1 or 2 person CNC machine shop. , QUOTE]

Thanks for the info.I like the way it looks.With not altering the gun and using another bent bolt a guy can keep the gun original.Not like they are worth a bunch of money though as you stated the mount is worth more than the rifle.Do you have to use extension rings to get the scope back far enough to see out of? The base looks short.

George

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Originally Posted by damron g

[The mount is a somewhat obscure, "no gunsmithing" mount by a little company called Advanced Rifle Parts that seems to be a 1 or 2 person CNC machine shop. , QUOTE]

Thanks for the info.I like the way it looks.With not altering the gun and using another bent bolt a guy can keep the gun original.Not like they are worth a bunch of money though as you stated the mount is worth more than the rifle.Do you have to use extension rings to get the scope back far enough to see out of? The base looks short.

George

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That will vary from scope to scope I'd think. The ones that I had for that BSA scope worked just right, but a shorter scope could possibly be a problem as there are only 2 locking notches in the rail. Also, the BSA scope has a spring cover plug at an angle off the left bottom and I had to notch the rail with a Dremel to get it to level out (not shown in the pix). Higher rings would have cured the problem, but the scope sits pretty high up as is and without a cheek pad (I need one) it's hard to keep steady without a heavy set of sandbags when shooting.

Jim

I have an idea and this thread seems about as good a place as any to post it. I am trying for reduced recoil 7.62x54r load using mostly what I already have paid for. I have some copper washed steel case surplus ammo. I was thinking of pulling the bullets and replacing the existing powder with Trail Boss and reseating the bullets. I realize that steel cases are generally not reloadable but do any of you think this would be possible to do? Comments either way are appreciated. Thank you.

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Originally Posted by Gaucho Gringo

Comments either way are appreciated. Thank you.

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I don't see the value in doing that unless it's corrosive ammo. Even then, you still have a corrosive primer I think.