I'm fairly impressed by cast boolits

[Clinton]

I originally cast these boolits from the Lee C312-155-2R mold for my AK but they dropped too small for the bore. After striking out with another mold for 308 I found these 155s laying around and decided to give them a try.

I sized them to .311 and loaded them with IMR4227 and some with SR7625 just because those were the only two suitable powders I have. Accuracy with 4227 was pretty bad and stepping up the load didn't seem to help, but the loads with SR7625 really impressed me. This rifle regularly shoots 1/2" - 3/4" groups with jacketed bullets but the most I was expecting out of cast was around 1".

What really amazes me is there's such a huge weight variance with these cast boolits. I didn't even sort them for weight, just sized, lubed and loaded them. Nor did I use any dacron or any filler. Just 12gr of SR7625 sloshing around in a 308 case. And yet look how they shot. Now if I can just get the same results out of a proper hunting boolit moving at a more respectable speed.

Two 5 shot groups at 100 yards.

[whisler]

Nice work! What was the velocity, if I may ask?

[GhostHawk]

Don't know about your AK, but my SKS adores Lee .312 185gr 1r with gas check over about 20 gr of IMR 4895.

Sizer was a Lee .311 that I reamed out to .312 with a dowel and sandpaper.

I also took a that mold and with a few strips of metal tape got it casting at .314 for my Mosin's.

[Yodogsandman]

Impressive! Glad to see you did it! A lot of things you've done had to come together just right to get groups like that!

[Clinton]

Nice work! What was the velocity, if I may ask?

Well I don't have a chronograph but from the load data I used I'm guessing it's around 1400 fps. Kind of a useless load for anything other than punching paper I guess. Increasing the charge made the groups string vertically it seemed.

[dondiego]

A lot of American Bison were killed with useless cast boolit loads of around 1400 fps or less.

[WILCO]

Very impressive work. Congratulations!

[Clinton]

A lot of American Bison were killed with useless cast boolit loads of around 1400 fps or less.

Yeah but this is a 155gr pointed profile. Wouldn't that just put a tiny hole in a deer?

[dondiego]

Yeah but this is a 155gr pointed profile. Wouldn't that just put a tiny hole in a deer?

Yep, both sides o the deer!

[MtGun44]

Good results, but I think you can even improve this by going larger diameter by .002 or so.
General rule of thumb for rifles is .002 or .003 over groove diameter works best in most.

So for a .308 groove diam, .310 or .311 are the normal best diameters. Your gun should
have a .311 groove or larger (although the targets tell me probably not larger), so you
would likely do even better with .313 or .314 diameter.

Bill