What can I really expect from cast boolits

[JohnH]

Hope this works... If so the attached picture is a group of 50 rounds I fired today at 100 yards. I fired them through a 308 Winchester Ruger American with a Walmart special Tasco 3-9x40 I use an Uncle Buds Bull Bag, no bag at the butt of the stock. I loaded the magazine, (4 rounds) fired them reloaded and fired those 4 rounds then let the barrel cool (barrel stayed between a really hot coffee cup to luke warm). Process took about 30 minutes including down time to let a fellow shooter go down range. Load is the NOE 311-202-RN, Felix lube, Gator check 11.8 grains of #107 surplus powder purchased from gibrass (likely one of the last jugs of this powder on the planet) mixed brass. I figure velocity to be circa 1500 fps. The boolits were not sorted for weight, only visually inspected, no rounded bands or wrinkles. The pink target is 3" x 2 3/4" the extremes of the group are 3 1/2" x 2 7/8" Obviously this ain't no put it in your bill fold to show off group (first 5 shots were ) but rather to show that even without putting a lot of effort into casting, sorting, load development etc that cast boolits will shoot rather decently. Not sure if this will help some of the newer folks to the Silver Stream or not but on those days you think your efforts are coming up short just remember your efforts may not be as bad as you think. (As a side note, I would expect Unique to produce groups similar to this 2400, 4198 and 5744 equal to and some what smaller all else remaining the same)

[petroid]

Excellent report. Sometimes its just fun to get out and shoot and not worry about putting them all in one hole. And casting lets us do it for less money, less recoil if you so choose, and more satisfaction. Not to say they won't all go in one hole (your first five shots) but all your shots, with a little scope adjustment, are minute of deer heart. The Ruger Americans are good shooting rifles. I have one in 308 as well and it does a great job. We are enjoying a time of excellent, cheap rifles and the knowledge of the case boolits community being shared so that we may all enjoy.

[Bzcraig]

Great thread and matches my expectations.

[Bigslug]

Three little words that have made my life a lot more pleasant:

KEEP IT REAL

And the O.P. is a pretty good example of doing that: casually assembled ammo made with random brass, and it's turning in groups that will handily kill deer to perhaps 95% of the distance deer are commonly killed at.

I know better than most that it's easy to let the OCD kick in and run off on a quest for the ragged hole cloverleafs, but when I started asking "what does this tool REALLY need to do", I became willing to say "good enough is good enough" a lot more quickly and got back to having fun.

The real beauty of the cheap cast bullet (I think) is that you can practice enough to get good with your gun rather than just get good at making ammo. There's a lot more practical usefulness in being able to hit a half-liter water bottle from 100 yards standing unsupported than there is in making minuscule clusters from a stack of sandbags anyway.

[shoot-n-lead]

Three little words that have made my life a lot more pleasant:

KEEP IT REAL

And the O.P. is a pretty good example of doing that: casually assembled ammo made with random brass, and it's turning in groups that will handily kill deer to perhaps 95% of the distance deer are commonly killed at.

I know better than most that it's easy to let the OCD kick in and run off on a quest for the ragged hole cloverleafs, but when I started asking "what does this tool REALLY need to do", I became willing to say "good enough is good enough" a lot more quickly and got back to having fun.

The real beauty of the cheap cast bullet (I think) is that you can practice enough to get good with your gun rather than just get good at making ammo. There's a lot more practical usefulness in being able to hit a half-liter water bottle from 100 yards standing unsupported than there is in making minuscule clusters from a stack of sandbags anyway.

X 2

JohnH...you are doing it right, in my opinion. Good job!

I have been told many times on this forum...that good enough...is not good enough. Not only with accuracy....but with powder coating. If it ain't pretty...they won't have it, even though it works just as well as a pretty bullet. Well, whether accuracy or powder coat coverage... it may not be for most, but as long as it does the job...it is good enough for me. I have more things to do than chase "one hole" groups and pretty bullets...besides that, I probably can't see well enough to shoot those pretty bullets into those small groups.

And, by the way...there is only a hand full powder coaters on the forum that make PRETTY bullets...the others are just average...even though the poster may talk about the excellent results he is getting.

[44man]

All I see is every shot would kill a deer. It is true I want my revolvers to shoot best because of crazy movements I can make. My friend shoots my 30-30 boolit from his 30-06 and he has not equaled it with jacketed.

[jmort]

The results speak for themselves. That is a great load combination. You have room for error, as that is a tight group consider the number of shots. Shows me that you don't need to make everything a science project.

[Digital Dan]

Going back in time about 150 years an organization called the National Rifle Club came into being and they hosted competetiton at various locales around the country. One of the more popular events involved slug guns at 40 rods. 10/20/30 shot matches were commonplace and on occasion they went to longer distances; 600 or 1,000 yards.

What should one one expect with lead? The NRC matches referenced above used string measure for scoring. String measure is an aggregate of the distance between POA and center of hole for each shot. My recollection is the record for a 20 shot string at 40 rods (220 yds) is in the range of 6-7". ...with black powder muzzle loaders...and lead bullets.

[guicksylver]

+1 on all of the above comments
AND if you give in just slightly to OCD and assemble 5-10 rounds by having matched brass, weighed charges and boolits within .5 grains of each other.. Oh Ya add some attention to OAL you can expect cast bullets to perform like this..these are the Plain Based version of that excellent boolit from NOE..Cheap shooting..

[runfiverun]

they laughed at me for assembling many of my 308 rounds on the Dillon 550.

[jimb16]

I used to have a 700 bdl in .308 with a 10x Lyman scope. My fav. bullet was the 311291 cast hard. Don't remember the charge, but one day I shot a 40 round group that measured 1.25 inches off a rest at 100 yards. Yes, a good rifle with a good carefully assembled cast bullet load is quite capable of fine accuracy!

[mdi]

One thing not often mentioned about shooting home case bullets is the extreme satisfaction one gets. Taking some dirty, grungy scrap lead and melting and cleaning it up and making ingots, then taking those ingots and casting, sizing and lubing those bullets. Loading those "perfect" bullets and shooting acceptable groups is just indescribable. After a few years of casting and processing bullets the
good feelin's" are still there....

[JohnH]

they laughed at me for assembling many of my 308 rounds on the Dillon 550.

I use a Load Master

[RogerDat]

Fun to cast, fun to make, fun to shoot. Casters get 33% more fun per round than regular reloaders and 66% more fun than shooting store bought in general plinking, I guess when hunting for the freezer it doesn't matter about who made the bullet, but the ability to hit where you need to in order to stock said freezer might depend on being able to maintain skills in the off season which can done for less cost and more enjoyment by casters and reloaders.

Do it for fun and it won't ever be work.

[Bigslug]

X 2

JohnH...you are doing it right, in my opinion. Good job!

I have been told many times on this forum...that good enough...is not good enough. Not only with accuracy....but with powder coating. If it ain't pretty...they won't have it, even though it works just as well as a pretty bullet. Well, whether accuracy or powder coat coverage... it may not be for most, but as long as it does the job...it is good enough for me. I have more things to do than chase "one hole" groups and pretty bullets...besides that, I probably can't see well enough to shoot those pretty bullets into those small groups.

And, by the way...there is only a hand full powder coaters on the forum that make PRETTY bullets...the others are just average...even though the poster may talk about the excellent results he is getting.

PREACH IT, BROTHER!

While my dad & I still apply a lot of our mad science load development techniques from our Highpower Rifle competition days, we've distilled the process down to where good ammo is arrived at a lot more quickly. While we frequently get really low velocity S.D.'s and really tight groupings, we're a lot more likely to leave a 1 to 1.5 MOA load alone than to try and turn it into a 0.5 to 0.75 MOA load than we used to be.

The OCD monster tends to get us on a quest for perfect without us stopping to ask why. Things like creating thousand yard match ammo for busting dog food cans at 100 yards. . .or buying really expensive, match-tolerance 1911's to deal with a seven yard bump in the night.

Tom Clancy touched briefly on this in one of his books. . .Without Remorse, as I recall. His main character was wrenching on home-made suppressors to use in his anti drug dealer vendetta and was on the verge of going for pretty when he concluded "good enough was good enough, while perfect was always a pain in the @55."

At the height of my Highpower madness, I was shooting two matches a month with the .308, practicing with a similarly set up .22 on the off weekends, dry-firing the entire match course with dummy rounds a couple nights a week, and making gnat's @55 ammo on a couple more.

One morning, I looked at the massive pile of stuff I was taking to the range and realized that I had forgotten how to have fun with a rifle. I then deliberately sought out and bought a Winchester 1906 pump action .22 with basic, barely visible open sights, and sometimes deliberately feed it random loose S,L, and LR ammo through the same magazine to reinforce the lesson that the 25 yard soda can doesn't care. That mental enema did me a lot of good.

[Bigslug]

they laughed at me for assembling many of my 308 rounds on the Dillon 550.

Too soon to tell yet, but might be headed in that general direction for .45-70. Some might say we have a problem. . .

[Tom W.]

When fire forming for my 30-06 a.i I don't change the settings on my scope, I just see where the first two or three shots land and hold over from there. I've been very surprised that the horizontal doesn't change, just the vertical. I have been able to hit an old 2x4 on the berm 200 yards away by just holding over. I get to do some shooting, fire form my brass, and enjoy myself. If I went to the range with a mindset that all of my shots had to go into the same hole all of the time I'd just not enjoy it. Sure it's nice when it happens, and when sighting in for hunting I do like the holes in a tight cluster, but I like to enjoy myselfvat the range, not get so worked up over groups that I get an ulcer.

[Shiloh]

That is an interesting sub-group going on at the top right.

Shiloh

[OS OK]

+1 on all of the above comments
AND if you give in just slightly to OCD and assemble 5-10 rounds by having matched brass, weighed charges and boolits within .5 grains of each other.. Oh Ya add some attention to OAL you can expect cast bullets to perform like this..these are the Plain Based version of that excellent boolit from NOE..Cheap shooting..

OCD...Ha!......"A man after my own heart!"

Gee, I'd call that pretty good craftsmanship and shooting.
Did you happen to take note of the FPS they were running at, the Pb blend or BHN? And, that Rem/700, was it the 1:12 twist?

*The reason I'm asking is because I'm trying to learn about RPM barriers using top quality cast rounds of differing styles.

[jmort]

they laughed at me for assembling many of my 308 rounds on the Dillon 550.

You and David Tubb