Rebated Boat Tail 308 Swaged Lead Boolits from Cast Boolits & Powder Coated

[MUSTANG]

The 1st four postings appear in two Forum Groups - (a) Swaging and (b) Coatings and Alternatives. I anticipate the discussion in each Forum Group will rapidly go in different directions based on the interests of these two different group followers.


Was sitting at the reloading bench a couple of days ago with my Corbin .308 Swaging Nose Pointing dies (8S Ogive) in the Swage press. Looked over at some .308 boolits laying on the bench: RCBS 165 Sil, Lyman 311644 Sil, and RCBS 200 Sil. The urge to try and reform the boolits by swaging them into lead .308 Rebated Boat Tails. No copper jackets for these – rather some Harbor Freight Red Powder Coating was calling.

I swaged Ten lead boolits from each of the “Donor Cast Boolits”. Ten from the RCBS 165 Sil mold weighing 172 Grains post swaging, Ten from the Lyman 311644 Sil mold weighing 195 Grains, and Ten from the RCBS 200 Sil mold weighing 211 grains. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the swaged boolits turned out; each with a barely discernable ring around the bottom of the boolits where the Lube Band/s had previously been. The Rebated Boat Tail was nice and sharp.

I powder coated the boolits in HF Red Powder. Because of the sharp rebated boat tail; these boolits will not stand on their base (fall over with the slightest bump). I looked at placing them in the Trivets I normally use for these three Boolits when gas checked (Trivets are found at: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ). The cells in these trivets are too wide apart to support the Rebated Boat Tail swaged boolits; although the firmly hold .308 boolits with a gas check installed.

Went and sorted through my gear and found a smaller cell Trivet I had bought a year or so ago (These trivets are listed at: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ). These trivets worked great and firmly held the RBT boolits after swirling them in HF red in a plastic tub. Used a set of Hemostats to pick up each RBT boolit and set them firmly into the Trivet. Baked them at 400 degrees for 25 minutes, and then air cooled. The boolits were 9.8 BHN before swaging. Alloy was 96% Lead, 3 % Antimony, and 1% Tin.

[MUSTANG]

The 172 Grain Swaged & Powder Coated RBT did not perform too well. The rifle (Remington 700) is sighted in for 300 Yards with my Swaged 175 Grain Rebated Boat Tail bullets with jackets formed from 5/16 Copper Tubing. I used 29 Grains of BLC-2 powder in the .308 with the Swaged Lead RBT Boolits. Did not want to change the Scope settings; so I aimed 2.5 Mils low. After two rounds low on the Target at 100 Yards; I changed my aim point dead center on the Bull with the cross hairs; that did the trick as far as Optical Sighting for this outing. In the picture below one can see that the 8 round group is quite large; but generally centered on the bull area vertically.

[MUSTANG]

The 195 Grain Swaged & Powder Coated RBT did better at 3.289 MOA. The first 3 rounds were at 3 O’Clock; next two were higher and at 2 O’clock, and then the remainder were walking to the left and down. Strange progression, no explanation. Once again load was with 29 Grain of BLC-2 Powder.

[MUSTANG]

The 211 Grain Swaged & Powder Coated RBT performed much better. Eight of the rounds grouped well at 1.06 MOA! Then had two rounds that went off and opened the group up at 3.529 MOA. I knew the bases of the two RBT boolits were damaged (Marked them when I loaded). I am hoping that the opening group was due to those known damaged bases. See group below:




Will have to try this load again. My theory on the heavier boolit performing better is that it has a much larger bearing surface against the Rifling due to the shape of the Swage Die and the 8S Ogive being the same for all three RBT swaged boolit weights.