Mihec 30cal silhouette 1st outing

[Forrest r]

Got this mold awhile ago (1 year +), a 3-cavity brass mold. Put in hp pins in all 3 cavities and cast up 1 pot of bullets & traditionally lubed and sized them. Used LBT blue + 45/45/10 on them and sized them to .310. They've been sitting ever since & I decided to finely give them a try. They mic'd out at just under .311" (grew over time) so I re-sized them and re-lubed them. I loaded them in mixed lc nato brass/308w and used H335 for a powder.
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I've used H335 in the past with the lee 312-160-tl bullet in the same rifle doing ladder tests. Was getting 2464fps for a 10-shot group using that lee bullet and 34gr of H335. I didn't both setting up a chronograph for this 1st outing with the mihec silhouette bullet. I did ladder tests with H335 32gr/33gr/34gr/35gr.
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The 32gr/33gr/34gr loads were all measured outside to outside. The 35gr loads started to blow out with a couple fliers that really opened the group up. Interesting for the 1st testing/outing with this bullet that such a wide range of powder weights produced the same 10-shot groups @ 100yds. I'll be bringing a chronograph out with the next/2nd round of testing to get an idea of the "sweet spot" velocity/pressure wise of this bullet/rifle combination. Then I can move on to slower powders seeing what I can squeeze out of this bullet after establishing a baseline load.

Actually I was pretty impressed this bullet di as well as it did over such a wide range of loads using the same powder. I want to do head to head testing with what I consider the trifecta of my hv 30cal molds;

lee 312-160-tl VS Mihec silhouette VS The XCB

LEE ='s .990"OAL 161gr with gas check/lubed .700" from base to .308" on ogive
XCB =' .950"oal 166gr with gas check/lubeed .705" from base to .308" on ogive
Mihec Sil ='s 1"oal 175gr with gas check/lubed .750" from base to .308" on ogive

This Mihec silhouette bullet held it's own for it's 1st outing in a 308w producing 3 10-shot 2" groups @ 100yds doing 2400fps+. I'm looking forward to more testing.

[leadhead 500]

That’s good accuracy for that kind of speed. Bore ride style bullets such as the Mihec Bullet in my experience starts to loose accuracy big time when you go past 2000 fps. That bullet between 1800 up to 1950 fps should be very accurate

[bluejay75]

That’s great accuracy for a 10 shot cast load!!!

[Forrest r]

Don't see a lot about this bullet so I figured I'd put it out there for people that do have the mold or are interested in 1 of these molds.

The bullet is not a bore rider I size them to .310" and my mold/alloy casts a 1" long bullet with the gc installed. If I use a hornady compareator with a .308" die in it and measure this bullet. It will measure .308" 3/4" up from the base of the bullet. The other 1/4" of the bullet is the ogive/bullets nose.

I'm going to keep playing with this bullet testing/fine tuning loads looking for 1 1/2" 10-shot groups @ 100yds doing 2500fps+. Don't know if it will happen but I'm looking forward to the challenge.

A couple of years ago there was a group of people that got together on this website and designed the xcb bullet. They made special guns/cartridges/bbl's and decided that a 10-shot 2" group @ 100yds at a high velocity (what ever that is???) was what their benchmark was. They found it was rather easy to do.

I put a 30" bbl on a cil 950T target rifle chambered in 308w with a .340" neck and a 1 in 14 twist bbl. With this rifle it's actually child's play to do 10-shot 2" groups @ 100yds with bullets doing 2400fps+.

Heck I cast a batch of those xcb bullets at the same time I cast those mihec silhouette bullets and never did anything with them. I resized them last week and loaded them up in mixed nato cases and use old 4064 powder that I was given that is just starting to break down (red dust) with $3.88 price tags on the cans. I didn't bother posting anything about that day simply because there's been a lot of posts about that bullet and how it performs. Anyway the 29gr target is 2 1/4" & the 31gr target is 1 7/8" outside to outside 10-shot groups @ 100yds.
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That's the 1st time out with 2 different bullets and finding 10-shot 2" or less groups @ 100yds.

I'd like to get those groups down to 1 1/2" with the mixed nato brass/mixed commercial brass while running those bullets 2500fps+. Same with that lee bullet (312-160-tl), I've already found 2600fps loads that will do 2" or less 10-shot groups @ 100yds using mixed brass.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

That’s good accuracy for that kind of speed. Bore ride style bullets such as the Mihec Bullet in my experience starts to loose accuracy big time when you go past 2000 fps. That bullet between 1800 up to 1950 fps should be very accurate

The Miha 30-Sil has a tapered nose and is not a bore rider....at least the mold I have (from 2013 GB) is tapered.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...=1#post4047827

[tomme boy]

it is a dual taper if I remember right. it was one of the first bullets that I messed with in 308win. Shot some amazing groups with it too. But the mold was not cut right for 3 of the 4 cavity's. So I had a expensive single cavity mold. The 3 cavities were cut more to one side so they stuck in the mold. When you got them out they were really messed up and could see that the side that was stuck about 60% of the bullet was on one side. Looking from the top of the mold while closed you could see it too. Mihec did replace about 1/2 of the original molds. I sold mine on ebay with the caveat of what was wrong. After waiting almost 1.5 years for this then that, well I was mad and did not want to deal with it.

[Forrest r]

it is a dual taper if I remember right. it was one of the first bullets that I messed with in 308win. Shot some amazing groups with it too. But the mold was not cut right for 3 of the 4 cavity's. So I had a expensive single cavity mold. The 3 cavities were cut more to one side so they stuck in the mold. When you got them out they were really messed up and could see that the side that was stuck about 60% of the bullet was on one side. Looking from the top of the mold while closed you could see it too. Mihec did replace about 1/2 of the original molds. I sold mine on ebay with the caveat of what was wrong. After waiting almost 1.5 years for this then that, well I was mad and did not want to deal with it.

Sorry to here you had issues with your mold. The 1 I received seemed to cast good bullets. Just never did anything with them. Heck I have a egan mold that has the same duel taper I haven't done anything with in this rifle.