Cast Boolits for the AR

[JFriis]

This mold likes to be HOT. Here it is preheating on the edge of the pot.
The gray bottle to the left is anti-seize to lubricate the sprue cutter and alignment pins. The baggie to the right of the pot has remnants from one of my wifes scented candles (citrus pine) that I use for fluxing.



Here is the mold with a fresh pour cooling. With this particular mold, allowing the iron to cool too much causes wrinkly bullets.



Fresh cast bullets. These were dropped straight from the mold into a five gallon bucket of water. I had to be careful to not let the water touch the molds as it would have cooled them too much as well as many other potential issues.
Excuse the blurry pictures, this particular camera does not have a macro setting.



Size reference. As you can see these are tiny (imagine that) and difficult to work with.



Here are a few sized, lubed and gas checked. Final average weight is right at 62 grains (55 advertised) with straight wheel weight alloy. Note the lack of lubrication on the top lube grooves. This particular bullet is designed as a 'silhouette bullet and lubrication is supposed to be applied by hand before entering the chamber. Again, these are tiny and applying the gas check is tedious work.



Here you can see the OAL when seated to the first lube grooves. I also applied a fairly firm crimp at this point to help prevent set back.


For some reason the pictures I took at the range were data corrupted.
I loaded 10 rounds ranging from 18.0 grains of H335 to 24.0 in 0.5 grain increments. I chose H335 because I have over 20#'s on hand and will be the easiest for me to go with. My goal for this session was to look for leading and determine the maximum pressure before issues arose.
I shot them out of my 16" Barreled AR as this will be the gun to see these the most for training and general plinking.
The 18.0 grain charge cycled the bolt just fine and accuracy was around 2" @ 50 yards.
No signs of leading were found after the 10 shot string. All rounds fed and cycled flawlessly.
This story remained the same until 22.5 grains of H335. At this point the group spread to about 4" @ 50 and slight leading was evident. I continued on to 23.0 grains of H335 just to see (after cleaning the barrel of course) and found that none of the first three shots were on paper.
One of the old timers of the range came over to see what I was doing at this point and we discussed the possibility of the bullets exploding due to too much spin. I do not know if this is what actually happend, but you could see a little grey cloud about 10' in fron of the muzzle after each shot. Very interesting.

I settled on the 20.0 grains of H335 to begin further testing from as these had the better accuracy of the groups fired. I intend to load up about 100 and go for an extended range visit to see how much leading may build up over time.

As a side note, no signs of lead were found in the gas tube upon cleaning and inspection. I do not feel this will be a major issue but I have been wrong before!

[z4lunch]

Steve here... Thats very encouraging!!! I would love to try some cast boolits in my ar and HK.. I'm afraid my ar has to fast a twist for light boolits. I'd have to find a69grain mold
Steven

What boolits are you using

[z4lunch]

Let us know when you send a bunch down the barrel if you have any issues with the gas tube leading
Steven

[JFriis]

If I recall correctly it is a Lyman 225649.

Supposed to be 55 grains but drop right around 60. With the gas check and lube they are at 62 grains.

The test AR is a 1:9 twist barrel and as I noted the higher velocities had issues with bullet 'explosions'.

[Ugly Dwarf]

Did you shoot (or will you be shooting) any of these over a chronograph? Just wondering what kind of velocities you saw.

I'm always interested in a cheeper alternative for feeding the AR.

[JFriis]

Did you shoot (or will you be shooting) any of these over a chronograph? Just wondering what kind of velocities you saw.

I'm always interested in a cheeper alternative for feeding the AR.

I will be now that I have verified the load area I want to work with.
It will be a few weeks (at least 2) before I get a chance to get to the range.

I figure these will have cost less than .05 per bullet (guestimation) and less than .10/1

[Ugly Dwarf]

I will be now that I have verified the load area I want to work with.
It will be a few weeks (at least 2) before I get a chance to get to the range.

I figure these will have cost less than .05 per bullet (guestimation) and less than .10/1

Cool, looking forward to hear how fast they're going.

At that price point, I assume that includes the cost of a GC?

[NuJudge]

If your mold is hot enough to cast well, droplets of water will sizzle away before you can pour your mold again.

My Dad and I did some work with cast in the .223 and 4198 some 35 years ago. The AR did not have a forward assist, and we had lots of trouble with the bolt not quite closing.

CDD

[JFriis]

Cool, looking forward to hear how fast they're going.

At that price point, I assume that includes the cost of a GC?

That would be correct. I am looking into which system I want to get for a gas check tool to save even more.

[JFriis]

If your mold is hot enough to cast well, droplets of water will sizzle away before you can pour your mold again.

My Dad and I did some work with cast in the .223 and 4198 some 35 years ago. The AR did not have a forward assist, and we had lots of trouble with the bolt not quite closing.

CDD

The water droplets are more worrisome in that they cooled the mold dramatically.

As far as the chambering problems, none of these had any trouble as of now. I would assume that your normal FMJ loads chambered properly?

[kamikaze1a]

You must be getting at least 2500fps...I wonder if a harder mix cast would hold together better?

[klw]

I've never tried cast bullets in a firearm that used a gas tube because, I was told, it would plug the tube up. Of course having said that I don't know of anyone who did it let alone anyone who got a plugged gas tube. So are we now saying that this works?

Incidentally how hard is it to clean the gas tube on an AR-15?

[z4lunch]

Steve here... used to run lead boolits thru my Poly tech legend, dropped from a Lee mold, back when I was a boy.
Can only hope for more positive feedback on the ar... I'd love to send some ww down my FAL
Steven

[clodhopper]

I have seen bullets break up in flight. Some just puff like you describe and others leave something that resembles a contrail.
These were jacketd bullets fired from fast twist ARs at high velocity. The puffs were varmit bullets. The streekers were 52gr matchkings. Both times an alibi string at a service rifle match, and the results witnessed by several experinced shooters and discussed afterwords.
It will be quite a while before I experiment with cast in an AR, maybe never. I have been working on cast for the M1 garand and have had to remove a droplet of lead from the gas tube. It was adhered very solidy right behind the gas port.

[Lloyd Smale]

its tough to tell by looking as the pictures are a bit blurry but my guess is what your calling a top lube grove is in fact two crimping groves. Looks like there seated to long as you have them to fit in a magazine. Again though looks can be decieveing.

[JFriis]

its tough to tell by looking as the pictures are a bit blurry but my guess is what your calling a top lube grove is in fact two crimping groves. Looks like there seated to long as you have them to fit in a magazine. Again though looks can be decieveing.

I believe you are correct all the way around on your observations. If I were to seat the boolit all the way to these crimp grooves my OAL would be stunningly short. I dont know that they would allow the AR to function properly either, so for now I am sticking to the longer seating depth.

I do intend to experiment with seating these deeper at some point, but for now this test was just to prove that it could work!

[Larry Gibson]

JFriis

What is the twist of your AR?

Suggest you shoot your loads at 50 yards and then at 100 yards. If the groups are 2" at 50 and 4" at 100 yards then you're ok. However, if they open up non-linear suchas 2" at 50 yards then 6" at 100 yards you are indeed spinning the bullets too fast. 50 yard groups are not good indicators of accuracy with higher velocity cast bullet loads in any cartridge.

H335 has some good applications with some cast bullet shooting. However I didn't find it to be a good powder for accurate and functional cast bullet loads in my ARs because ignition was not consistant until pressures reached a point to where the cast bullet was driven too fast. I found H4895 to be the best with a 1/2 gr dacron filler over the powder.

Larry Gibson

[JFriis]

JFriis

What is the twist of your AR?

Suggest you shoot your loads at 50 yards and then at 100 yards. If the groups are 2" at 50 and 4" at 100 yards then you're ok. However, if they open up non-linear suchas 2" at 50 yards then 6" at 100 yards you are indeed spinning the bullets too fast. 50 yard groups are not good indicators of accuracy with higher velocity cast bullet loads in any cartridge.

H335 has some good applications with some cast bullet shooting. However I didn't find it to be a good powder for accurate and functional cast bullet loads in my ARs because ignition was not consistant until pressures reached a point to where the cast bullet was driven too fast. I found H4895 to be the best with a 1/2 gr dacron filler over the powder.

Larry Gibson

Barrel is a 1:9

Awesome information here!!
Thanks.

[Larry Gibson]

Barrel is a 1:9

Awesome information here!!
Thanks.

Best accuracy with my 9" twist AR (Colt Comp) with 55 gr cast is in the 1900 fps range with H4895 as mentioned. Some years back I got "good" accuracy (equal to M193 ball, 2-3 moa) out of a Colt sporter with 12" twist using the heavier 225462 at 2400+ fps. I recently aquired another 225462 mould but haven't yet tested it in the 9" twist AR or my 9" twist Savage Competition. So much to shoot/test, so little time!

Larry Gibson

[Chunky Monkey]

Very interesting JFriis. I also have been working on casting boolits for my AR. Here is the link to the thread that got me going. Here is the link to anther with pictures. I used Larry Gibsons advise and tried H4895 with Wolf SR magnum primers. Right now I'm shooting 19 grains but I'm still working on it. Actually I'm going tomorrow morning to shoot some more. Gonna be cold, its 19 degress right now.