Lyman 323378 Bullet At Range

[Idahoan]

Finally forced myself to take a break from working on the property and went to the range. Nothing to write home about, yet, and I had to shoot at 50 yards instead of my usual 100, simply cannot see the 6" pale orange bullseye very well compared to the 8" black bulls-eye I am used to but forgot at home. Rifle was a K98k rebarreled in Yugoslavia which is very accurate with the 198 gr Portuguese FMJ. I first shot the group circled at lower left, Lyman 165 gr 323470 using 14.6 grs Unique, only fair, but I think it will be better as I get back to shooting more regularly, I am definitely "rusty", what with moving and working over the new homestead the last year or so.

After finally figuring out that the 242 gr 323378 bullet was shooting way low, I worked up to 40 grs of IMR 4350 and shot the first 2 shots (in square) with my rear sight set at 300 yards, then moved the rear sight to the 400 meter setting and shot the last 3 rounds with that setting (in rectangle). Nothing fantastic, but they are stable and reasonably accurate. Next step is to seat the bullets a bit deeper and try crimping them I suppose, mine were seated to the middle of the front band. And also try to decide what primers I should be using, Lyman says to use std primers for cast boolits, but magnum primers are recommended for 4350, I used std primers, which seemed to leave a fair amount of powder in the bore.

I tried to enclose a pic of the rifle also, but it is 153 kb, which is over the site's 100 kb limit

[Jack Stanley]

It's indeed great fun to make the old military rifles tow the cast bullet line ain't it ?It's only a matter of time and you will have it doing what you want instead of what it feels like

Jack

[Buckshot]

...............Not bad for a first outing, milsurp rifle, trigger and sights. Lots of energy in Unique. If you like that, back off to 12.0grs and load 10 rounds each at .5gr increments and see what it likes.

I've used Unique in a lot of full power military cases, but really prefer stuff like 2400, 4227, SR4759, 4198.

.................Buckshot

[trooperdan]

.. just about the "universal" load! I've loaded 5 grains of Unique in everything from .38's to .45-70. Is there a surplus powder in the same burning range? Is so, I'd try to get a buncha pounds of it!

[Idahoan]

OK, got a pic now, ran it through my "Snapfish" pic-hosting account, it automatically decreases the resolution quite a bit as a tip for those of you like me who are not computer savvy enough to use fancier techniques to reduce the kb's.

Easy on the eyes and shoots the Portuguese 198 gr FMJ Spitzers into 2" at 100 yds, but the bore looks almost new so I would like to make it my 8MM cast-boolit shooter.

[Idahoan]

...............Not bad for a first outing, milsurp rifle, trigger and sights. Lots of energy in Unique. If you like that, back off to 12.0grs and load 10 rounds each at .5gr increments and see what it likes.


I've used Unique in a lot of full power military cases, but really prefer stuff like 2400, 4227, SR4759, 4198.

.................Buckshot

I was considering 4227 for the 323387, but velocity is limited to about 1500fps according to the Lyman handbook, and I wanted to run it at about 1800/1900fps. Loading date is a bit thin for that heavy a bullet. Although somewhere at this forum there are some posts about the Lee heavy bullet, if I can refind it, that data should work fairly well.

[JeffinNZ]

Well done. My CZ33 wouldn't shoot the 323378 worth a damn but loved the 323470.

J

[Buckshot]

...................Good looking rifle. Laminated stock?

.............Buckshot

[Idahoan]

Thanks, yes, standard K98k laminated style.

[vintagesportsman]

Anyone have a Lyman 323378 for sale?

[303Guy]

[QUOTE... but magnum primers are recommended for 4350, ...[/QUOTE]Really? How different is IMR4350 from H4350? Well, the 8x57 case is considerably larger than the 303 Brit but in that cartridge 40gr H4350/AR2209 under a 194gr boolit burns the powder very well. I do need to use a filler (wheat bran) with a lighter boolit and lower powder charge to get clean burning. Perhaps a higher charge would burn better? Just a thought. Seems you are on to something there.

P.S. Nice rifle! (Groups not too shabby either!)