Shot my first cast boolit today

[Old Iron Sights]

Got a couple steys along with the lyman 329 mold, dies and some boolits. I'll slug the barrel to see what it really needs. Done that with my mosins.
Don't have any gas checks on hand so I thought I would work up some really light loads. Been raining today so I thought I would make some loads. Can't find any info on using varget. I guess everyone prefers the really fast powder for CBs. Anyhow, made one round with 13 g varget just to see what it would do. Fired off fine (sounded a little like my muzzle loader though) but it left some unburned grains around the chamber. I didn't feel any blow back and for the amount of powder I used, the bullet didn't look too bad. Otherwise, the bore is still shiny.

A: is varget a poor choice for light loads?
B: Need filler material?
C: Need heavier loads?
D: Don't worry about and wait until it stops raining to shoot on paper.

[onondaga]

Varget is not a horrible choice for reduced rifle loads. If you have a published load for that boolit weight with a jacketed bullet, try about 10-20% less than the recommended minimum charge and use a filler to bring it up to capacity. many start by trying dacron batting, I prefer the granulated buckshot buffer, BPI Original, that easily measures with Lee scoops.

IMR Trailboss is a simple powder to use for reduced power cast boolit loads. The instructions for it are at the Hodgdon/IMR sites. usually 75-85% casefull of Trailboss works fine.

Gary

[TonyM]

+1 for trail boss... work great in my revolvers for reduced loads.... I imagine it works great in bolt action rifles as well...

Not to be used in an autoloader (Semi auto) rifle though...

[sisiphunter]

A...not a poor choice but there are much better powders for reduced loads...trailboss. Unique. 2400. Clays. Bullseye maybe.
B.....filler may be required and may not.... I will use cream of wheat as a filler and sometimes dacron just depending. Alot of fillers will raise pressure though.
C....heavier loads...not unless u want heavier loads. I like lite loads too.heavy one have theri usrs as do s nice light practise ot gopher load.

Best of luck. Matt

[canyon-ghost]

I see Varget used in faster calibers, 257 Roberts and 300 Savage in Lyman 49th edition. 30-40 Krag shows a lot of Varget cast data, .308 and 30-06 is spotty.

[462]

Don't forget Unique.

[pilot]

For light loads, I like Bullseye.

I use 2.5 grains in my 223 with the 55 grain Bator bullet. In a 308, I use an as cast Lee 155 without the gas check over 5 to 7 grains.

[Bret4207]

OIS- when you find out the Lee is too small, and 9 chances out of 10 it will be, their 338 mould will work. GC's can be a bear to find though in 338.

Try 13.0 Red Dot, works for me.

[Three44s]

OIS- .................................................. ...................... GC's can be a bear to find though in 338.



Bret and OIS,

They are hard to find until you know which rock to look under:


http://www.midsouthshooterssupply.com/item.asp?sku=000037090


Just passing what was graciously given to me here at Boolits.



Three 44s

[largom]

Every handloader should have a Midsouth Shooters Supply catalog as well as one from Midway. Midsouth gets 99% of my orders.

Larry

[Old Iron Sights]

Picked up some Trailboss today. I'll give that a go. Also slugged the barrels of both guns. On both, the grooves ranged from .329 to .331. I'll see how this mold does for now.

Tried some more rounds with varget (13, 14 and 15 grains with dacron filler. Wasn't real impressed. I'd like to order some GC's but would hate to have a thousand of them on hand and decide a need a bigger mold.

Oh and another thing, what do I need to seat the GC's? I have a Lee single stage press.

[MtGun44]

The problem with powders in the Varget burning range is that they are designed to burn at
FAR higher pressures, and burn incompletely and possibly inconsistently at lower pressures.

Pistol or shotgun powders work very well, and cost less. Try 10 gr Unique or 16 gr of
2400 in most full sized military cartridges and you will pleasantly surprised.

Bill

[Bret4207]

Picked up some Trailboss today. I'll give that a go. Also slugged the barrels of both guns. On both, the grooves ranged from .329 to .331. I'll see how this mold does for now.

Tried some more rounds with varget (13, 14 and 15 grains with dacron filler. Wasn't real impressed. I'd like to order some GC's but would hate to have a thousand of them on hand and decide a need a bigger mold.

Oh and another thing, what do I need to seat the GC's? I have a Lee single stage press.

What are your boolits droping at? If it's like my Lee 329 they'll be right around .329-.330, too small. I lapped a Lee push through sizer out to .332+ for my NEI mould and the the Lee 338. I think I could go .333-4 with no problem.

Sometimes you can get lucky and GC's will "snap" onto the shank and they stay if you give them a light tap with a very light hammer or screwdriver handle. Most folks use a sizer of some sort. IMO one of the problems with the Lee 329 boolit is the 8mm GC. It's too small for the groove by far. What good is a GC that doesn't seal the grooves? It's a near waste of money to try and make it work. Lee should have spec'd it for a 338 GC and had the .329 body more like .333, but Lee isn't famous for deep thinking in some areas.

GC's, even partial bags/boxes, sell really well on our Swappin and sellin section here.

[Old Iron Sights]

The bullet I checked was at 329. So, the best option is to get a slightly larger mold and run through a sizer die which also seats the GC?

[Bret4207]

Well, all I can do is give you my opinion and experience. The 95 Steyr tends to have very, very deep grooves, you need to fill them. So my first question is, did you make an impact slug of your barrel near the throat, or did you drive a slug through the barrel? I have seen slugs driven through the barrel that were undersized. If you upset the slug near the throat the slug will generally expand into the grooves and you'll get a better idea of their depth. Anyway, I'd almost put money on your barrel being a tad larger than you think. THe least expensive mould I know of that offers a decent fit would be the 338 Lee, which is the same profile as the 329, at least mine is. They appear to have just cut the 338 down in diameter. If you can swing the 338 and the .329 push through die you can easily lap the die out to, say, .333 or so with a rod and some abrasive paper rolling the die on your thigh. Took me 200 rolls to open mine to .332+ IIRC. The 338 drops about .340 from my mould and will size down, but you may have to lube the boolit and do it it steps. On mine I have to leave the die a bit high so the mechanical advantage of the press will kick in. If I leave it all the way down I can almost rip to press out of the table and still not get the sizing done. So I leave it high and loose and give it a couple turns and keep pushing and turning. It'll definitely seat you GC. A different press may not need my method, but that old RCBS works fine for me. I didn't pre lube my boolits either, never occurred to me. Since then the guys here turned me onto that idea and it's worked good with other boolits.

[Old Iron Sights]

Makes sense. I have a bag of the 329 bullets that came with the guns so I may just shoot them, or melt them down, hard to say. picked up 10lbs of WW so I got some pouring to do.

[Boolseye]

+1 on 2400. in a .308 or 91/30, 16 gr. over a 160 gr. CB is great. moa in my TC encore.
I would not use so little of a rifle powder like Varget. Min. about 25 gr., IMHO. As mentioned, Unique, BE, 2400.

[Buckshot]

..............All the problems with shooting the 1895 Steyr Straight Pulls in 8x56R has to do with the outsized chamber neck, throat/leade, and groove dimensions. The bores on these run fairly consistently at .316". I have 4 of'em. One I re-barreled to 30-40 Krag and it's just as accurate as any, and as easy to prepare ammo for as any other modern rifle. No flies on the action's ability, although the trigger is kind of sucky :-)

My nicest, all numbers matching M95 has a chamber that will happily accept a round loaded with a .338" boolit. It's groove is .3334", a .315" land and a .338" throat. I a modern made rifle you'll generally have a throat .001" larger then the groove, and NOT .007" - .008". You'll also have a groove depth of (usually) .003" to .005" and NOT .007" - .009" :groner: In my example M95 when you stab a .334" OD boolit (which STILL has .002" clearance all around in the throat) into the .315" lands you're forcing a considerable amount of lead to move around.

The Lee C338 - 210 - R design was mentioned, and I have the mould and have used it in my Steyr. However there is one thing to be aware of and that the lube grooves are .316" OD. So they can or WILL bottom out in the lube grooves, and don't forget they're also bulldozing a lot of lead aside as the slug progresses further into the leade. All that being said, I've gotten some good (not great) accuracy out of it. I don't know about other's 338 designs except for the RCBS. If I'm not mistaken its now a limited production item these days which means it's $$$. I happened to buy one from 9.3x62Al several years ago. It has lube grooves of .300" OD. I've gotten much better accuracy from it then the Lee design.

The slugs I've used in the M95 & M95/31:

http://www.fototime.com/E5F797678DB6438/standard.jpg

A: A Saeco special order design dropping at .336" and 205 grs. A FNPB tapered scheutzen type slug. Has shot the absolute BEST groups to date, but SLOOOOOOWLY. I shot it unsized, and lubed with Tumble lube (as shown) at 12 - 1400 fps.

B: The C338 - 210 - R Lee design.

C: The RCBS 33 - 205 design

D: The Oldfeller 'Frankenstein' designed specificly for the 8x56R. These were cast from the original mould done by Dan @ Mountain moulds. I believe NOE has this design available. This is the one you want if you plan on shooting at any respectable velocity. It slightly shades the accuracy I've gotten out of the RCBS design.

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

[Bret4207]

Nice catch Buck, I'd forgotten the Frankenstein mould. That might be a better choice is $$ is available.

[mroliver77]

Makes sense. I have a bag of the 329 bullets that came with the guns so I may just shoot them, or melt them down, hard to say. picked up 10lbs of WW so I got some pouring to do.

I picked up a Winchester made mold for my 38-55 Marlin that wants a .380"ish boolit. This molds drops them around .378". Playing around with it one day I loaded some with grits as a filler. There was no lead left in the barrel and accuracy improved quit a bit! I do not like grits or c.o.w. in modern bottleneck cases but the neck on the Steyer is very funnel like. If you are comfortable using fillers this might be an option for these undersize boolits.
I still have some of the CF Ventures wax sheets left from some years back. They work good to help seal a poor boolit fit(within reason) also. Basically you are using a wax cookie under the boolit. The theory is that the very high viscosity of the wax helps to fill the void left by the undersized boolit while protecting the base with a fluid "check". I have had some pleasing results with them. I have a bunch of boolits designed for the .32 something that drop at .321"ish. I have shot them unlubed and unchecked over pistol powder and a wax check at 1000- 1100 fps with entirely satisfactory results.
Something to think about.
Jay

[Old Iron Sights]

I appreciate all the comments and advice. The 8mm GC's arrived today and actually snap on nice and snug. I'm going to pick up some unique but probably won't make it by the shop until next week. Any recommendations on a light load for Trail Boss? I couldn't find anything on the IMR/Hodgdon site. I was thinking about starting at 9 or 10 grains and working up. I want enough pressure to avoid the blow back.

Edit: Found the instructions finally for trail boss. Looks like my starting load is 11.9 g.

[swheeler]

..............All the problems with shooting the 1895 Steyr Straight Pulls in 8x56R has to do with the outsized chamber neck, throat/leade, and groove dimensions. The bores on these run fairly consistently at .316". I have 4 of'em. One I re-barreled to 30-40 Krag and it's just as accurate as any, and as easy to prepare ammo for as any other modern rifle. No flies on the action's ability, although the trigger is kind of sucky :-)

My nicest, all numbers matching M95 has a chamber that will happily accept a round loaded with a .338" boolit. It's groove is .3334", a .315" land and a .338" throat. I a modern made rifle you'll generally have a throat .001" larger then the groove, and NOT .007" - .008". You'll also have a groove depth of (usually) .003" to .005" and NOT .007" - .009" :groner: In my example M95 when you stab a .334" OD boolit (which STILL has .002" clearance all around in the throat) into the .315" lands you're forcing a considerable amount of lead to move around.

The Lee C338 - 210 - R design was mentioned, and I have the mould and have used it in my Steyr. However there is one thing to be aware of and that the lube grooves are .316" OD. So they can or WILL bottom out in the lube grooves, and don't forget they're also bulldozing a lot of lead aside as the slug progresses further into the leade. All that being said, I've gotten some good (not great) accuracy out of it. I don't know about other's 338 designs except for the RCBS. If I'm not mistaken its now a limited production item these days which means it's $$$. I happened to buy one from 9.3x62Al several years ago. It has lube grooves of .300" OD. I've gotten much better accuracy from it then the Lee design.

The slugs I've used in the M95 & M95/31:

http://www.fototime.com/E5F797678DB6438/standard.jpg

A: A Saeco special order design dropping at .336" and 205 grs. A FNPB tapered scheutzen type slug. Has shot the absolute BEST groups to date, but SLOOOOOOWLY. I shot it unsized, and lubed with Tumble lube (as shown) at 12 - 1400 fps.

B: The C338 - 210 - R Lee design.

C: The RCBS 33 - 205 design

D: The Oldfeller 'Frankenstein' designed specificly for the 8x56R. These were cast from the original mould done by Dan @ Mountain moulds. I believe NOE has this design available. This is the one you want if you plan on shooting at any respectable velocity. It slightly shades the accuracy I've gotten out of the RCBS design.

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

Buckshot something just didn't sound right here, my Lee C338-220r mold casts bullets with lube groves .020" deep/side, as cast .340/.300. I just pushed the lube out of the grooves on a bullet sized .334" and measured the OD of groove .300" that's not going to bottom out in a .316 bore.

[Buckshot]

Buckshot something just didn't sound right here, my Lee C338-220r mold casts bullets with lube groves .020" deep/side, as cast .340/.300. I just pushed the lube out of the grooves on a bullet sized .334" and measured the OD of groove .300" that's not going to bottom out in a .316 bore.

..............I'd cast up a new batch of the Lee C338 - 220 - R some months back, of a softer alloy (15 bhn) then the 20 bhn the previous had been. Checking the LG's I get .315". I checked several others with the same digital caliper and checking around the diameter I get .314"/.315" pretty consitently. Heck, broke out the blade mic and got .3142"- .3155", on one boolit. The drive bands on the previous also ran .339"/.340". this softer batch are running .338"/.339". Now the Lee C329 - 210 - R's I have cast up have .300" lube grooves. I've had the Lee 338 design for some time. Maybe yours is of a different vintage and the gnomes at Lee felt it was time for a change?

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

[swheeler]

This could be the reason for people having very different results with the Lee 338 mold in the M95. The nice thing about Lee is if you buy two molds with the same number, you can get two "different" molds, could be a good thing.

[Old Iron Sights]

How difficult is it to lap out a mold and keep it round? Maybe a custom turned dowel with emery paper?

[Buckshot]

How difficult is it to lap out a mold and keep it round? Maybe a custom turned dowel with emery paper?

..............It's difficult if you're doing much. The way to do it is to cast several slugs then drill the bases to accept a drywall screw. Coat the slugs with grinding paste, insert into the cavities and spin them in both directions gradually squeezing the handles tighter. When those slugs wear, go to the next pair and continue untill you've reached what you want, or you've ruined the mould[smilie=s: Regardless, in any mould the first areas to be affected are sharp corners and details.

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

[Old Iron Sights]

Update: I got the Lee 329 sizer to seat the gas checks on the existing 329 boolits that came with the gun. I loaded 5 rounds each with Trail Boss (10, 10.5, 11, 11.5 gr) Cases were filled with some dacron. The 10 gr loads shot the "best" (a pattern 1" high by 4" wide at 50 yards). Not real impressive.
Before this, I tried some lighter loads without gas checks, just dacron, and got a 2" group at 50 yards with 9.5 grains trail boss.

The options I'm considering now are getting the 338 mold and lapping out my sizer to 331 or so (can't find a Lee sizer in this range) or just buying the hornady jacketed bullets.

[Old Iron Sights]

For kicks loaded some more rounds with 9.5 grns. No filler. Outside of one flier not bad. Not great though but still not bad.

http://tapatalk.com/mu/4545f712-3544-ee70.jpg

[Old Iron Sights]

Gun number two did a little better.

.http://tapatalk.com/mu/4545f712-3ee5-d5a2.jpg

[Chicken Thief]

In general you need @17-19kpsi to make the brass expand to seal properly.
So when velosity goes down then burning rate has to go up, to keep pressure in the proper range.

Casehead (hard) brass plasticy is @ 64-76kpsi.

[swheeler]

Buckshot; I sent out about a half dozen PMs to people I thought I remembered had the Lee 338 mold, two people replied. One said he never had that mold and the other was the same/similar as yours .316" dia in the lube grooves. The one I have must be the oddball, figures!

[Old Iron Sights]

9.5 gr sealed ok. Only a couple cases looked a little smudged. Think I found my load for this bullet anyway.