30 Caliber Sabot s

[Slick Pilot]

Anyone got experience with these?

I have some and am thinking about casting some 22 calibers to put in them, but what might be the best weight and design to use?

For instance, Midway has a 55gr flat nose bullet in a Lee mould that is cheap...

[Bullshop]

What cartridge? I got my self in big trouble on shooters when I said I was getting 4200 FPS with PB cast boolits from a 30/06 with good accuracy and no leading. Also shoot them from an H&R 30/30 with the 70gn RCBS boolit.
You can make them go fast. You aint never seen a 30/30 blow up water filled milk juggs like this does. God willing I plan on trying some in a 300 win mag.
BIC/BS

[Slick Pilot]

I plan on using them in 308, 30-06, 30-30, 30-40, and 30 Carbine.

Is there a bullet weight and shape that will be better all around?

[Bullshop]

The only thing I found that didnt work was boat tail bullets. Gas check design boolits w/o checks work fine. Other than that it didnt seem to matter. If you are interested I can give data for 30/06 and 30/30.
Remember with the 1/9" to 1/10" twist in most 30 cal barrels you can shoot some perty long boolits/bullets.
BIC/BS

[tommag]

I tried them several years ago with jacketed bullets. Still have a few sabots in the reloading room. I wish I had some cast to try them with. I can imagine a pure pb with maybe a little tin for fillout would knock the stuffing out of a coyote. I should have asked Bullshop to throw a few in with my last order, but it's probably shipped by now.

I have read somewhere that they will blow up a rifle with a muzzle-brake. The petals catch on the ports and form an obstruction.

Bullshop, when I shot mine, the primers backed out a little. Have you ever gotten enough pressure in yours to flatten the primers any?

[dk17hmr]

My dad bought 200 or something close to that of those red lego's (sabots) we played with them for about 20 minutes and then put them in the cabinet and havent touched them in 3 years.
Couldnt get them to shoot worth a crap out of our 06's, 308, or 30-30's with anything you could call accuracy. But they were really fast, and I could see cast bullets as a good partner from them.

Maybe we were doing something wrong, I might revisit this sabot idea when I get home this weekend.

[jhalcott]

I got some in a trade deal some years ago. Never THOUGHT about cast in them. Accuracy was good to very bad ,depending on gun and load. IF the gun was accurate with normal loads it would be accurate with the sabots (sayboze)

[Slick Pilot]

Bullshop, and all,

I am interested in any data at all.

I also would like to know what weight bullet might be best all around with the sabots.

Thanks.

[scrapcan]

Here is a link to data from the above company. Should get you started.

http://www.eabco.com/Reports/report04.html

they also sell sabots.

[Poygan]

Slick Pilot,
I tried these a few years ago in the M-1 carbine and found that the boolit wouldn't separate from the sabot. Perhaps they would separate at a higher velocity. I also wonder if the twist rate for a 30 caliber bore would work for these projectiles? Maybe I'll try the remainder of them in a 7.62 x 39. On the other hand, it might be less annoying to throw them away.

[357maximum]

My dad used eabco sabots with some (bare)225415's in his 30 herret bullberry contender, and was quite tickled. I believe he was using 2400 as a propelleant....and I know he was using bare boolits, no checks or lube as he was using bare boolits I gave him...I can only imagine wax based lube would foul up the release of the boolit from the sabot, it did in my shotgun slug/sabot adventures.....but a dry lube like motormica may help release, it did in the shotgun sabot trials...

He does keep his irons surgically clean, that may have been part of his success, as anytime I have used plastic sabots in my "gauges" squeaky clean was the waaay to go........his barrels are always squeaky unless I am around....... I have to brow beat him alot of the time to keep him from ruining the shooting while shooting cast...he keeps wanting to remove all the good stuff out of the barrel....

[Slick Pilot]

Okay, now I need to find a cast .224/5 at 55 grains or so?

Will a heavier bullet be more or less stable out of a 30 caliber barrel?

[tommag]

Depends on the twist rate, and to a lesser extent, velocity. My .223 1/14" twist doesn't stabilize anything heavier than 55 gr jacketed well. A 1/10" would handle a longer bullet. Google "greenhill formula" and you'll find the formula for twist rate vs bullet length required to stabilize well.

[trk]

Anyone got experience with these?
I have some and am thinking about casting some 22 calibers to put in them, but what might be the best weight and design to use?
For instance, Midway has a 55gr flat nose bullet in a Lee mould that is cheap...

When Remmington stopped using them they sold off the last 10k - 20k or so as scrap to a fellow I met at a gun show. I picked up the last quart or so he had.

He was getting 5k fps out of a 300 Win Mag and a case full of slow powder.

That was a few years ago, it might get high enough on my priority list to try them - I think I'd like to see some soft lead at 5000fps go splat.

[Johnch]

I have used a lot of them in the 308 and 7.62 x 39
I found my besst accurcy at close to start loads , top end was a PATTERN not a group

I tryed the 55 gr RCBS cast bullet with out a GC
Accurcy was OK , not great , but I only tryed 1 load

Get the sabot loading tool , it is worth the $$

Johnch

[Slick Pilot]

Thanks, Johnch.

[Bullshop]

Its late and I just got home from caribou hunting so am tired. I will look for the load data tomarrow God willing.
You realy dont need to buy the sabot loading tool if you have a Lyman or RCBS or Saeco lubsizer. You can seat boolits/bullets squairly in the sabot using a 308/9 sizer die and a top punch that fits. If your loading boolits you should already have the top punch. You can firmly bottom a boolit/bullet in the sabot this way. No need to buy what ya dont need. As my old friend Frank Martin says poor folk got poor ways.
BIC/BS

[crazy mark]

I've used from 37 to 60 gr cast bullets with varying success. I had a savage 110 in 30.06 that shot them the best but I sold the gun. Tried some in a 91/30 with not much success however. I have some 30 cal Mausers I need to try them in and a 1903 RIA when the weather gets warmer. Mark

[Linstrum]

Hi, guys. Bear with me here, this is on the long side. I tried sabots in my Remington 700 ADL .30-06 and 91/30 Finland 1942 rebuild Mosin-Nagant 7.62x54R about ten years ago and still have a few thousand in a Ziploc Baggie somewhere under the loading bench. I bought them from two different manufacturers and they were not equal by any means. I decided to do some investigating to find out why some loads were accurate and some weren’t – most of the time instead of groups I was getting patterns that would make a scatter-gunner upset, sometimes not hitting the target at 10 feet. Yup, they were bad, alright! I’m a machinist, among other things, so my first bit of reasoning was to use a “V” block and dial indicator to check them out for run-out concentricity, roundness, etc. I spun the sabots by hand in the "V" block mounted on a rod I machined in the lathe to fit the pocket. The ones that shot better had the hole for the 0.224” projectile centered in the sabot while the ones that didn’t perform well were not centered very closely, some being off by 0.007”. The bad ones were also not round, being about 0.002” or 0.005” out-of-round. So, I went through all of them (several thousand! Took awhile) and measured each one for being round, then took the ones that were round and checked the pocket for being centered, or concentric, with the outside. When I was done, out of 5000 sabots I had bought I had probably 100 of them that were any good at all. When I loaded those up I used the “V” block and dial indicator again, this time to make sure that the sabot body was centered in the cartridge neck and the 0.224” projectile was still centered in the sabot. My cut-off point of being acceptable was having the projectile 0.0005” (five ten-thousandths of an inch or half a thousandths) off center from the cartridge neck. With the 22-caliber projectile being centered I got reasonable accuracy, but not as good as the rifle got with regular Lee .309-180 boolits I cast and sized to 0.308” and Sierra Match King “redcoats” (thanks, Ricochet!). But they were smokin’ on outa there at around 4000 fps. So, if you want good results with sabots, first buy just a few from whoever is selling them to make sure they are good ones with the hole centered in the sabot with the sabot round instead of oval and after finding who has good ones then buy a bunch. Don’t be afraid to send them back if they are garbage, we shouldn’t have to accept substandard material because bad sabots just plain won’t work! Consumer law states that an item offered for sale to the public must be fit for the intended purpose. I hate it when I send somebody $25 for something that doesn’t work when I could have saved myself the aggravation by taking the $25 and just burning it instead. The end results are the same – I’m out $25 one way or the other and simply burning it saves me time. So check out the sabots before buying a bunch to make sure you get good ones. Harbor Freight has one thousandth inch resolution machinist’s gear driven dial indicators for under $25 that will show 0.0005” if you look closely, and any good hand loader should have a dial indicator anyway, along with a good 0.001” digital caliper, as basic but necessary tools. Aluminum “V” blocks are available if you look in the back of any popular gun rag; I got mine from an ad in American Rifleman. The set-up is pretty straightforward; a stop has to be used to keep the cartridge from sliding end-wise while rotating it and the dial indicator has to be mounted very rigidly to the “V” block. That is basically it, put the cartridge in the “V” so the side of its projectile is under the stylus of the dial indicator so the cartridge is also up against the backstop, then rotate the cartridge body slowly with your finger tips while also pushing it gently against the backstop and down into the "V" simultaneously while watching the dial read out. The hand of the dial indicator should not move, if it does, your sabot is too far off-center for it to shoot with any reasonable accuracy. I tried shooting some with the projectile one or two-thousandths off center and they were the flyers. One saving grace I found with loading my good accurate sabots is that the Lee loading dies I have are absolutely fabulous in getting them (and other projectiles as well) on center, they are very well designed for doing this and are responsible for a good part of the accuracy I get with my hand loads. About the sabots being bad or good, they are injection molded and the machine operator used the same attitude for making them as for making Dixie cups or tooth brush handles, which is the more they make per minute the more money they make. In this case, manufacturing speed is what makes them out of round and not concentric since the plastic requires time in the mold to fill it out and attain a uniform temperature and pressure in the sabot mold cavity, then on top of that, the molded product can’t just be dumped out into a bin to cool at too high a temperature. Inadequate mold fill out from operating the machine too fast, and distortion by being dropped while still hot are most likely the culprits for causing nearly all of the sabots produced (a whopping 98%!) to be crooked, warped, damaged - - - and unusable! The machine operators need to be instructed how to optimize their procedure to make a uniform – and accurate – sabot, just like us boolit casters! Good Luck!