Saiga 308 and cast

[Freightman]

Went to the range to see if I could make the Saiga 308/7.62x51 cycle with cast loads> good news is I can, bad news is the boolits need sizing.
I loaded some 311291GW boolits without sizing and sized some the unsized will not chamber the sized .3095 do quite well 1" at 50 yds, the unsized require quite a bit of force to chamber will chamber with my hammer handle shot five to see if they shot the same 1" at 50 yds.
Had some 311466EW unsized that worked fine same 1" at 50.
Was using 47g of WC872 on the 311466 at 150g and 45g on the 311291 at 188g the range master ask what kind of powder I was using when I told him he said your not getting 2000fps, I remarked that is the whole point, he was shooting a Saiga 308 with a 16" barrel mine has a 22" barrel he had a scope and shooting factory ammo and wasn't doing as well as mine with the iorn sights.

[45nut]

I have a 16"er myself and tried a few CB loads with 311284's and 311291's over unique. As expected none of these had enough energy to cycle the action and I just treated it like a spring locked bolt gun. I did not have any leading and accuracy was avg 2" at 100yards for 5 shots. I kept meaning to do more work with it but other distractions pre-empted it. I sized to .309 for both. Chambering was no issue.

These are overlooked rifles for a semi- 308, I got mine from CDNN a few years back for a bit over $230.00 and now they are nearly twice that and still a bargain vs a M1A @ over 1K.

[Freightman]

It is one of my favorite rifles, I had a Century FAL and the best I could do was 4" at 100 yds and it was fun for awhile but just blasting isn't fun afterwhile, accuracy is more fun.