Accuracy of GC boolit w/o the gas check?

[got_lead?]

Hello all:

Maybe some of you can shed some light in the subject of GC style boolits that are used without the gas check.

I have loaded cast pistol boolits for years and have almost exclusively plain base boolits. The accuracy potential for these seems to be about 1" at 25 yards.

I'm just starting to work up cast loads in rifles and most rifle boolits have the step for the GC at the base. This just gets filled in with a little lube from my lubrasizer. I'm running my cast at .310, which just chamber in my marlin 336 and I'm driving them around 1250 fps with 8 grains of universal. They are printing about 3" at 50 yards. I know I have a long way to find the sweet spot with this rifle.

I just wonder if plain base boolits would give better accuracy when the load doesn't call for gc's.

I would appreciate any experience anyone would care to share.

Thanks

David

[jh45gun]

Do a search I am sure this subject has been discussed many times in the forum. My opinion if the bullet is designed for a gas check use it. They are not all that expensive for a 1000 of them. If you do not want to mess with the GC then maybe a flat based bullet would be better for your application. I was not impressed with bevel base bullets so the ones I had I used to bevel to crimp on gas checks and it worked fine. I want my bullets in my rifles to have some speed to them. I do not drive my cast bullets as fast as some I am happy with my 30 cal bullets in the 1800 fps range.

[rintinglen]

The answer is "perhaps."

A lot depends on the style and shape of the boolit, how well it fits the barrel and in the case of leverguns, how well it feeds through the action and how safe is it in the magazine. I will say that I have never in 40 years seen a gas-check design shoot as well without a check as with one. However, a well-cast PB boolit of proper size can be flabbergastingly accurate. A fellow poster, Ben, has posted numerous groups over the years that most of my rifles would strain to duplicate with premium J-balls, much less PB cast boolits.

In the 30-30,I have had good results with light-for-caliber PB 311-245's. They equal the Gas Checked 311-419's when fired over 8 grains of Unique or Herco. My daughter and I shot hundreds upon hundreds of those when we were active in silhouette competition on chickens. The 311-008 also works pretty well at those velocities. I had a 311-241 that cast a 150 grain PB that shot well over 15 grains of 2400, but I never managed to cure the leading problem with that load. But for about 20 shots, it would group around 3 inches at 100 with iron sights.

I tried using 311-041 173 grain boolits without the gase check but the best I managed to get was about what you have here--3 inches + at 50 yards, while the same boolit with gas check would do that at 100. I have a 311-224, a 200 grain PB RN which I bought to try as a heavy boolit on rams, but it was miserably inaccurate in the 30-30.

In the 45-70, I have shot nothing but plain base cast boolits. I had a 2 1/4 ', 10-shot, 100 yard group that consisted of 2 5 shot cloverleaves using an RCBS 325 grain boolit.

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

i shoot a c309-170rf lee with out check over 6.3 gr power pistol but 7 gr of unique would probably put you in about the same place

it will shoot 1.5 inches at 50 sometimes i get a little tighter group sometime so through one or 2

but i can ring a steel plate at 100 that's about the size of a sheet of typing paper , all day long

paper groups at 100 are about 3-5 inches i often get smaller groups of shots almost touching but some times it will be 2 groups with 3 or 4 almost touching but the groups will be 3 inches apart

I am shooting iron sights and it could be i hold in one place for a few shots then a little different for a few or it could be bullet weight

but definitely minute of bunny head at 50 yards , a 170 gr boolet at 1200 or so fps is likely to mess up a bunny any where it gets hit

almost no recoil at all all are as cast .310 , tumble lubed and loaded over a large pistol primer and 6.3 gr power pistol i thought about weighing bullets and see if i could shrink the group but i don't have a scale for that yet , my balance scale stops at 110 gr so a 170 is to much for me to weigh

i did just get some gas checks also to try

[got_lead?]

I think I'm going to perform an experiment. I have one of the lee 170 gn flat nose molds that I could mill a bit off the top, removing the GC step. This will reduce the boolit weight a bit, but it will give it a plain base. It might be a couple of weeks before I can get to the range to try these, but when I get the results Ill post what I find.

Thank you all for sharing your knowledge.