Lee C312-175-RN Battles

[Lead melter]

After a number of repeated trials and a few cuss fits, I finally got my Lee C312-175-RN mold to work for a plinking load in my old Moisin-Nagant. There is a moral to the story about to follow, but first the particulars;

My first attempt was to cast of my normal alloy,1/3 linotype, 2/3 lead, +2% tin, sized .311". Lube was RCBS rifle lube, Hornady 30 caliber gas checks, load was 12 grains Unique, WLR primer. Results were not wonderful, but did show the boolit might shoot with some experimentation.

Same procedure as above, but with SPG lube. 10 shot groups of 8" at 50 yards.

Tried same as above, but with Gator checks and RCBS lube. Wouldn't hit a cow in the rump at 50 paces.

Next came Gator checks and SPG lube. Wouldn't hit a cow anywhere at fifty paces.

Now it's time for desperate measures. Tried same alloy, size, etc. with Hornady and Gator checks with my own lube mixture. Groups shrank to 5-6".

Following this lead, I next loaded same lube-check combination, but reduced load to 11 grains Unique. 3-4" 10 shot groups. Now we're on to something!!!

Dropped powder charge to 10 grains and got 2" groups with the Hornady checks edging out the Gators with tighter main cluster and fewer flyers.

I am still not perfectly happy, so I used my Lee .311" sizer to seat the Hornady gas checks, but not the other part of the boolit. Simply invert the boolit and press the check on, tap the slug out from the sizer and leave the remainder of the boolit at .313" as cast.

Lubed with Lee Liquid Alox, 10 grains Unique, WLR primer...10 shot one-hole group at 50 yards. SUCCESS AT LAST!!!

Next trial will be simply to change to Gator checks and shoot when the rain stops.

The moral is, don't give up, use your imagination in that great computer inside your head and PROVE it will not work before you quit.

Now I have a question. Will this boolit be safe to use in a lever 30-30, or will the RN create a dangerous situation? The crimp groove location is not the issue, as I have the Lee Factory Crimp die and can crimp anywhere.

:-D

[Ricochet]

Factory .30-30 loads with round nosed bullets were common in the past. Loading manuals used to say to use only flat or round nosed bullets in tubular magazines. In the early '70s Lyman was listing loads for several round nosed bullets in heavy .45-70 loads for the 1886 Winchester. Most factory .45-70 loads used to have round nosed bullets in the old days. I'm not sure when, by whom or why round nosed bullets started being recommended against, but it's fairly recent. I wonder if there have been any actual magazine explosions, or if someone just got to thinking about the center of a round nose resting against the primer in front of it?

I would expect the risk to be low on two counts: The blunt round nose of a bullet spreads out pressure over a much wider area than a firing pin, and rimmed cartridges are actually quite tapered, with a tendency to tip in the tubular magazine so that the center of the nose is unlikely to actually be against the primer.

But I don't know of actual testing experience to prove it.

[felix]

Keep in mind what you are changing, not by item as much, but as the process. You are changing the ignition characteristics. Things like obturation which also effects the acceleration curve as much as the powder and primer. You are not finished with the load until you get it to shoot in a mess of different ambient conditions. Try and keep the boolit the same, and find the powder speed required where a full grain difference about the center does not destroy the accuracy intended. ... felix

[Leftoverdj]

Factory .30-30 loads with round nosed bullets were common in the past. Loading manuals used to say to use only flat or round nosed bullets in tubular magazines. In the early '70s Lyman was listing loads for several round nosed bullets in heavy .45-70 loads for the 1886 Winchester. Most factory .45-70 loads used to have round nosed bullets in the old days. I'm not sure when, by whom or why round nosed bullets started being recommended against, but it's fairly recent. I wonder if there have been any actual magazine explosions, or if someone just got to thinking about the center of a round nose resting against the primer in front of it?

I would expect the risk to be low on two counts: The blunt round nose of a bullet spreads out pressure over a much wider area than a firing pin, and rimmed cartridges are actually quite tapered, with a tendency to tip in the tubular magazine so that the center of the nose is unlikely to actually be against the primer.

But I don't know of actual testing experience to prove it.

I can't say for sure it was the first, but Speer started warning against the use of round nosed bullets in tube magazine about the same time time they came out with a line of flat nose bullets. As of Speer #9, they were warning against RN and listing loads for them at the same time.

I've seen a couple of tests over the years. Devices were set up to slam a RN cartridge into the primer of a cartridge ahead of it. Never managed to detonate a primer, which is not proof that it could not happen, just proof it is unlikely. .25-35 has been loaded with RN for a hundred years and still is. You'd think that if anything could go wrong, it would be with the cartridge having the smallest point, but it does not seem to have happened.

That's not to say there have not been magazine explosions, just that I have never seen or heard of one from a RN bullet with plenty of exposed lead. Several Ruger .44 Mag Carbines were blown up by people using FMJ silhouette bullets. Surplus M-1 carbine bullets in tube mag is a likely road to disaster. There have been some incidents with HPs with a seemingly generous cavity when a misaligned cartridge struck the primer ahead of it.

To get into speculation, I would expect to be able to detonate a primer with something like Lee's C312-155-2R cast of lino or harder, but would bet heavily against it with any fairly blunt RN cast of air cooled WW or softer. As long as the nose deforms more readily that the primer it strikes, you are not going to get detonation.

btw, if this bothers any of you, there's a simple solution. A meplat can be readily swaged onto any cast RN of reasonable hardness by using a pedestal to run it up into the an SWC seating die of the next larger size.

[floodgate]

I did read in - I think - Samuel Maxwell's "Lever Action Magazine Rifles", in the section on the Burgess designs that evolved into the Marlin 1881 / 1888 "open top" rifles, that in Government testing using the 405-gr. RN .45-70 loads, there were some magazine blowups attributed to primer impact with the (very sensitive) mercuric primers of the day. John M. Marlin was very opposed to the use of RN designs, and in the factory bullets he specified for use in his tubular magazine rifles - and the moulds he had Ideal's John Barlow design for reloading them - he specified FP's with fairly broad meplats. If you look at the cuts from the 1897 Ideal Handbook No. 9 posted on CASTPICS, you can see the difference in the Marlin-specified designs as compared with those for the Winchester and for the 1895 Savage; they seemed happy with RN's and/or fairly narrow meplats. Another approach was the "protected primers" used by U.S.C.Co. and others, which had an outer cup with only a firing-pin sized hole on-center, leading to the "live" primer.

I haven't heard of any magazine "KABOOMS" reliably attributed to RN boolits or bullets in recent times.

floodgate