Horace Kephart - The Kephart Band 308206

[ohland]

As so ably stated, the scraper band was useful when used with black powder, but it has less utility nowadays. Still, one sees the Kephart Band on a few boolit moulds... Also, the grooves are HUGE. Other posts on Cast Boolits have this boolit working (quite well) at low velocities. Harvey Donaldson was quite taken with the 308206.

I was intrigued by a recent ebuy auction of an old Lyman / Ideal mould that used a “Kephart band”. My copy of “Yours Truly, Harvey Donaldson” just came today, and on page 46, one finds out more: Horace Kephart of St. Louis, Missouri designed the 308206 sometime before 1900. The following quote from #16 Ideal Handbook, 1903, is Mr. Kephart’s own description of this bullet:

“The bands should be broad and strong to withstand pressures of gas from the rear, and the wrench of the ten-inch twist. There should be some provision for lubricating the bullet ahead of the first band, so that dry lead may not touch the barrel. Some means should be devised for pushing the fouling straight ahead and out of the barrel at each discharge. With these points in mind, I designed the bullet No. 308206 which has the three wide square-shouldered bands with a dirt catcher groove in front. This dirt catcher groove occupies the place of the usual crimp shoulder, and contains lubricant. Its function is twofold: to grease the rifle barrel before any lead touches it, and to push out fouling at each discharge. When the bullet of ordinary shape is fired through a dirty barrel, its point and crimp shoulder will wedge the fouling, usually forming a cake just ahead of the chamber. My bullet having the square shouldered band behind the dirt scraper scrapes up the fouling and pushes it out of the barrel.”

:coffeecom

[Buckshot]

............I've head of them as dirt scraper grooves. In long slender boolit designs like the Lyman 311284 or the Saeco RG4, they're easily bent at that groove when forcing the slug with GC into a lube-size die base first. Best way for them (or honestly, any other boolit) is to lube in a die a thousandth over their as cast OD, and then send them nose first up through a push through die.

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

[fivegunner]

anybody have a picture they could post :bigsmyl2: of the 308206 boolit???

[bhn22]

http://www.castpics.net/subsite/HistMolds/IdealandLymanMolds.pdf

scroll down to "311206". This will be the same bullet.

[SwedeNelson]

Interesting - my Dad had a high wall in 30-30 that he wanted to
shoot Black in and that was the bullet he was looking for.
Never did find a mould for him, now both he and the rifle are gone.

This is what we came up with
http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i80/swedenelson/NOE_Bullet_Moulds_311_170Gr_RN_PB_170_gr_Sketch.jp g

Would like to get some samples if I can

Swede Nelson

[Larry Gibson]

Scraper grooves (the common name used at least since I started casting and reading everything about casting in '68) are not needed with todays lubricants and smokeless powders. They are a definite point of structural weakness if one is pushing velocities and psi's with GC'd cast bullets, especially in rifles. The scraper groove should definitely be omitted from any modern/custom cast bullet design.

Larry Gibson

[ohland]

Bent Ramrod, 01-20-2009, 08:31 PM
I tried it in my 1903 Springfield. With 13 gr of IMR-4227 it shot well, also with 16 gr of SR-4759. You can't increase the powder charge much or the shooting goes all over the place. On the other hand, if the velocity is too low, the boolit starts tipping.

11-08-2007, 10:48 PM
I get the impression from the chronology of the moulds Ideal was offering in the black and early smokeless powder era that ideas about pointed cast versions of smokeless jacketed bullets were strongly influenced by designers like W. G. Hudson and Horace Kephart. These early designers figured that cast bullets for smokeless calibers didn't need the amount of lubricant that black powder bullets needed, since the fouling in the barrel was much less, but the new bullets did need heavy driving bands lest they "strip the rifling" under the much higher pressures that smokeless powders were capable of. Therefore one sees the principles embodied in the thick driving bands and fewer grease grooves of the Ideal 311278 and 311206 designs translated into the later, more spire pointed designs like the 311413 and the 311334. Since much of the length of these type of bullets rode the inside of the bore, the grease grooves were made even smaller and fewer to preserve the thick driving bands as much as possible.

w30wcf
03-25-2007, 06:10 PM
The old Ideal manuals are a treasure trove of info....nice that you have one of them. Fortunately, I have both versions of the 308260. Interestingly, the noses are way below .30 cal bore dimensions at .275". At the velocities these bullets were intended for (<1,400 f.p.s.) that won't hurt accuracy. Quite likely, Horace allowed some extra room, if needed, for the fouling to accumulate ahead of the bullet before exiting the barrel.

Ideal's 308284 (Lyman 311284) also incorporates the front scraper band but with a nose of the proper diameter to ride the lands.

Jim Foral had a nice article about the HUDSON-KRAG Handloads in the 2004 Gun Digest. Among others, both versions of the 308206 are illustrated.

:coffeecom

[Bret4207]

I'm just pleased to see anyone remember old Horace. Todays shooters have little sense of the history behind the hobby.

[ohland]

What about H. Guy Loverin? Or Ray Thompson? I'm sure Keith has his legion of followers... Even Mr. Barlow?

[Bret4207]

Ashley Haines, Crossman, Whelen, Donaldson, Lovell, Hudson....I can't remember them all anymore.

[jaystuw]

I plink away a lot of 220 grain ideal 358238's out of a Remington m30 in 35Rem. Its the slightly bigger brother of the 308206. Its kind of a thrill thinking that I'm likely one of the the very few people in the world that still shoots this classic early bullet. Jay