303 british hard cast gas checked load data

[muscleking]

Hi guys

I just got 400 rounds of 200gr and 200 rounds of 180gr, these stuff:

http://www.thebulletbarn.com/pricelist-r.html

For the 303 british. All the powder I have is imr 4895 and 3031, hodgson benchmark, and trailboss.

I have been doing quite a bit of reading and I am confused.

1. Do I have to go subsonic with lead?
2. I got these are hard lead and most people talk about soft stuff that's why cause leading problem in barrel
3. Just realized lube for cast bullets and these ones said "hard wax lube" do I still need too lube it?
4. Can I put in 42 grain of 3031 and 4895 which worked very well for my hornady sst 150gr bullets for these cast ones?
5. I read trailboss for cast use 9 to 16gr
6. Will slower velocity means I need to sight scope again?

104543

[grouch]

If you've got 3031 and 4895, you could try a starting load of 70% of the published load for .303 in the bullet weight you're using. With gas checked bullets you certainly don't have to go subsonic, but I doubt if you can use the full jacketed bullet charge either. You are working blind here, need to know the actual groove diameter of your barrel and actual diameter of your cast bullets. You will almost certainly have to adjust your scope(a lot if it's an Enfield), and for what it's worth, a softer alloy doesn't necessarily cause leading.
Good luck, I hope it works for you.
Grouch

[Larry Gibson]

Try starting at 24 gr of 3031 or 26 gr of 4895 and use a Dacron filler with both. Work up in 1/2 gr increments until accuracy goes south. You will not get good accuracy with the same loads you use with the 150 Hornady jacketed bullets. The lube that is one then should work fine. You probably will need to rezero the scope but a lot depends on the zero you have and the actual cast load used. Odds are a rezero will be needed.

Larry Gibson

[muscleking]

I loaded 20 rounds
4895, 30gr, 200gr,
4895, 31gr, 200gr
3031, 30gr, 200gr
Trailboss, 10.5gr, 200gr

Go shooting next Saturday, I report back in a week.

Tried a little variation on bullet seating, see what happens.

[JeffinNZ]

If you really want to get them going put 41gr of H4350 under them for 2000fps.

[mdi]

I've always found it very easy to just consult my Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook either 3rd, or 4th Edition. I got a lot of info for my .303 British...

[madsenshooter]

muscleking, I hope all goes well for you, but skipping step one can lead to disappointment. Maybe you didn't, but you have to slug your bore first and foremost in order to know what size bullet to order. I see .313 available at the link you provided, but a lot of our .303 shooters have found that they needed bigger bullets, sometimes much bigger! Good luck, and if you don't get lucky your first time out, don't give up.

[longbow]

+1 on what madsenshooter said about slugging your bore.

My Lee Enfields all run about 0.314" groove and like at least 0.315" boolits. I have had good results with up to 0.318" boolits but had to seat those a bit deep. No leading and good accuracy though.

I size to suit my throats which again (fortunately) all run about 0.315"+ so 0.315" is as big as I can seat out in a 314299 style boolit.

Anything under 0.314" resulted in leading for me. Anything over 0.314" has done pretty well.

If it hasn't been mentioned, measuring groove diameter for odd groove rifling can be a bit tricky... doable but tricky. I decided I didn't care as much about groove diameter as throat diameter so slugged the throats.

Something else that just occurred to me is that you should try sliding the noses of those into the muzzle. If snug or tight they should shoot reasonably well. If loose they may not even if groove diameter is okay. That bore riding nose needs to be supported on the lands.

Another issue that may or may not come up with fairly hot loads is skidding. I had issues with the rifling swaging wider grooves into the boolits when I pushed velocity so tried oven heat treating to make a harder boolit and that worked for me. Since these are hard cast it likely will not be a problem but if you can recover some boolits from the berm or water jugs or...? they can tell a tale by the condition of rifling and whether there is any gas cutting.

Longbow