Speer semi jacketed

[Eamonn]

"Boolits = as God laid it into the soil, Grand Old Galena, The Silver Stream graciously hand poured into molds for our consumption. . . Bullets= Machine made utilizing Full Length Gas Checks as to provide projectiles for the masses."
As these have half length gas checks I hope you will forgive me posting about them here ;-)

I got some of these 100 grainers on a whim to load in a .308 win.
Does anyone have any idea how low you can get them to go with trail boss?
Also how do they expand compared to 100-125 gr jacketed varmint bullets?
It would be nice to be able to get subsonic .22 mag perfomance at maybe 5-50 yards max as I can't legally suppress a rimfire caliber and as my 308 suppressor can't be disassembled to clean I don't want to shoot lead through it.

[popper]

I used unique in 30/30 and cfepistol in 300 BO. ~5gr. Makes a pop. Problem is getting them seated and feed right. Start high an go lower in powder. Check for stuck bullets. Never recovered any, that big GC makes a hole.

[tazman]

There is an old time issue with half jacket bullets that you need to be aware of. If you go too light, the jacket can stick in the barrel and the lead portion will still exit the barrel causing you to think the complete bullet cleared the barrel. With the jacket in the barrel, you would have an obstruction for the next round.
They used to put warning labels about this in the boxes of half jacket bullets, saying to use them for normal loads only.

[TNsailorman]

I saw those warnings back in the day and they were appropriate. I still buy every .410 Speer 3/4 jacket bullet I can get my hands on at a decent price. It is the best bullets I have ever used in the .41. I was disappointed when Speer discontinued those bullets. my experience anyway, james

[jimkim]

I bought three boxes of the Speer half jackets, after using up my Hornady plinkers. The Hornady's were awesome. I did not have the same experience with the Speer's. Not only would they refuse to feed in my 336, but they were hard for me to load. I have good sized hands. It was difficult for me to sit them in the casemouth. Once I did, they would yaw to one side or the other when seating. I even tried flaring, and I still couldn't get them to seat straight. If you come across any of the Hornady's, try them.

I used PB cast data. From memory, 8.0gr of Unique or 6.0gr of Red Dot shoots pretty accurately. It's good enough for rabbit anyway. 10gr of Unique makes for a good little round too. This was with the Hornady bullet.

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[popper]

I use mostly the hornady, appear to be swaged. Speer seem to be pressed (sintered?). Try tapping the handle on the press when seating to get them straight ( S.P. seater stem) then seat. Kinda like seating RN in 9mm.

[Eamonn]

Oh, maybe I should forget about trying to load them subsonic as I can't easily check the bore. The rifle is a Win 88.
I had a feeling they might have worked well with, perhaps, a hollow point drilled in them to make them safer around dogs.
I'll just use a .22 lr instead of trying to make it fancy :-)
It would have made for a higher legal tier (fox) though.

VV N130 powder 100 gr loads begin at 2800 fps. In that guise they will do for cheap practice at least.

As far as powders go Norma and Vihtavuori are the name of the game here.
Some Hodgdon and imr powders are available but to my knowledge there's only one importer that orders them once or maybe twice a year.

Anyway, I just picked up a Mcmillian stock for my Vixen so I'm happy :-P

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[popper]

You will NOT get 2800 fps with the bullet, maybe the cup! NO to HP them. They can't take the spin and fly apart at HV anyway, HP is just worse. 5-7gr of most any non-magnum pistol powder (231,wsf, unique equivalent ) will work, more of a pop than a bang. Try for about 1/2 jacket length into the neck. Larry Gibson has a thread here about light loads in 30cal, he enlarges the flash hole to reduce case stretching. I've never bothered. Fun and about 14-1600 fps, quite accurate.

[Eamonn]

I see, a stouter load of trailboss should work then if the n130 load will tear it apart in the barrel.

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[Eamonn]

The HP thought was only for greater expansion if subsonic.
I'll check out the Gibson thread.

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[Walks]

Yep, they can be Dangerous. We tried these when I was a kid, core cutters, swagers, lead wire. What a pain.
And you'd have to check each shot in the spotting scope. To make sure it was a round hole and not oblong or key hole. That meant the core had separated from the jacket.

But we were only using Revolver bullets.