A mold suggestion for 270

[longcruise]

I'd like some suggestions on a mold for hunting with a 270. I like Lee molds but they seem to be on the light side of bullet weight. Thier only mold is a 135 grainer and I'd like to shoot in the 150 to 160 range.

[Rcmaveric]

270 bullet molds are few and far between. I would love to see an LFN profile for a hunting bullet in the 140 to 150 grain. Until the 270 gets a good enough following and one of the bullet design gurus makes us a design and we do a group buy we are stuck with what we got. So far you make the 4th person to cast for the 270 win that i know of and that includes me.

My experience is only with the 135g Lee bullet.

I personally use the Lee 135g and comes out 140 grains lube and checked. It is highly accurate though for me in a savage axis with a 1 in 9 twist barrel. Velocites are in 2050 fps. I shoot often with it 100 yards and 200 yards. I dont think its an optimum nose profile though for hunting and would make shot placement important. It would have to be a good heart shot or head or neck. I wouldnt rely on expansion or blood loss or blood trail. I hope to harvest a deer with it.

RCBS offers a 150 grainer. But it looks like a silhouette style bullet. Would most likely pencil straight through a deer. So shot placement with that would have to be precise and blood loss would be minimum. It appears to have the smallest meplate.

Last but not least NOE offers a pope style pullet in 150 grains. Meplate looks the same size as the Lee bullet. It looks promising with all thar bearing surface. Was designed for NOE by one of our members.

Owe i forgot about LBT. He offers a LFN 270 bullet. We might have to go through him. Veral Smith who owns and operates LBT is 86 so... I have thought of ordering one of his molds. I am on the fence though due to what I have heard.

There are three older molds no longer in production from decades past but none are what you are looking for and would most likely be really expensive due to being out of production.

This what we are stuck with until we get a better following


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[richhodg66]

I am beginning to cast for the .270, I shot up a can of some I got in an estate sale which were alreadt sized and checked, they didn't shoot real wel.

I noticed this one when I was thinking about trying hunting with it; https://www.gunbroker.com/item/835194141

I cast up a pot of Lyman 280473, still need to size and lube them and see how they do, but I wouldn't deer hunt with it.

[richhodg66]

Some reading for you here;
https://www.handloadersbench.com/forum/general-hunting-discussion/big-game/830254-rcbs-156gr-lc-270win-load

[longcruise]

Thanks to all three of you for excellent informational responses. FWIW I don't make 4 reloading cast for the 270 because I have not yet started! :-) But, I'm encouraged to buy the Lee mold to play with while making a decision on a heavier casting.

I wonder what might be gained in Terms of velocity by using a powder coat. My very limited experiments with it in 30-30 and 45-70 have all shown encouraging results.

Another thought is to use a duplex casting of WW with a pure lead nose.

I'd welcome any further thoughts on this.

[Rcmaveric]

I have powder coated the Lee bullet. It worked just fine like a greased bullet. Have found no gain or loss in paper patched, PC or greased Lee bullet. The all performed the same and accurately. As of ease, it was quicker and easier to just lube them for me.

I have had my eye on the NOE 279 bullet for a while. I think the pope style would be more accurate at higher velocities over 2000 fps. Is the reason i cant get over 2050 fps nose slump or other thought, i wont know until i try a different bullet design.

Personally i am happy with 2050fps. I would like to get up closer to 2400. But i can shoot just fine at 2050 fps out to 200 yards.

That article builds my confidence on my little cast bullets on deer.

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[richhodg66]

Thanks to all three of you for excellent informational responses. FWIW I don't make 4 reloading cast for the 270 because I have not yet started! :-) But, I'm encouraged to buy the Lee mold to play with while making a decision on a heavier casting.

I wonder what might be gained in Terms of velocity by using a powder coat. My very limited experiments with it in 30-30 and 45-70 have all shown encouraging results.

Another thought is to use a duplex casting of WW with a pure lead nose.

I'd welcome any further thoughts on this.

I'd think the idea of casting a soft nosed bullet would be a good idea. I also thought of trying to paper patch a 6.5 cast bullet, I have a few molds in 6.5 still and one is pretty heavy for caliber and has a small flat point.

I personally wouldn't get wrapped around the axle about velocity, 1800-2000 FPS will cause the standard 50/50 + 2% tine to expand just fine. I have yet to kill a deer at anything close to 200 yards and I kill a few just about every year, my opinion, chasing that idea is going to cause you to miss out on real world performance of the terminal kind.

I've killed one deer with a cast bullet a 7mm, not much bigger than a .270. Right now, I'm only interested in casting for the one .270 I have just to plink and practice with it, but I'm pretty sure I could be successful deer hunting with cast in the .270 if I worked at it a while.

[ole_270]

I cast that 280473 spitzer about 25 years ago for use in my 270. I used loads from the Lyman manuals, but never got it to shoot very well above 1500 fps. I ended up using it with Red Dot at around 3.5 grains for offhand practice loads. I've since read of others saying it was a low speed design. Since rebarreling the 270 and picking up other rifles for cast usage, I haven't tried any other cast in that rifle.

[richhodg66]

Yeah, I got the mold and about 1000 gas checks in a deal. Looked around until I found a .280 H&I die for my Lyman 450. I cast them pretty hard and plan to shoot them big if they'll chamber, but I never really figured this would be a good design, seems most pointy types are not in my experience anyway.

I have honestly never been a fan of the .270, I happen to have one because a bundling deal presented itself and it's a good rifle. Also, .270 ammo was the only centerfire rifle ammo that never sold out locally during the scare a few years ago. Bottom line, it has always struck me as a weird caliber that uses an adball bore size nothing else uses and won't do anything a .30-06 won't do better, but I like guns and have one now so I'll do what it takes to shoot it, but I doubt I'll ever get heavily into it.

[longcruise]

My 30-30 PC bullets (Lee 180) cast from WW and air cooled seem to hold up pretty well at a (guessed) velocity of 1900 to 2000 fps but I have only been able to fire a few shots before retreating due to a firing pin problem. And with the 45-70 I stick with BP velocities or just above so those with PC are indistinguishable from cast and lubed.

So, I guess my thoughts on the soft nose lead pour was out of concern that the WW AC might not expand at all in the 1700 fps range and maybe not at velocities in the 2000 to 2100 range.

[Rcmaveric]

I do beleive in the hunting section or maybe a searching bar there are test. At 2000 fps AC ww and 50/50 (coww/pure lead) performs just fine. Worse case scenario it would be no different than shooting a deer with .243... not trying to nock that round but i have had to help friends track deer that shoot that. Doesnt expand and very little blood trail because of a small wound channel.

Another option is heat treat your bullets and anneal the nose.

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[Dthunter]

Were your friends using a cast boolet in the 243win?

J-word bullets tend to expand perfectly in the 243win, at logical distances in game.

[Rcmaveric]

No my friends were shooting jacketed. 243 Win.

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[robinsroost]

Rcmaveric, I have killed 36 deer with my .243, using 100 grain Nosler Partitions, over H1000, and I have never lost or had to track any of them. Most were bang/flop, DRT, and the others expired within sight. No bullets were ever recovered and the exit wounds were about 1 1/2", showing great expansion. IMHO, the .243 kills much better than it ought to, using proper ingredients. My only mold drops an 85 grain LRNGC boolet and I would not use that on deer. Keep yer powder dry...……..robin

[Good Cheer]

Once developed loads using 280473 in a 7-08.
It was 1 1/2" accurate at 100 yards while making the bore look like it was galvanized! ;-)

Maybe somebody oughta make a .27-35.

[Good Cheer]

Once developed loads using 280473 in a 7-08.
It was 1 1/2" accurate at 100 yards while making the bore look like it was galvanized! ;-)

Maybe somebody oughta make a .27-35.

Oops. Made a double post.
Would be nice if there were small capacity case .27 or .28 bore target rifles. But, everybody wants to kill something and one way or the other that ends up being the standard by which all cartridges lie or die.

[gumbo333]

6.8 spc

[richhodg66]

6.8 spc

I have pondered one of those little cartridges, it's one of the common offerings in Contender barrels I have been considering, but it's such an oddball bore size and lacking in bullet selection. Only reason I own a .270 is because it came as part of a package and ammo is available everywhere.

[longcruise]

Well, I'm going to mess around with the Lee mold and see where it goes.

[robinsroost]

longcruise, I am extremely curious about your results. I have two .270's, a model 1500 Howa and a Ruger #1. Keep yer powder dry...……..robin

[Todd N.]

Cast bullets in a .270? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of shooting a .270- high speed, (relatively) long range? It's like shooting cast in a .300 RUM.

As for the guy who commented on using .243 for deer...

You, me, robinsroost, and many others here know that there is more to that story than what you are telling. I believe your friend's shot placement was not what it should have been, or he was using the wrong bullet for hunting. My wife ONLY shoots a 6mm Remington- a sped-up version of the .243 for those who don't know. She and the grandkids do the deer hunting in our household, and she has taken 1-3 deer every year with that rifle for the last 30+ years. She and that rifle have also been death to a few cow elk over the years. And no animal she has shot has ever run more than 40 yards.

[richhodg66]

Well, I'm going to mess around with the Lee mold and see where it goes.

Post the results. Don't seem to be many shooting cast in .270, even here. I think you're going to want a different mold design for deer hunting though. No reason the .270 can't do it, this is a picture of a 7mm cast bullet I dug out just under the hide of a doe I shot last year after going through about three feet of deer. There isn't that much difference in bore size, but I would opt for a heavy bullet, preferably a hollow pointed or soft nosed one.
250488

[Poygan]

I agree with Todd N. that the .270 has the higher velocity with jacketed boolits. OTOH, I cast for all of my rifles, with the exception of a .223 I once owned. I have not shot extensively with the .270 but it is accurate with the RCBS 250 grain boolit, using 4198. If I was still hunting whitetails, I would have no problem using this combination.

[Harter66]

I shoot a 260-120 paper patched in a 264 WM because .

My 6.5 bullets are to fat to patch for the 6.8 . The 279-124 which is ready to load at 130-132 gr from users is probably the easiest bullet I've ever shot , I get 2200 out of a 20" 5R barrel with H322 and nearly 2400 with H4198 using jacket data and good sense .

The 27-130 FP RCBS works as well but doesn't hit the numbers . My example weighed 141 gr naked .
I did find a 27-150 once but the shipping made me buy an NOE .

You might look for an under sized 7mm-168 . I have one such mould .... The nose is too small for my 7mms but it has to be too deep in the 6.8 case to go into the leade . It will size readily to .280 but the nose ......... If you're shooting a Savage it might work well .