NEI Mould.....Hope for my .338s (at last?)

[BruceB]

Just cast a few trial boolits from a brand-new NEI "338-283" mould, and I'm pretty pumped about what the dimensions are telling me.

This is a LONG roundnose design, and looks a lot like a stretched and fatter 311291. The nose is fully one-half of the overall length. It has long parallel sides on the nose, which measures .332" in diameter! .332" makes this long bore-rider big enough that it will NOT enter the muzzle of the M70 under any pressure I can muster with my fingers. That is exceptionally good news!

There are four driving bands, and all of them measure .339", and all are perfectly round, as near as my Mitutoyo calipers will tell me (within .0005").

In addition to all the good news above, in my wheelweight alloy an average of four boolits weighed comes in at 304.0 grains. What bliss....

Now, instead of dealing with Lyman's left-over designs from .33 WCF days, and Lee's latter-day el-cheapo 220 RN, it would seem that I have a MODERN boolit of proper weight and dimensions. If this one doesn't shoot, I'll be sadly disappointed, but everything sure looks good right now.

[The Nyack Kid]

thats a good deal . the 338s ,for being as populer of a caliber as it is , dosn't have many opitions for cast boolit users . ( one reason i have stayed away form them ) . that is a neat looking boolit , i have alway had a soft spot for the heavy-for-caliber boolits .
dont spare us the details : how it does with HTWW and ACWWs and how fast you plan on going .

[BruceB]

TNK, sir;

Yep, starting this coming Thursday morning, I have eight days off and intend to be shooting these NEI guys somewhere in that period.

I'll start easy, with 2400 going up from about 16 grains, then through 5744, 4198, maybe 4895....dunno where it'll take me. How fast?? Good question! I'd like to see useful accuracy , like maybe 1.5" -2" at 100 for five rounds when loaded upwards of 1800 fps. However, if results are decent I'll keep bumping up the speed to see how much it will tolerate. It has plenty of lube capacity, which may help at the high end.

Our M70 is a 26"-barreled Super Grade, and such a beautifully set-up rifle that I've never even had it out of the stock....the trigger was that good right out of the box. It can deliver the Lee 220 RN under an inch at 100 for TEN rounds, but only at a measly 1300 fps (so far). Plus, it's gorgeous to look at, which is always nice.

The Lee is by far the best performer to date, out of a bunch of .33 moulds which also includes an LBT 235, and Lyman's 338320 (200 grains) and 33887 (250 grains).

Testing to date really has been sporadic and rather scanty, so I haven't really written-off any of the moulds as "poor". A lot more loading and shooting is needed, before I do that.

Our second .338 is a my left-handed Savage 116, bought just last year, with the "used-to-be-adjustable" muzzle brake. Thirty or forty rounds of cast boolits, and that brake is SEIZED in the "on" position, and will not budge. Even standing it on its muzzle in a jar full of penetrating oil for a week did nothing to free it. With the brake "on", as it now is, full-power jacketed hunting loads are about like shooting a .270, even on the benchrest. Very effective. Dunno if I'll try more cast loads in this one or not. It groups three Barnes 225 TSX bullets well under 3/4" at 100 (three consecutive groups, three slightly-different loads!).

This new-to-me NEI design has got me rather excited. It just LOOKS like it'll shoot....hope it does turn out that way.

[The Nyack Kid]

Ive been chewing on this all afternoon , and i pinned down why this boolit cought my eye in the first place.
It is a near copy, weight and shape wise ,of the 300 gr bullet that the 333 jeffery was famous for using.
IMO the 333 jeffey is one of the great classic's , it rates way up there with the 375 H&H and the 9.3x62.
I wounder if i could get this mold in .334 caliber ? then i would just need to get a double square bridge magnum mauser action to go along with the mold and..........

[BruceB]

Very true, the similarity to the .333 Jeffery.

If you go to

www.neihandtools.com

on page 6 of the bullet designs, you'll find the list of bullets in the .33-caliber area. They state that mulds are cut ".000 to .003" above the stated diameter. As mentioned, my 338-283 is .332 on the nose diameter and .339 on the bands when cast from wheelweights. Is that too small for such a rifle as you envision, or are we talking about GROOVE diameter of .334?

If so, the lube grooves are sufficiently deep on this 338-283 to allow sizing to .334", I'm sure. Then the nose might be too fat....?

I cast a short run of about 100 bullets yesterday morning after work, and find that from a properly warmed-up mould they actually drop at 308 grains, +/- 0.5 grains. This is a single-cavity mould, if I didn't mention that earlier.

Somewhere down the line I'll try casting some of these with the softpoint technique I discovered last summer. With the bulk of the nose well-supported by the lands, I would not expect much slumping of the nose under acceleration, if any. If one-half of the nose length was pure lead, it should allow 3/4 of the bullet to be much harder and thus keep a lot of sectional density to drive the penetration. This is a LOOOONG boolit! It would probably make a really fine elk-killer, if the velocity is high enough to offer a decent effective range, like 200 yards.

I'm eager to get on the range with some of these!

[Bret4207]

Bruce- Is this a newly made NEI or one left over from when Walt had it? Walt was a craftsman but I was hesitant to order a new mold until I got more of a review on quality.

[The Nyack Kid]

Tpr. Bret
my two iron post Walt molds( i believe they are . i ordered them after he pasted away and NEI was moved to Texas) are of the same quailty as the molds that he made . I cant speak for the aluminum molds .

BruceB
how close is the boolit to the CAD drawings in the catalog ? Both my #175 and #346 have differant shaped noses that what is shown in the catalog .
Does the bore ride length taper twards the nose a little (say .001) or does it run strait till it gets to the ogive radius ?

[BruceB]

My mould is an aluminum job, and it's just about jewelry quality...simply gorgeous! However, I bought it from an Ebay seller, and can't say when it was made. I am going to order the .404 mould very soon, and that'll give us a definite date to judge their quality by. I was leaning to iron for the .404 mould, but for the rather limited number of .404s I expect to shoot, aluminum would probably do me fine, and is a bit less expensive.

I'm at work and hence don't have measuring capability, but I DO happen to have one of the .338 boolits in my pocket. It looks just like the catalog picture. I measured the nose at .332", but I believe that was taken just ahead of the first band. In trying to slide it into the muzzle of the M70, only the ogive entered the bore, so if it tapers at all, it can't be by very much. I'll measure again in the morning and let you know.

(Do the rest of you castnuts do this....carry an assortment of miscellaneous boolits around in yer pockets?? I just discovered a 311284 in another pocket....!)

[BruceB]

Okay, I got home about 0700 and had a chance to measure this boolit a bit more.

It's 1.390" in length, and the nose portion is about 0.695 in length....half of the bullet's length is nose, just like my eyeball estimate predicted. The nose is pretty near a perfect cylinder up to the ogive, running .332" at the edge of the first band, and actually increasing a bit to .333" at the point where the rounding-off starts. The ogive portion is only about 0.260" in length.

My calipers don't detect ANY out-of-roundness anywhere on the sample boolit, although I imagine a good micrometer might detect a bit of variation. The calipers only read down to half-a-thousandth, or .0005".

Having just come off a twelve-hour night shift, I believe I'll take a nap and then get to loading some of these for initial trials. Forecast is decent for the next few days, so I should have some shooting results soon.

[Bullshop]

Maybe now would be a good time to try the Bull Plate method!
I will send you a sample if your interested.
BIC/BS