Lyman/Ideal 308329

[madsenshooter]

Cast up a bunch of Mr. Pointy, the Lyman/Ideal 308329. The mold was a pleasure to work with, dropped em right out no problems. Talk about consistency. I've been weighing the lot. Avg weight is 186.8gr and they don't vary but +- .2gr either side of that! I've weighed over 100 and there is only 1 outside of that +- .2gr. I think the heel didn't quite fill out on it. My Krag seems to like the boolit too, I tried some seated all the way down to the crimping groove over 15grs of Blue Dot and got a 1" 100 yard group out of them! Think I'll try seating them out a bit closer to the forcing cone that Krags have and see what happens. They were sized .311 for my .310 bore. Going to use them as my 200 yd load at a CBA match in Ysplantia, MI next weekend.

[Ben]

madsenshooter:

That's a fairly rare mold.

Many people say a spire pt. cast bullet won't shoot well, I've not found that to be the case. But then again, I don't try and push them too fast either.

I have several molds that cast a spire pt. .30 cal. bullet and staying in the 1,500 - 1,800 fps range delivers great accuracy from my 06's and 308 Win. rifles.

Great shooting with that 1 " group ! !

I have a Cramer that throws a " pointy " 191 gr. , .30 cal. cast bullet. It is a great shooter also in my rifles.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/haysb/Cramer%20%20640/IMG_1057Small.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/haysb/Cramer%20%20640/IMG_1062Small.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/haysb/Cramer%20%20640/IMG_1067Small.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/haysb/Cramer%20%20640/IMG_1072Small.jpg

Thanks,

Ben

[beagle]

Not a thing wrong with the #329. I have two and both were abused during childhood(before I got them). As a result, one is pitted on one half and the other is pitted on both halves.....but, a few rough places on the bullets aside, they both shoot well.

And a 311413HP and an old Yankee clone are my favorite shooters in teh .30/06./beagle

[SierraWhiskeyMC]

Nothing wrong with the pointy boolits as long as you don't try to hurry them along too much.

My Dad got great results with the 311413 (169gr) in a .30-06 using 15gr of IMR SR 4759; 2-1/8"x 2-7/8" 5-shot groups @ 200 yards.

4759 is a bit tricky to meter due to bridging, but reduced rifle loads is what this powder was made for.

[madsenshooter]

Ben that mold in the top pic isn't what the 191gr came out of is it? The cavities look more like the Squibb (1 b or 2?) I have Belding and Mull's version, which shoots pretty darn good at 1200-1300fps. I like the heavy driving bands of the 191. My 308329 has a longer ogive. I can't really understand the "can't go too fast" problem with these bullets. I'm using a 23BHN alloy, can't see much nose slump taking place with that hardness, is there some other factor? The idea just doesn't make sense to me, jacketed bullets with the same form factor are accurate at 2500fps, why not boolits? All I want is a single ragged hole at 100 yds with 2000fps velocity! It looks to me like the 308329 is a lead rendition of the Swiss GP11 bullet, at least the nose. I have a 7.65 Argentine 185gr ball round that it's also similar to.

[Ben]

The mold in my # 2 post above is the mold that was used to make the bullets you see in post # 2.

Ben

[Bret4207]

Ben that mold in the top pic isn't what the 191gr came out of is it? The cavities look more like the Squibb (1 b or 2?) I have Belding and Mull's version, which shoots pretty darn good at 1200-1300fps. I like the heavy driving bands of the 191. My 308329 has a longer ogive. I can't really understand the "can't go too fast" problem with these bullets. I'm using a 23BHN alloy, can't see much nose slump taking place with that hardness, is there some other factor? The idea just doesn't make sense to me, jacketed bullets with the same form factor are accurate at 2500fps, why not boolits? All I want is a single ragged hole at 100 yds with 2000fps velocity! It looks to me like the 308329 is a lead rendition of the Swiss GP11 bullet, at least the nose. I have a 7.65 Argentine 185gr ball round that it's also similar to.

My take and worth just what you're paying for it- I've given this a lot of thought and have a few suspicions.

1- IF you have a properly dimensioned nose that gets at least some support from the lands then you'll be able to shoot faster/more accurately than one that's completely unsupported.

2- IF you have a boolit with minimum runout and no damage from seating you'll be able to shoot faster/ore accurately.

3- IF you launch the boolit gently with a slower powder and use an alloy of adequate strength for the pressure...ditto above.

My suspicion is a lot of the bad press the spire pointed boolits get comes from guys attempting to boost them to jacketed speeds when they didn't fit the gun in the first place. Obviously the shorter the bearing surface is for the total boolit length the more critical the fit/seating/ runout/alloy/pressure curve become. If you look back through the old Rifleman mags of the 20's, 30's and 40's when the reputation of the spire points was established you'll see they used fairly soft binary alloys, fast powders and aimed for jacketed speeds. It's no wonder they had wild grouping.

Comparing jacketed spire points to cast spire points is comparing apples to pine cones. No voids to worry about in jacketed, strength is off the chart, the jacket is strong enough to align itself in the bore, etc. Your 23 Bhn alloy is hard compared to an 8 Bhn alloy, but it's still butter soft compared to a jacketed bullet.

[madsenshooter]

"IF you launch the boolit gently with a slower powder and use an alloy of adequate strength for the pressure...ditto above."

Hmm, that's food for thought. I have a couple slow burners, DP85 and WC860, need around 32000psi to obturate the 23BHN alloy. Time for some loading and shooting! I'm going to have to join up at that 1000 yard range that's only 5 miles from my house, they have a chronograph for members to use too!

[Bret4207]

Why are you TRYING to get the boolit to obtruate? I take it the boolit doesn't fit in the first place? I'm not a fan of the idea of making a boolit obturate. Yes, in some cases it works to an extent, but if you think about it, it can never be as accurate as a correctly fitted boolit in the first place unless you're using zero clearance turned necks, etc. Obturation is nothing more than the uncontrolled mashing of the boolit into the throat. Fit the boolit to the throat in the first place, give it a gentle shove out of the case and let the pressure build further down the barrel.

Again, just my 2 cents.

[madsenshooter]

Well, it appears I'm mentally fighting two concepts here. One says that obturation is a necessary thing, the other, Lee's theories on maximum pressure. On the one hand, taking my 23BHN as an example, requires around 32,000psi to cause obturation. On the other hand according to Lee's ideas, 30000psi should be the max pressure for said boolit, otherwise you're mashing it more than it can spring back. The performance of my load at a cast match I shot last weekend indicates to me that Lee is probably on the right track. See I shot an itty bitty group with a load that I'd oven heat treated but never tested, no doubt they were harder than the as cast alloy though. Didn't have much loading time, so figured I'd shoot the match with as cast. The results were nothing like the heat treated load, everything but the heat treatment, or lack thereof was the same. I was throwing shots all over the targets at the match, and there was only one shot I could blame on myself. Adjusting the scope did no good, things were too unpredictable. Apparently my load of 20gr of Blue Dot exceeded the strength of the as cast boolits, but not the heat treated ones. Here it is nearly a week after the match, and I just found the little tag that noted that I'd heat treated the boolits I shot the little group with, then came the little light! For reference, the load was 20gr of BD, Rem 9 1/2M primer, Eagan MX3-30AR clone boolit, and here's the 13 shot group I shot with the hardened loads, there was even 2 different primers used in those 13 shots, but they piled right on top of one another at about 80 yards with my scoped Krag.

[Bret4207]

I don't believe obturation is necessary, in fact it can cause all sorts of problems. While I'm sure Mr Lee is factually correct in his pressure theories, I don't think it translates into what you're doing quite the way you are explaining it. If I understand you correctly, you want your boolit to obturate (WHY???) but not exceed the shear strength of the alloy. As I said earlier- if the boolit fits in the first place you don;t need obturation to "force fit" the boolit for you. How do you control obturation so it's the same each time? You can't. It will be similar, but if you have a case that's cockeyed a bit in the 4 o'clock direction and follow it up with one that's in the 7 o'clock direction the obturation on those two boolits will differ and if the other 3 are dead center you'll have at least two rounds out of the group.

The alternative is to fit the boolit to the throat and gently push it out the barrel without obturation. Why go to the trouble of casting as close to a perfect boolit as possible and using a strong alloy if you then try and mash it into compliance with the throat? That 13 shot group you show with 3 distinct groups and 3 fliers might have been half the size with no fliers if the boolit fit differently.

Just my 2 cents.

[9.3X62AL]

Ben--as always, your photography ROCKS.

I've bought into the belief that spire point designs aren't the best for cast boolit riflery, and own no such tooling. I did get my beliefs challenged a while back with a borrowed mould from Onceabull, the NEI 405 grain .460" spitzer for 45 rifles. This boolit fit my Ruger #1's barrel VERY well, and shot accordingly with 92/6/2 alloy. Just for grins, I poured some castings from straight wheelweights, and performance didn't vary noticeably--the same 1.5"-1.75" groups at 100 yards with the aperture irons. Now, mind you--these chunks of lead were leaving at 1400-1600 FPS, not 2500. The #1 might contain such loadings, but I'll hire that sort of labor--thank you very much.

Madsen, if you're making 1" groups at 100 yards--you're DEFINITELY doing a lot of things right. That is some good shooting, that really helps bust the myth about cast spitzers not being capable of fine accuracy. I'm not a huge fan of obturation, either. I take pains to assure good boolit fit before the Big Light Hits It (thank you, Buckshot), just to subtract as many variables as possible.

More recently, I've begun paying closer attention to case mouth/boolit sidewall interaction during seating, trying to find The Right Dimension to prevent marring or size reduction with a given alloy. I would venture a guess that a LOT of boolits get ruined (or at least compromised) in the loading process. Obturation--if and when it occurs--could 'cover a power of sins' with such a boolit. And there is the argument that slow powders when used in Magnum revolver calibers require heavy bullet pull, which is enhanced with tighter neck/boolit tensioning. Another great place for obturation to play a role, perhaps.

My response to these assertions has been to get the dimensional relationships correct in the first place, and to avoid powders with critical neck tensioning requirements for cast boolit applications.

For now, these explorations haven't produced wholesale group tightening--but there are a LOT fewer flyers taking place with both rifles and handguns.

[runfiverun]

most of my best h/v loads come from boolits that are a slip fit in the bbl not under or oversized.
the nose portions of most of these boolits are a very short bore riding section with a longer bearing length.
the loads start slowly and continue to push most of the way down the bbl
for instance 49 grs of rl-19 i the 358. with a 358 sized boolit.
lots of 4064 in the 8 mauser with a 3235 sized 32-40 boolit.
and imr 7828 in the 0-6 with a 309 sized boolit with a 302 sized nose.
quite tight in the bbl.

[madsenshooter]

I had another example of this "too much pressure" thing loaded that I shot yesterday. I had the Eagan MX3-30AR, one batch oven heat treated, one batch as cast, 23BHN. Naturally, I got more pressure with the Eagan in the tighter bored K31 vs my .310 Krag. They were already loaded and I'd just put a new 24X scope on my K31. I started out with the hardened boolit over 17.5grs of Blue Dot. Shots were predictable and I was able to get the scope adjusted where I wanted it. After that I went to the as cast loads. Two shots hit where the previous ones did, without adjusting the scope any, I shot a basketball sized pattern at 85 yards. I'm beginning to see the error of my ways!

Ben, it must be this widescreen monitor making the cavities of your mold look like Squibb boolits, sorry. Makes the 191 in your fingers look a mile long too.

[dualsport]

The start 'em slow then push theory makes sense to me. From a powder perspective(I get that I need to 'fit' the throat) is AA2700 a good candidate in the '06 family of cartridges or other milsurp standards? I bought a jug of Data powder or three back when it was cheap. Also, will powders in the H335/AA2230 range do the start 'em slow thing, or are they too fast? How about the super slow powders? I have a truckload of surplus 50BMG and 20mm powder. Maybe with a Bullseye kicker?

[madsenshooter]

2700 has about the same speed as H380, I have used it in the 06 for jacketed loads, needs magnum primers or you get unburned granules blowing back into the chamber on a semiauto, they roll back into the chamber on a bolt action too, then you get little powder granule dents in your brass. Which Data powders do you have, there's info on this site about DP85, which seems to not make a good reduced load powder. DP86 however might as it is about the same as Accurate 3100, in fact Accurate has some cast boolit loads on their website for DP86, http://www.accuratepowder.com/data/surplus/Data%20Powder%2086%20Extruded%20Load%20Data.pdf, at least for 30/06. Do a search of the #'s of the 50BMG surplus powders you have on this site, lots of info and they seem to be cast friendly.

[dualsport]

Thanks Madsen, I'll look into the magnum primer idea. That could account for some vertical stringing I've been getting. I have Data 79, 68, IMR 5010, and I think it's 860. I'll look them up in the surplus powder section.