Shooting PC coated Gas Check withoy GC?

Does any one shoot PC cast bullets designed for gas checks with out the gas check ? I'm just getting started with PC bullets & several of my molds are GC style. Would be great to leave the GC off if accuracy would not suffer. My main concern is for a Saeco 45 cal 350gr sized .460 for my 45-70 , about 1500 fps. The other is for my 44 cal bullets, mainly a Saeco 260gr sized .430 at any where from 1000 to 1350 fps in handguns. Also 44 cal up to 1800 fps from a Win 94 Legacy 24" bbl. Your info greatly appreciated.

I’ve tried this but it did affect the accuracy. Some tried and true loads became a lot less accurate

Yes, many of us have.

Yes, it works, but, usually accuracy suffers a bit. Acceptable? Depends on your goal.

Pistols at 'normal' ranges probably won't see much difference without GC. Rifles at longer ranges you might see a difference.

The only way to see is to try a few in your guns and compare to bullets with GC or plain base.

Thanks so much. I guess I will just have to try a few.

I cast, PC and shoot the Lee C-358-158-SWC and I find accuracy the same as the 358-158-RF. I've never used a gas check on it so I can't compare the difference.

I shoot PCed check type, unchecked in my 45/70 all the time.

I am experimenting with powder coated non gas checked boolits in my Savage 16 bolt gun in .250 Savage. Jury is still out! I've got some 5 shot groups a little more than 1" at 100 yds, and I've got some that were closer to 3". But the reason the jury is still out is that I have the same results with gas checked powder coated and non powder coated boolits!

NOE 311-238 GC is a tack drive PC'd no GC in a 300 BO

Just make sure you have nice sharp edges (good fill out) on the base of your boolits

I have shot a lot of powder coated bullets in plain base or checkless (GC boolit without check).

I found that gas operated guns (AR-15 etc.) are likely to do poorly without checks. All others seem to do pretty good without checks. Some cartridges/guns can maintain accuracy at a higher velocities with checks. However, regular straight wall pistol rounds (including 44 mag) can typically be pushed to full power with no problems.

This question keeps coming up but the fact is a bullet is steered from the base. It was proven more than 70 years ago that any imperfections or deviations from a perfectly flat and perpendicular bullet base will degrade accuracy; a uniform bevel base is still considered flat & perpendicular. However, the base of a gas check bullet is imperfect and only a properly installed gas check will make the base perfect. Powder coating protects the base from the heat and prevents gas cutting, but does not correct major imperfections in a GC bullets base.

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Originally Posted by charlie b

Yes, many of us have.

Yes, it works, but, usually accuracy suffers a bit. Acceptable? Depends on your goal.

Pistols at 'normal' ranges probably won't see much difference without GC. Rifles at longer ranges you might see a difference.

The only way to see is to try a few in your guns and compare to bullets with GC or plain base.

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^^^ 100% ^^^

My thoughts also. The base of the bullet is paramount to accuracy. A bit difficult to make the base of every PC bullet uniform. Gas check much more likely to be uniform.

When I look at the bases of my powder coated RCBS 25-100's they sure seem quite uniform to me. Much more so than the occasional boolit that has a gas check not seated squarely for whatever reason. If my experiments with gas checked PC'd vs PC'd boolits sans checks shows that the gas checked are more accurate, I would say that the gas check ridge would be the cause more than an imperfect base.

For everything except gas operate semi-automatics, I am a big fan of plain base / checkless. If the bases are uniform, my results are "as good as jacketed". This primarily for Revolvers and Contender 10" & 14" barrels.

For my AR-15 applications, I have become a firm believer that gas checks are needed. I am still working on the details of what works best for me with the AR-15 platform.

So would gas checks help with a 100 yard shot with a 9 mm carbine?

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Originally Posted by markmars

So would gas checks help with a 100 yard shot with a 9 mm carbine?

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Even at full power, gas checks for a 9mm (typical pistol or a blow back carbine) are not normally needed for PC boolits. For some 9mm guns, leading can be a problem. Gas checks sometimes help with or fix leading.

The issue with gas operated guns is gas cutting damage to a small portion of the bullet base as the bullet is crossing the gas port. We know this is happening in AR-15s because of lead buildup in the bolt. I have also found loads that go from "almost as good as jacketed" with gas checks to shotgun patterns without. This was discussed at:
https://castboolits.gunloads.com/sho...-amp-Checkless

I have been wondering about this also. With shortages on everything, I bought a bunch of .44 Spl brass instead of waiting for .44 mag to come in. I was thinking of loading the .44 Spl without GC's, kind of as a rebated boat tail. Mainly shooting out of a Henry X Model.
I just finished 3rd coat of Hi-Tek Old Gold on .44 cal RCBS SIL boolits. Will try 10 rds with GC's and 10 without and see if there is much difference.

shot 10 rds with gc's and 10 without from 50 yds 6.1 gn of Unique for a start load. Gc's shot 6-8" high but good windage 4" group. Without gc's was terrible, shot high, keyholed, 5 on paper, 5 high off paper. The 5 on paper had about an 8" spread. With gc's there were perfect holes, just need to work up a good load.