The British Are Tumbling!

[rtyler8140]

So I ended up picking up a 316299 from NOE. Loaded it up with 17g of 2400 and it didn't shoot as well as I had hoped. I decided to try a few different things based on some pointers here & some info from 303guy. I have several different loads ranging from paper patched, fillers, slower powder, higher velocity, etc. Hoping to get out to the range this weekend. I will report back with some results. Fingers crossed I find some good loads. Thanks for all the input, I appreciate the tribal knowledge.

[john.k]

i didnt have tumbling ,but ocassional flyers ,and generally poor accuracy......IMHO ,the 299 has a long nose that collapses lopsided unless a hard alloy is used ......I have found better results with the Lee 185 shape.

[rtyler8140]

i didnt have tumbling ,but ocassional flyers ,and generally poor accuracy......IMHO ,the 299 has a long nose that collapses lopsided unless a hard alloy is used ......I have found better results with the Lee 185 shape.

I did try the Lee 185 boolit. Lapped the mold out to .315 and I believe that one tumbled as well. May need to revisit that one again.

[Outpost75]

I used the CBE 240-grain bullet with great success in my 2 - groove Long Branch, and also NOE #316299 plainbased with 11 grains of #2400 or 16 grains IMR4227. SOFT, FAT bullets are the answer.

[Jack Stanley]

The tumbling problem with my number one was fixed by sending a throat impression and case to Veral Smith at LBT . I got a double cavity mold that made bullets that came out of the mold at .320" and bore ride of .308" .

The crazy thing is , they fit six different rifles I had From a Winchester model patterned after the M1917 up to a number four MKII . That bullet never tumbled with sizing ranging from .316" to .318". It's almost as though the rifles wanted the casings fit to the chamber as well as bullets to fit the throat .

Jack

[screwcutter]

I’d look at loading procedures, using standard dies don’t work out well. I’ve went to using Lee collet dies & NOE expanders to load oversized projectiles. NOE 316299 has done fine for me with 2 and 5 groove barrels on 200 meter rams.

[longbow]

Something else occurred to me... Well, two things:

- You are probably aware that most Lee Enfield chambers are very large so full length sizing brass is pretty hard on it and full length sized cartridges have a lot of clearance around them in the chamber. In my case the shoulder moves forward a lot... looks like about 1/16" though is probably not that much. I started neck sizing only to minimize these issues.

-I had trouble with my RCBS dies sizing the neck to the very optimistic size of 0.311"/0.312" to suit factory bullet diameters. My groove diameter is 0.315" in 3 of 4 Lee Enfields so the tight necks were sizing down ACWW boolits when I seated them resulting in undersize driving bands. Regular annealing helps reduce this sizing at seating as would heat treated boolits. I made a larger expander button to reduce the neck tension on 0.316" boolits. This immediately improved accuracy. But again the brass is being worked a lot so I bought a Lee Collet sizer and made a mandrel to give me 0.313" inside the neck after sizing so reducing working of brass and sizing of boolits by tight necks.

Both of the above helped with accuracy issues.

Longbow

[rtyler8140]

So I was able to get back out to the range this past weekend. Had 7 different load configurations to try. I was not overly impressed with any of them and blame myself for this. I had 4 paper patched loads, 2 powder coated with filler and 1 powder coated with no filler. I had 2 different boolit profiles. Only 4 had the same powder/charge. I feel my loads had too many variables to get consistent data to provide constructive feedback. All that to say, a day at the range is still better than a day at work. I agree with the two statements above that full length sizing is squishing the neck and body down pretty far from the chamber tolerance. It's not as bad as my mosin, but still not ideal. I measured the ID of the case neck of one of my 303 cases and it's about .319. Back to the drawing board and this time with a little more focus as to not repeat my last outing. Again, I appreciate all the feedback!

[Driver man]

Did you try seating the bullet closer to the lands?

[Jack Stanley]

Another thought , Redding makes a die that uses interchangable collars . I think it's a form of neck sizing but it allows you to control neck tension as well by changing the collar . If you're stuck with just a full length size die at least back it out so it doesn't touch the neck .

If the throat is toast a bullet with a longer bearing surface will likely help , it did for mine .

Read Longbows post again ... treasure right there I tell ya .

Jack

[KCSO]

Try COW filler over the powder, I had a oversize bore on one of mine and couldn't get the bullets sized right but the filler fixed the problem Other wise i would cast and size to 317 if necessary, I have cast 322 bullets and sized them down in steps.

[rtyler8140]

So below is a chart of the loads I tried last weekend. All except load #6 & #8 were all over the place. Load #8 is what I have experienced good results with in the past. If you'll noticed, the case neck ID after firing is indeed pretty large. After full length sizing, neck ID is .311. I am going to look into either a collet die or the NOE neck sizers. I will say, I did find it interesting that load #6 actually grouped (not great, but smaller than a shotgun pattern) and did not tumble. These were the boolits that have always tumbled. Was it the velocity or the paper patch that helped them out? If you look at the chart you will see they were sized to .3165 after paper patching. The arsenal boolits are seated as long as possible to allow the bolt to still close without a monumental effort. I will have to check the length of the NOE again. It's possible I was just using the suggested oal from the Lyman Cast book for the 314299 boolit. So now the question is: where do I go from here? I'm thinking I may try 3 different boolits (NOE 316213, Arsenal 315178, and Lee 312-185) powder coated and sized to .3165 with H335 in the 2000-2200 fps range and see what happens. I'll need to get either the collet die or NOE expander prior to loading in hopes that will help some. All 3 of these boolits will be water quenched wheel weights.

[screwcutter]

A short clip of No4MKI* Savage 2 groove, NOE 316299 starting load of 4759.
https://youtu.be/SQ8fY762WOQ